Customer Reviews

Kid K'Nex - Elmo's Cowboy Adventure Building Set

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We received one of these as a gift for our son. He was excited about it because he loves Duplos. It didn't take long to figure out that K'Nex is a poor substitute - CTW should have licensed their content to the Lego corp, they would have had better products as a result. Our son was very quickly frustrated by the legs on both the horse and the Elmo. They do not attach well and do not stay attached. The directions show to place them at the edge of a block, which works, but they are unstable and quickly loosen and fall off. He also has trouble placing them there on his own (not a problem with motor skills - this kid can build a tower of Duplos taller than he is!). Worse, they only fit tightly like this on the first few tries - after that, the top of the leg gets worn a little and then won't fit well at all. They fit much better and much more stably if placed into one of the circular holes that falls between pegs (anyone looking at the underside of a Lego block should understand what I am referring to) but the arrangement of the pieces makes this impossible - there aren't enough exposed holes to place all four of the horse's legs this way, and while it can be done with the Elmo, the size of the feet makes it a tight fit - and the toy ends up unbalanced as the designers didn't think to place the feet in that manner, even though it's the only way to make them stay on.

The talking feature is also not well thought out. The specs say Elmo says two phrases - and that's exactly what he says. "Today, Elmo is a cowboy." "Let's pretend... we are riding horses... in the old west." He speaks when you press on his head. You will hear these two phrases multiple times just trying to get the head out of the box and assembled. The activator for this is very touchy, so the gentle handling of a young child will set it off constantly as the kid plays. This got old REALLY fast. The same two phrases, over and over and over. We had to remove the batteries to save our sanity. He didn't seem to miss it afterwards.

I give the toy a B for overall effort but a D- for design and execution. Maybe the other K'Nex models are better, but if we buy our son more blocks we're sticking with Duplo/Lego instead of the imitators.

I have three young boys (grandchildren) and they all play with the Elmo toys, they love them, build tons of fun into well spent quiet time with these. Will purchase more sets as time goes on.