My baby brother has always been interested in things with wheels. One of his first sentences as a two year old was "Matthew go on train?" (Only he said it "twain" and gave you these big doggy eyes and looked so sad he couldn't go on the twain that you felt like a horrible old person who had deprived him of his only true joy in life). Another was "Twain pretty". (And when you look him on the twain his eyes got real big, you'd think with joy but not really, really it looked a bit closer to fear but you know he loved it because once he got off he wanted to go back on.)

Anyway, my baby brother is now four (!) and has extended his love of twains to anything with wheels (this does not include the various books we throw at him). His loves his Mickey Mouse train, his Hot Wheels racing set and his big wheel trucks. I got him the Shelcore Chunky Garage, thinking that it would knock his socks off.

It was easy enough to assemble. Following the directions, it only took me about a half hour, and this was with Matthew asking me every minute "You finished?" And for the first minute after it was done, it seemed to work beautifully. Matthew took his little Chunky people and put them in the little Chunky cars and drove up to the little Chunky gas pump and up the little Chunky ramp and parked them for a split second in the (chunky) parking lot, then drove the little Chunky car into the little Chunky elevator and that's where we hit the problem.

The Chunky elevator wouldn't go down! At first I thought it was a strength thing. So I picked up the garage and pushed the garage door down with all my might. Didn't budge. Took me another minute or so until I realized that there was a little piece of plastic that got in the way of the smooth operation of the elevator. So if I pushed the elevator door to the side a little, I could get it to work. I did so, thinking that the problem was fixed.

Not so. Matthew comes to me 30 seconds afterwards: "The ellalator won't go up." The ellalator got stuck on the same little piece of plastic.

Long story short: the elevator on this toy is useless to a 4 year old. Both my brother and I were extraordinarily frustrated by it. It worked fine when I played with him, moving the elevator door over every single time he wanted it to go up or down. But I got him this toy to play with by himself, and it's impossible to explain to a four year old the logistics of moving a piece of plastic just so so that it doesn't get caught on another piece of plastic.



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