Customer Reviews

Tyco Radio Controlled Shell Shocker 27 MHz

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(44)

 

 

The toy itself is fine, pricy, but fine. However, it's one thing for your kid to open a gift on Christmas morning and realize you have to run to the gas station for a forgotten battery. It's totally another thing to spend $70 on something you can't even use without the $30 battery pack that has to be purchased separately at a REAL store. Tyco didn't want to price this thing at $100 so they TRICKED their customers with a simple "batteries not included" label. If you want this toy for your child, just realize...it ACTUALLY costs $100!!!

The Shell Shocker is the coolest land-based RC toy I've played with since, well ever. I purchased one myself, and once I got it home realized I misread the packaging - to me it seemed that you could purchase an extra battery pack if you wanted to, but it was not 100% crystal clear that I needed to buy one of these separately. Some people are going to be turned off when they realize that they need to purchase a $30 battery for a toy they already spent $60 for - trust me when I realized I had to go back to the store I was right there with ya. Once you get the battery charged and start playing though, all that frustration will disappear!

While the toy may be cool the "batteries not included" on the box is definitely deceptive. A $30 proprietary battery should be included with the toy and NOT a secondary expense.

I was reading the revies, I was aware of the concerns and I was willing to take the risk and give it a shot... Well, I am happy I did!
I am 26 years old and have a fable for RC toys. Saying this I'd like to say, that for me this thing is definetely NOT a toy for kids under 8 and defineteley NOT a toy to be used either indoors nor without supervision!

To give you an impression why I think that is, consider the following: the ShellShocker is about 1ft in diameter and has a 1ft long tail. It needs this tail in order to move forward, to create a counterforce on the ground. This leads to the first issue: if you drive backward or if you stop that thing the tail WILL act like a whipp. This could cause some serious damage not only to your furniture, doorsand especially hardwood, but also on your pet if you should be tempted to "battle" them. (My dog loves to chase RC cars, but I trained him to stay away from that thing.)

Next consider the locomotion principle: the outer shells are not liek a wheel, smooth and round, but like seperate little hooks trying to grip into the ground. This makes the Shell Shocker nearly impossible to move on hard surfaces. Personally I had the best experience on DRY, SHORT grass and THICK carpet (but be aware of the potential damage if used indoors!!). Together with this comes the contraction and expansion feature: DON'T use it in high gras, since the motors are so powerfull that they will strip the gears apart if the mechanics got stuck somewhere.

The motors lead to my next issue with the toy: unlike a regular rc car you only could TOGGLE the engines between full forward/stop/full backward: you CAN'T drive that thing slowly! You either go full throttle or nothing! That makes stearing in cinfined areas (like your living room) kind of hard or impossible, ESPECIALLY since any change in motion will bring the tail whip around, hitting random things.

My final concern is the general quality impression: the axles of mine where kind of loose from the beginnig and the haptics are simply cheap. But my biggest concern about this thing ae the parts of the shells that actually touch the ground: if you look at the pictures you could see that the shells have these balck end pieces ehich you sureley identified as the "wheels". Personally, beeing an engineer, I would have made these things from a rubber like plastic such that it would scratch on hard surfaces and that it would get at least some kind of grip on hard surfaces - but instead the material is regular plastik, like your phone casing. I scratches immediatly if used outdoors and seemes to be the first part to fail, excluding the gears.

As a conclusion I would say that I personally would buy it again, even if will birn you $100 in total. (But since I love rc toys I am not really objective on that part... ;-) ). As a toy for your kids I would say it is extremly cool IF they are old enough (please, take Mattels recommendation of 8+ seriously) to understand that they must use it carefully if it shoudl last long or if you supervise them.

It's a blast using it in the front yard and watching it, spin, roll and to all kind of fancy things - but it wasn't fun when I first knocked a lower glas window of my HiFi rack...

Enjoy responsible!

Claus

I agree with others regarding the special battery pack. I bought this toy for my grandson, it is the most wanted item on his list. I purchased it 2 weeks ago, get around to wrapping it only to find out it needs a special battery pack & charger in addition to other "normal" batteries. The cost wasn't my concern, nor the other batteries. Now scrambing to find the required battery pack/charger, to find they are unavailable!! Great, my grandson gets his cool toy and can't operate until who knows when. Something like that should be included in the box regardless of the total cost. At least those that are willing to pay the price can expect to get the complete toy. Very disappointed in such a large, well known toy company.

