LEGO Off Road Racer

By LEGO Group
Price $19.99
Age 7-14 yrs.

It is a remarkable experience to watch a child assemble the Off Road Racer, a fast-moving race car with a pull-back motor capable of doing exciting stunts. The finished vehicle is a marvel of detail, sleek and sporty, and the pride felt and displayed by the child who put it together is a pleasure to behold. Yet the instructions are surprisingly easy to follow, using ingeniously clear-cut illustrations to guide the process, step by step. The experience is also remarkable because of the amount of fun it provides. While assembly is not difficult, it does require (and inspire) focus and concentration. Working at something with that level of intentness is a pleasure unto itself. And each step in the process, as the racer takes on shape and form, yields it own satisfaction. That a product like this, one that requires no glue, screws, nails, or tools to assemble, and whose finished result is an exciting, durable toy, exists at all is extraordinary. It takes a company like LEGO, dedicated to producing building-products for a broad range of ages, to pull together the experts and resources necessary to generate something like this. Bravo.