I got to catch a lot of tv this holiday weekend–and started to see the waves of toy tv commercials. Some reminded me of toys that did not win awards from us…and that we needed to post more reviews!!
When we first saw TRIO at toy fair we were all excited. We love open-ended building sets and really get psyched when a large toy company gets behind a new system–making the access to it more affordable. Unfortunately TRIO did not fare well with our testers. The product is marked for kids 3 and up – so we enlisted one of our hard core DUPLO builders–thinking this would be the most likely audience. He had the same trouble we did manipulating the pieces. Unlike DUPLO, it’s hard to pull the pieces apart. We then tried them with a four year old builder–and had the same reaction. We hope the folks at Fisher-Price work on the “pull” factor. The pieces are pleasing–but too frustrating for the intended audience. Our recommendation is to stick with a basic DUPLO bucket at this age.
I’ve seen the same review of Trio blocks elsewhere too and so I have steered one couple away that were trying to decide between these and the Magnablocks (or something like that). Just that I’d seen bad reviews of these.
It is SO hard to find people saying bad things about a toy, that when I see them, I listen.
We were disappointed…there are lots of great alternatives though. We have given the Magneatos from Guidecraft a Platinum Award…they are just the opposite of TRIO–very easy to manipulate- making them a pleasing open-ended building experience.
In the interests of balance, from someone who actually owns these — our two-and-a-half year old has no problem with Trio once he actually played with them; you have to twist the blocks to get them undone, not pull, but that works fine.
Getting the rods into the blocks takes some breaking in, but after the first couple of hours when he needed help from a parent, that works fine as well.
Suggestion: only buy the basic sets — those ones have much more open-ended play potential than the fire station / airport / etc, which suffer like new Lego from being way too specialised. Set P6837 has a lot of different parts which none of the other ones have, and none of the “this is a fire station door” sort of things.