Your kids will be hot stuff with Hot Wheels

As a little girl, I had a serious car fetish. I would spend hours and hours playing with Matchbox cars, drawing pictures of cars, memorizing facts about cars...even today, I am a car junkie. And I can't tell you how excited I was when Monkey Man developed a love for Hot Wheels cars at the tender age of two. I practically bought out the entire selection at every store I could find them in. It's a sickness, I tell you.

Parent Bloggers Network managed to hook us up with the coolest sets from Hot Wheels - the Hot Wheels Trick Tracks Triple Stunt Starter Set (say that ten times fast!), and the Hot Wheels Power Loop Stunt Zone. The day they arrived in the mail, I let Monkey Man open the boxes and he just about went through the roof he was so excited! Heh, and I thought he had outgrown Hot Wheels...not the case at all!

The Triple Stunt Starter Set has three stunts that kids can use their imaginations to create any combination of stunts that they can dream up. They can speed around the loop, face the "Craniac", or fly out of the launcher - and any combination of those stunts. Monkey Man had lots of fun trying to create the most chaos possible with his Hot Wheels cars. I will warn you that some of the older Hot Wheels cars may not work with these sets, but each set comes with a car to use that works fine with the set and would be interchangable with any of the Trick Tracks sets.




The Power Loop Stunt Zone is also part of the Hot Wheels Trick Tracks line. It also features three stunts - with the centerpiece being the power loop stunt, a pair of loops that criss-cross in the sky and a power booster that allows kids to get a couple of cars going and then watching them crash. And really, isn't that what is the most fun for kids playing with Hot Wheels? This set does require two "D" batteries but the wow factor is well worth the trouble to put them in.

Monkey Man is seven years old - and was able to do most of the assembly by himself save for putting the batteries in. He did need a little help understanding how to reset some of the stunts, but after a few minutes he was on his own and was laughing hysterically the whole time at all the chaos and destruction he was creating. "This is like the best science experiment EVER!" he yelled at one point.

The sets are also easy to break down if you don't want to keep them up for a long time. We've moved it several times and it only took a few minutes to reassemble everything, and a few minutes to break them down again when they had to be moved. I appreciated how easy they were to move around and get going again without a huge hassle!

Both sets are in the $20 range and are available through Amazon as well as major retailers. And with everyone tightening their belt a little this holiday season, this would be a perfect gift for any kid that loves Hot Wheels. It's not only fun, but encourages creative thinking as they dream up their next big stunt!

Thanks again to my friends at Parent Bloggers Network for a great product and gift idea!