Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This toy was provided free of cost to my family from Spin Master in exchange for our honest review. At first glance this Paw Patrol set looks awesome. The ability to launch racers across the track sounds like a lot of fun! My boys were excited as I opened the box and proceeded to put the track together. Assembly was very easy; there is a sticker sheet but only two of the stickers have a specific place to be applied. All of the other stickers are to "place wherever you want". I chose not to apply them anywhere. The set is well built with sturdy plastic, and the pieces fit together like a glove. We assembled it on the carpet in or living room, though I believe it would do much better on a solid surface floor. The track pieces would stay together as the kids navigate around it. My 3 and 4 year old boys were the first to play with the Lookout Tower. The first thing they wanted to do was try the launcher. With a bit of direction from me, Charlie placed the Rubble racer onto the launch spot and slammed on the top of the tower to "launch" him across the track. Rubble immediately crashed and burned. It seems his vehicle is front heavy; no matter how many times he was launched, he'd topple over and crash. We tried to launch Ryder on his strange little snowmobile vehicle next. First, this vehicle is pretty long and doesn't fit well on the parking space. We had the same experience when we tried to launch him onto the track, a spectacular crash and burn. The boys started playing with the smaller Chase and Zuma figures next. They decided to place those characters in the launcher to see how well they could fly. Thy weren't disappointed here! They definitely had more fun launching the little dogs, since they few a lot farther. The boys soon learned to "break" the bridge, and proceeded to launch the dogs through the hole that created. Tons of laughter came from that! We attempted to play with the Lookout portion of the tower, placing Chase and Zuma inside where they fit nicely. However, when we tried to put them on the slide to slide down (as is shown as an option on the box) we found that the dogs just don't fit. The slide doesn't line up with the tower itself, and the dogs are too wide and they get stuck right at the top. All in all, my kids had a pretty good time with the track set. Their favorite part was breaking the bridge and driving (aka: crashing) the racers through the hole. We got almost 2 days of intermittent play out of this play set, and like most of their other toys it now sits in pieces strewn across the living room floor. The fact that the racers don't actually "launch" as the product advertises, and that the dogs don't fit on the slide as shown on the box makes me disappointed in the product as a parent. The fact that my kids seem to enjoy it anyway makes me at least a little happy, since it does encourage their imaginative play. It was entertaining to watch them make up little stories and pay with the set; they didn't seem too bothered by the launcher not working well for the vehicles. Given what I know now, I do think I'd have passed on this toy, since having a product work as advertised is important to me. I especially have high expectations for toys carrying an outrageously popular brand name such as Paw Patrol, so my disappointment feels worse when these expectations aren't very well met.