CARS 3 : TOY REVIEW

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a toy rutt? You buy all these wonderful things for your little one for them to love and play with and there they sit in the corner gathering dust. A keyboard. A shed load of books. An aqua-doodle. A builder dressing up set with hammers, screwdrivers etc. A TwirlyWoos boat with doors, noises, all sorts. A walking talking Bing bunny. Just to name a few.

My son can often be running around the house like a nutter absolutely bored and he has all the playdoh, the kinetic sand, colouring in paraphernalia he could ever want. And he wants NONE of it. Cue a desperate parent thinking “What does this kid want?!” Most of the time he just needs to be out. We’ve said it before but he’s like a dog. He needs to be walked twice a day, fed and watered. He much prefers to be running around trees and lakes than sat indoors getting crafty.

Don’t get me wrong, any new toy added to the mix is always met with happiness and smiles and he definitely plays with them. But it doesn’t last as long as we’d hope! So we have to get creative sometimes…

It’s safe to say that he is obsessed with cars. Not so much toy cars or the big, expensive ‘nee-naw’ we bought him. But ACTUAL cars. He's approached complete strangers cars before now and tried to open the doors. He can even spot my car in a packed car park from yards away. He LOVES them. His auntie and uncle recently brought him a battery powered Audi. It has its own pedals, lights, beep beep… literally the best present ever.

With the release of Disney Pixars new film, Cars 3, I thought we could try something else new and sit through the first cars movie at home. He is happy to sit for a good half hour at times watching a few episodes of his favourite show… a film though? Hmm. I don’t know.

It is safe to say being sent the latest Mack truck from Cars 3 , fully loaded with all the Cars from the movie, regardless of him knowing them or not, was going to go down well! It’s a huge truck with 7 cars inside, including Lightening McQueen! I thought this would be like heaven in toy form for him! But we wanted to keep the entertainment in this toy alive for longer than 3 minutes… so we made our own DIY race track! I also thought this would be a good way to help develop that little mind of his. Following a path, a track… instead of the aimless pushing and throwing around of his toys and cars and to give his play a little more focus. We took some masking tape, and made progress with our track, taking us over the sofa, the cushions, rug and dining table… see the results of our crafty labour below!

So how did we get on? I had to give an example of what to do and follow the track all the while being shouted at, “NO MINE!!” as I took the truck around the track! But after that, he was well away! He was zooming it around the track (and bashing furniture a little, but hey I guess that’s my fault!). And it lasted a good amount of time… I’d say half an hour! It just shows that making that little bit of extra effort and getting on the floor to keep him interested works. You can see all the toys from the latest Cars 3 movie available at the Disney Store here.

Oh, and how did the film go? Yeh… we lasted exactly 4 minutes til he wanted to do something else. Maybe next time!

I received this toy from the Disney Store in exchange for my thoughts :)