My son, I, and the rest of the family fired this thing up the evening upon its opening as a Christmas gift to my son. We only spent a few minutes with it (because it was dark outside but, we had to see the LED eyes light up :) ) and realized we had pretty cool toy in front of us, after performing a few tricks with it. We packed it away and took it home to play with the next day.

My son and I took the Shell Shocker out for its 2nd run,... it performs great on non-hard surfaces (i.e. grass, dirt, etc) or so we thought. After about 5 minutes of laughing watching this thing do its tricks, my son let it come to rest (in its expanded form) and attempted to "contract" it into is "ball" form, via the remote.

Well this is where the pain of failure began. Apparently one of the wheels got caught up in the grass and the motor over-powered the gears inside and we heard a pop. After picking it up and moving it to a more forgiving piece of ground we found that it would no longer contract nor expand.

Thinking, "Hey, I'm a Systems Engineer," I took the thing apart except for the core to see if there was something obviously wrong. It appears the gears inside had slipped either due to one of the teeth being broken or the motor just slipped it off its track. The material of the gears appear to have a nylon/plastic propery like that of PVC tubing. Regardless, I put it all back together before making things worse. We now find, with manual manipulation, we can expand it or contract it but, it lost is "enchantment" with us.

I didn't save the receipt nor the box so, I figured it was a wasted effort in any attempt to exchange/return it (I'll own the fault there). But, including the battery, the feeling of throwing $90 down the drain .... just sucks.

The Shell Shocker has great amusing potential. Sadly, I don't think the surrounding material can handle the power in the motor.

I personally think that if you have to buy something extra to make the toy run, you should put it in big bold writing in the item description. I received this item today, only to find that I needed to buy an additional battery, a $30 additional battery!! THANK GOD they at least put that information on the front of the package! (I couldnt imagine waking up christmas morning and not being able to play with it.)However, now the battery pack and charger are imposssible to find and seem to be on back order everywhere! I did happen to find one on ebay! I hope this toy is worth it, and my son loves it..........if his heart wasnt set on it, I would pack it up and send it back. A $100 should buy more than 1 toy!

My husband just ordered this toy online. We haven't gotten it yet, so I cannot attest to the fun, educational value, or durablity. I can, however relay the fact that the advertising for this toy is hugely decpetive. The description of this toy on Amazon.com says "2 AA batteries required." It doesn't say one thing about any other sort of batteries. Then, if you scroll down because you happen to want to know some of the cool features of the toy, you see that it will require the Tyco ProFlex BP&C and one 9 volt for transmitter. Batteries not included. Well, I'm sure that Tyco figured that most parents wouldn't have a clue what a ProFlex BP&C was, or that it was (...)At the very least, the words battery pack and charger should be spelled out for clarity, the usage of the initials was just another attempt at trickery.

So in the description from Amazon.com, we're told we need only purchase 2 AA batteries, and then the manufacture's spiel says that we need a "BP&C and a 9 volt battery". But the manufacturer doesn't say anything about 2 AA batteries. Someone has dropped the ball here, and it's really foul. I must say, this is the priciest (...) I've ever spent in my life. I certainly hope it turns out to be worth it. One thing that the manufacturer fails to understand, is that myself and others would have bought the toy if the price for the battery and toy were combined and everything was advertised legitimately. I just wouldn't have had such a bad taste in my mouth.

I've never purchased a remote control toy that did not come with the rechargeable battery. It was very disappointing on Christmas morning to learn that we had to order the battery separately (...).

Like other disappointed consumers, we bought the Shell Shocker for my 8 yr old son for Christmas. He loves RC type toys and Shell Shocker is a much different RC compared to the typical cars, trucks and such. I knew about the extra battery expense before buying Shell Shocker from doing the research, that was not an issue (like others have noted). However, this toy was one of the "feature" Christmas gifts for my son. I was diligent enough to have charged the battery ahead of time so he may use it on Christmas day. Well... the Shell Shocker did not make it past 1 hour of use in our back yard. The left fin stopped extracting (expanding outward), and based on the other reviews, I can only assume a gear broke inside it. (The backyard is composed of mostly mulch and grass, nothing hard like concrete or rocks.)

I did not bother to open the Shell Shocker casing...instead I am going back to the store and demanding my money back for the Shell Shocker and battery pack. (~$100 total). This is the second disappointing Christmas toy from Mattel. The other is the "Barbie Primp and Polish" styling head...also a big disappointment. My wife called Mattel and complained today, we are getting a full refund...but that's another story.