Recently I had the opportunity to review a new robot toy: Mechatars, and you know we do love the robots around here, so how could I resist?   Plus, you guys get a chance to win one, and a coupon code MECHMOM for 10% off at iloverobots.com, valid until November 30, to buy your own if you don’t!

The Review

Basically, a Mechatar is a toy that is part remote control robot, and part video game.  Which is pretty much right up my 6 year old’s alley.  So I had him actually do the review on this… see the video below!  But to summarize:

You have 3 Mechatar toys to choose from: a raptor/dino/dragon looking thing, a wolf, and a bear (which the Boy decided was a Polar bear.) The toys have a simple to use remote so you can drive them around, and engage in battles with other Mechatars, or do ‘missions’ which apparently involve beeping.  We didn’t have another Mech to battle with, so I can’t attest to that portion, but the driving around was a little clunky and difficult to control.  Though The Boy didn’t seem to mind.  So your ‘offline’ mode is basically a fighting toy.

The ‘online’ mode is a computer game where you fight with your Mechatar in the virtual world.  The boy and I agree this was the best part of the game.   The fighting game itself was fun, complex enough to be interesting, but not so complex that a six year old couldn’t handle it.  See a little bit of it in action in the video below.  It’s an online game, played in the web browser.  As far as I could tell, there is no interaction with other actual players, so it’s not really a virtual world, but you can play against your friends’ mechatars by allying with them for training missions.  You’re not actually playing against the friend, but you are pitting your Mech against the friend’s Mech, which is being played by the computer.

There are some other pieces to the online game, like Challenges, but The Boy didn’t find them very interesting.  However he LOVED the battles.

From a technical perspective, the game suffers from an unfortunately common problem for kids’ games, of requiring Administrator access to run.  Like many smart parents, we prefer for our son’s computer account to be restricted in what he can run and install (who knows where he might accidentally click when out on the web!) , and his account does not have Administrator privileges.  This means that the program which allows you to sync and auto-connect to the online game doesn’t work automatically – it has to be run as an administrator by us.  It also meant we had problems on the initial install-make sure install the game as an administrator to avoid failures.  If you were doing a lot of syncing between the offline and online this would be an issue, however since you don’t even have to have a Mechatar to play the online game, and syncing isn’t a real big deal if you’re not doing a bunch of offline battles, it hasn’t been a big problem with the way the The Boy is playing the game.

But all in all, The Boy is really enjoying the toy, and definitely recommends it. He loved the battling, but he did wish there were more mechs to battle, not just the 3 styles.

See the video below to see the toy in action, and to see the video game in action!

Giveaway!

So, wanna win one for yourself?

Here’s the rules:

• Visit www.Mechatars.com
• Review the Mechatar lineup and check out which one you think your kid would like.  (To see the Mechatar line up, click on “play now” then “register” but no information needs to be submitted)
• Leave a comment on this post with which Mechatar you’d most like to win!
• See?  Easy Peasy.

Leave your comment, following the rules above, and I’ll pick a winner this Friday!

Small Print

I was selected to participate in this sponsored post series by Clever Girls Collective.  I was compensated for my time for  this review, but my opinions are always my own. 

Halloween is coming up guys, and you know that’s the best time of year around here at Dabbled. So I created a new Halloween Projects page to collect a bunch of past halloween posts in one spot.  You’ll find costume ideas, food, halloween crafts and decor, and all kinds of tutorials, both from Dabbled and from elsewhere around the web.

So go check it out — You’ll find it in the main menu bar above under “Go Halloween!”

And if you have a cool halloween tutorial or created a cool costume, be sure to either leave a comment or send me the info (if you don’t blog, send me pics and a write up), and I’ll include it in this year’s halloween roundup.

Besides being an all around good time, Dragoncon is also a great place to get inspiration for Halloween costumes, like the REAL Iron Man !>>

I’ll also be on the lookout for cool artists…. so stay tuned.

Some past DragonCon posts:

• FSM Hat:: from Dragon-con
• Dragon*con Loot!
• Dragon*con! And some Geeky Links so you don’t get any work done today…
• Dragon-con 2010 Photos/Costumes
• Dragon*con Artist Report

Maybe I’ll see you there?