Excite Dog and the Wrecking Ball (Toy Wrecking Ball from Smartlab Toys)

A wrecking ball!? Our school house is in danger from a toy wrecking ball. Can Excite Dog stop the wrecking ball from smashing everything to smithereens? Yes, we got our hands on the new wrecking ball toy from Smartlabs Toys Demolition Lab. Watch as the wrecking ball smashes different tower set ups we built including:
-a cardboard schoolhouse with a bell tower
-a foam block tower
-a wooden block tower
-a Megablock tower (interlocking Lego-type blocks)
If you like crashes and smashes you might enjoy this wrecking ball action, but we're sure that Excite Dog won't! He'll certainly have hands (er paws) full trying to stop our new wrecking ball.
Mini Review:
We had a lot of fun with the wrecking ball from Smartlab. Our kids certainly love smashing things, and so it's great to have a toy where that's the actual idea. It's pretty hard to find a wrecking ball toy and this one actually works at a decent price point. Great idea, solid execution.
The biggest issue is smashing is a lot more fun than rebuilding the tower - and even with practice it is very time consuming. So there's a lot of down time with this set, but honestly, I don't see any way around that. A high-speed self-rebuilding tower would cost a great deal, or more likely, involve simply playing on a video game screen, which is not what we're after here. Also, as we hope our video demonstrate, the wrecking ball can break a lot more than just the cardboard tower provided.
The wrecking ball has a crank and a release button. It's also got stabilizers. Sometimes they fall off, but it's kinda neat that you actually need them for the wrecking ball to actually balance properly. The wrecker is not that durable (it's wire and plastic) but it's of at least average quality and probably better than expected at the price point.
The included school house is just card board, but there's a ton of pieces so if you want to build the whole thing, you can make a really big tower configuration. The instructions give a lot of ideas how the toy can be used for its educational value discussing potential energy etc. which was a nice bit of shrewd marketing. Who doesn't like to be reminded their play is reinforcing learning. Overall, thumbs up!
ATTRIBUTION:
We'd like to recognize and thank the artists who created the music and some of the sound effects in this video:
The "whimsical music" is the awesomeness of:
Monkeys Spinning Monkeys Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons...
"Huge Explosion" recorded by Ryansook
www.freesound....
"Huge Explosion5.flac" Recorded by CGEffex
www.freesound....
Large Truck Chains
License: Attribution 3.0
Recorded by Mike Koenig on Sound Bible
soundbible.com/...
Spinning in 3D (binaural) » tinkerbellish around-head spell ( back in time ).flac recorded by Timbre www.freesound....
Action whoosh » Whoosh Puff by Speedenza
www.freesound....