Doesn’t this solar-powered kit look awesome? I couldn’t resist this kit for $3. It promised 3 robots in one: regular robot, tank, scorpion.
Inside the box, there was a set of instructions, stickers and the plastic moldings in blue and white. They were labelled with numbers so that you could tell what is what when following instructions.
The instructions were quite complicated. You actually had to build the robot first in order to even understand how to configure it to the rest of the robotic creatures. The solar power panel was attached to a motor and it worked well when not actually attached to anything. There were a lot of bits and pieces to put together.
Sometimes we looked at the instructions and had no idea what hole they were asking us to put things into. Other times pieces of plastic from the molding would just be in the way. It specifies that it is for age 10 and up but I’d be impressed to find a 10 year old who can get this thing working.
Nearly 2 hours later, this is what we ended up with. He was lopsided, and was too heavy for it’s own motor. Or maybe it was midnight and our lamps weren’t generating enough power for the panel. Either way we were left with one sad robot and decided never to touch it again.
You can watch our struggles on video here.
