Kidz Workshop EZ Build Locomotive
by Staff - 2008-05-01
Pre-cut pieces of wood, screws, and a screwdriver together in a kit allowing you to build a wooden toy train. The kits come in other varieties such as a car, and bi-plane. This is the kind of item that if done right could be super cool, because you basically get three things for your money. 1. A building project for a parent and young child to work on together or optionally an older child alone. 2. A cool wooden item that can be used for a painting project (paint not included). 3. When all building and painting is done you are still left with a cool wooden toy to play with and/or display.
Building A Train Montage
In order to test the EZ part of the EZ Build Locomotive we decide to let our newly turned five years old son Tommy do the construction work. We ran into a problem pretty close to right away wen we discovered we hadn't been given the correct number of screws of each size, this required us to pull out a screwdriver different than the one provided in the kit in order to try and force some longer screws to dig deeper than the provided pre-drilled holes in a couple of places. If we decide to carry these we will either make sure to add in extra screws just in case or will find a supplier than can assure us with some reasonable confidence that the screws will be correct. The pieces don't fit together perfectly, so there are some small alignment issues, but most get sort of hidden by later building, and those that don't get hidden seem to not matter all that much once the whole thing is complete because the train rolls just fine. Tommy had a blast making it and is very proud of it. He wants to paint it so I guess we need to find some good wood paint that is safe for kids to use. We talked to the company that makes the toy, whom we didn't get this one from directly since we bought it retail, and they say they have never had a problem with the screws so we think the issue may have just been a fluke, or maybe even related to the retailer we bought it from. So, since we like the over-all idea so much we may get a few and test some more.