As we get closer to Christmas I’m always on the lookout for new toys, especially ones that would suit both Toby and Gabe. Finding toys that can be enjoyed by a three year old and five year old together isn’t always easy so when I was asked if we would like to review Zoom Tubes Car Trax I was hopeful that they would fit the bill.

Zoom Tubes Car Trax

We were sent the Zoom Tubes Twist & Turn Tubular Trax set, the Tubular Expansion Pack and an additional RC Racer Car. That gave us 50 pieces of track and two cars to play with. The boys were very excited when they saw the boxes and were eager to find out what the Zoom Tubes were and how to play with them. And here comes my first tip…

If you are giving Zoom Tubes Car Trax as a gift this Christmas I would really recommend you get it out of the box and do some of the building in advance. All the curved tubes come in two pieces which have to be clicked together. Older children could probably do this themselves but for little ones it’s definitely a job for mum or dad, and my two were definitely getting a bit impatient while I put all the sections together. Also, the cars themselves need to be charged via USB, and batteries put into the remote controls (2 xAA, not included) so it’s worth doing this in advance too.

Setting up the track and cars

Once the pieces have been clipped together then building the track is easy – just twist the connectors onto the end of each section and away you go. You do get some ideas for tracks in the box but basically you can build whatever you want! I built a simple track first and the boys really enjoyed racing the two cars around it. They really do zoom! The cars light up too which adds to the excitement.

Another tip which took me a while to figure out because it’s not in the instructions. If you have more than one car you need to change the channel one of them runs on from A to B on the remote control. However, you have to do this with the car switched off – change the remote to channel B, and then turn the car on. It’s simple enough but it managed to confuse us for a bit!

More Zoom Tubes Car Trax ideas

After playing with the first track that I had made Toby decided he would try and build a run down the stairs. The cars will go up the track as well as down so he had great fun shooting his car up and down.

We also used the cross piece from the Expansion pack to make a double loop track that the cars could chase each other round. With 50 pieces of the track though the possibilities really are endless and I can see Toby building lots more different tracks in the future.

The Zoom Tubes Car Trax are sold as suitable for ages 5+ and I think this is probably about right. Gabe enjoyed racing his car round the track but actually building track was a bit beyond him. One of the great things about Zoom Tubes though is that because the track is enclosed there’s no frustration with cars falling off the track like you might get with some other racing sets.

On the whole Toby and Gabe really like Zoom Tubes and I would recommend it probably for children aged about 5-10. The only downside for us (although not really for the boys) is that the cars are really noisy when they are flying round the track! It’s a great toy though, and the possibilities for building new tracks are almost limitless, making it fab for older children too.