Hot Wheels RC Terrain Twister Vehicle (Red) Review

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I have a lot of R/C things here. I build and fly helicopters and planes. I have several cars, mostly high end ones. My 9 year old son loves when I have them out, but all of them are too much for his 9 year old control. So we also have a few "kid" type R/C toys as well, for him to play with. I thought this might be a fun one to have here, that we both could play with.

Arrived quickly, and in great shape. Packaging was annoying, waxed string tying everything through the cardboard, no quick release storage here. Wax on the strings made it tough on a few of them to untie the knots, so out came the scissors.

It's boxed completely assembled, all you have to do is plop the batteries into the transmitter and the vehicle. There is no on/off switch on the transmitter, but there is one on the vehicle. The rechargeable battery for it is a large articulating double rectangle, held together with a hinge type assembly, so it can bend in half and be fit inside the top of the vehicle easily. The charger is a single unit, with the prongs for the outlet built right into the charger, no cable or anything. The battery slides in from the bottom and clicks with a small release switch to remove. And here was where I found my first issue no indicator on the charger. No light to indicate it's got power, is charging, and certainly nothing as complex as a multi colored light to indicate charging / complete status.

The transmitter is absolute junk. It has an 8 way d-pad style control on the left side, for movement ,and the right is a simple up/down slider switch that simply adjusts the angle of the tracks and has nothing to do with movement directly, but modifies the angles of the pontoons so that different movements have different results.

And this is where the real failure was movement. The instructions simply show 16 pictures, showing what *should* happen when you push the button on a direction. Forward, back, turns, sideway, pivoting. And about the only thing ours did that corresponded to the picture was forward and back. The instructions also state that slick surfaces (sidewalks, asphalt, tile, hard flooring) won't provide sufficient traction, so you really can't expect to be able to drive forward and backwards on it. You have to use sideways motions on them. And that's certainly true, on my linoleum floor in the kitchen it can only go side to side.

I have different carpeting in the house and on all of them, it wouldn't go straight. It would list off to the left, like an RC car that needs a steering adjustment. There was no surface I was able to try it on (grass, concrete, various carpet types, hard floors) that it would actually go straight.

And the turning is just awful. It shows that it "should" turn with the diagonal movements of the control pad, but this one doesn't. You can push up or down on the right slider switch to alter the angles and make it supposedly spin around it's axis like something strafing a target and circling it at the same time, but this didn't work very good either.

It looks cool, and my son was really excited when I unboxed it, but we both got frustrated, and subsequent attempts after making sure the battery was fully charged didn't improve anything. I had hoped maybe as the battery got low, it simply couldn't exert enough force where it needed, which would've explained the performance when we unboxed it (was about 5 minutes of play time in the battery when it was unboxed), but even fully charged the control didn't change.

All in all it's a cool toy, and looks really slick, but the fact that they say you can't go forward or back on hard floors, tiles, or even CONCRETE (?!?!?!) really means there's not a lot of places they seem to expect you to really be able to use it fully. I was surprised at the concrete problem, since I would've thought concrete had enough of a rough surface to provide traction...

It's fall now, and no place for me to test in water now, so all this is only in regards to land operation. But this is a toy that's unfortunately not going to be getting any use in our household...

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This is a great RC toy if you don't have the smooth surfaces that most require. It worked really well on grass and rough terrain as promised, okay on concrete and not well at all on smooth floors (expected). It's large and made a real impression on the kids and adults with its unusual styling. There was a small learning curve for the kids since it steers a little differently than a wheeled vehicle, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it. The remote range and battery life seem great we had no problems with either. It was a hit with the 12 and 7 year olds at our house.

(We haven't had the opportunity to test it in water, but will update if we have that chance.)

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we bought this item as a Christmas gift for my 11 year old son. I was skeptical because of all the bad reviews here on Amazon. Let me start by saying, if your going to leave a bad review on an item please understand what the item was designed to do not what you "wish" it would. Ok, theres my rant. This product has been great, Going on 2 months with alot of use and no issues at all. we did however manage to get it on sale for $43.00 at china mart, So maybe I am exceptionally happy? But, Back to it. There are alot of complaints about the fact it wont go straight, I cant get it to do this, or to do that. The design of the barrel or screw track system is where the fun value comes in. This will not go straight on say carpet or something that has no give, Come on, It rides on two independant screws that constantly battle each other. Did you really think it would? Where it really shines is on snow or in water, sand, or something that has movable mass. Sidewalks are to slick and carpets tend to just grab the screws and they fight it out so carpet not so much. Part of the fun is the sideways motion, Which it really flies, even on carpet. It is a literal blast in snow and water, especially snow. I have had no issues with battery life, it will last every bit as long as advertised which I believe was 20 min. Look up some reviews on youtube as well if your thinking about purchasing. Theres some good video of kids using theirs with no issues. My son hated the the fact we had to wait 4 or 5 hours for the initial charge of the battery but we followed the instruction manual and have had no issues. The one thing you could run into is we wanted to get another but they all run on the same frequency, Keep that in mind if you have the need for two. I would give this a fairly strong 4 to 4 1/2 stars. Very happy.

Honest reviews on Hot Wheels RC Terrain Twister Vehicle (Red)

I tend to doubt any toy that is advertised heavily on TV, but after lots of letters to Santa and reading the reviews I decided to try out the Terrain Twister. We have had a number of RC cars & trucks and most don't last more than a few weeks, because we live in the country and most don't have the guts to make it up the hilly, muddy, grassy and gravel areas in our "yard." We have no cement, and no flat hard areas. So when I read other reviewers that said it sucks on flat areas, but is great on different terrains...I said, "SOLD!" It snowed Christmas morning...as requested by my 9 year old...and the Terrain Twister worked AWESOME on it. In under 5 minutes my son was doing all the tricks you see on the commercials and driving it sideways. It is bigger than I expected and seems pretty well built. The batteries last about an hour, so you have to plan to charge it for at least 3 hours. We can't wait to see it "swim" in the pond when the ground thaws.

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The toy works great on land and water and because of the twin screws can do tricks that are quite impressive. I used it in a very calm swimming pool and was impressed with its speed, stability and wild maneuvers. The "adults" couldn't wait to get their hands on it.