Christmas Winners Honorable Mention

With the horrid Strawberry Shortcrap Karaoke Set now safely back at Toys 'R' Us, our attention the last couple of days has turned to some of the better presents. My son and I have spent quite a bit of time building the the Mega Bloks Battlestorm Castle the past few days, and each time I sit down with it, I am more and more impressed. This is an excellent product.

First, you get a ton of quality building time for your money. There are more than 400 pieces in this set, and about 60 detailed steps to putting them all together. I'm working slowly with my son and trying to let him do as much as possible. He is a full year younger than the minimum recommended age of 6+, so things are slow going. We'll do a half hour a couple of times a day. I'd say we are now about two-thirds of the way complete, with about 2-3 hours total time spent so far. But this is a wonderful parent-child project, and we're having a great time.

Second, everything fits together well. With this many parts, all it would take is for some shoddy manufacturing to make the assembly a nightmare. But it's not. Everything is there, and everything snaps together cleanly and well. Some of the elements come apart again a bit easier than I would like, so we've had some minor rebuilding to do after a random five-year-old arm sweep bashed off the top of the adjoining tower, but for the most part, they seem to have gotten the "difficulty-to-assemble/easy-of-disassembly" balance pretty much on the spot.

Third, if you like manuals, this set has the second best manual I have ever seen. Heck, if you like manuals, this might be a good purchase for the manual alone. It's a full-color, high-quality book on large paper, and it goes on for page after page. And get this: there are no words! Everything is done with pictures, arrows, and a few numbers, and it's crystal clear what you have to do. The attention to detail is outstanding. At the end, there are even full-page, full color pictures of alternate builds you can make with the castle. The person who created this manual should get a Noble Prize.

Lastly, and most important, there is a ton of fun stuff in this box. In addition to the castle, you get one larger dragon, two smaller ones, six knights (albiet small ones), a catapult, a javelin thrower, a working drawbridge, a spiked log trap, and functional moat with a real waterfall! Ok, ok, I'm just kidding about the moat and waterfall. But usually when you buy a set like this, they show you a picture on the front of the box with a ton of awesome stuff on it, and then hidden somewhere on the back, in teeeny weeny letters, is that 75% of the stuff is sold separately. So to get everything you see, your approximate cost would be about the same as a year of college tuition at a prestigious Ivy League college. But with this castle, all the cool stuff is there! Amazing!

Highly recommended at this point!