Joyful kiddos biking on air = parents walking on air!
Written: Oct 13 '06
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Pros: Quality construction and materials, smart features like free-wheel mode and steering lock, adjustable frame
Cons: Pricey.
The Bottom Line: Definitely worth it if you can buy one used. Quality justifies the expense if you plan to use it for several children.
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| neuhofer's Full Review: Kettler Air Jumbo |
What a great tricycle!
We bought our Kettler tricycle second-hand in 2003 while living in Europe for one year. Although they are available in Canada and in the USA, no one owns them where we are on the Canadian prairie. Hence, nothing on the second-hand market. In Europe, they are incredibly popular, and it was easy to pick one up on eBay and send it home in a suitcase (yes - a suitcase. See comments on the adjustable frame later on).
While many tricycles have solid rubber tires, this gives a nice soft ride. The tires are tubeless. After using it all summer overseas and deflating the tires to ship it home, we had a problem the next year in that the tires didn't seem to seat onto the plastic rims properly and lost air a few times. Never did quite figure out what we were doing wrong, but the problem resolved and has not repeated in the following couple of years.
Smart Design
The Jumbo Air has several thoughtful design features that we appreciate:
1) The frame shortens and lengthens (right below the front edge of the seat) with a simple plastic knob. This is great in allowing you to customize the fit as your child grows.
2) This adjustable frame also allows you to completely separate the front and rear of the tricycle. In your yard, this doesn't matter at all. When trying to take an unwieldly contraption like a tricycle in the trunk of your sedan, this suddenly matter a lot!
3) In addition to the adjustable frame, the seat can be bolted onto the frame in two different sets of holes to further customize the tricycle to different ages of children.
4) Kettler tricycles all accept parent handles that mount just behind the rear of the seat. This is nice when your little tyke tuckers out 6 blocks from home, or when your patience at the slow pace and unreliable steering tuckers out and you just need to get home now!
5) To make it easier to use the parent handle, non-base Kettler models including this one have a steering lock-off on the handle bar stem. This is a simple plastic switch you move up or down. Locking the steering and pushing the trike with the parent handle is a great way to work with your young toddler who can't ride a tricycle effectively yet, but screams and thrashes about being in the "baby" stroller. Yes, there is a small amount of play in the handlebars even when locked. But we have normally found that the parent will need to pop the front wheel off the ground anyway in order to steer. (It’s just like driving a car down a straight highway. Even though the road/sidewalk appears very straight, you are still making small corrections on a regular basis).
6) The "free-wheel" feature means that if your young or tired toddler is sitting on the tricycle with you doing the pushing, his or her little feet can simply rest on the pedals. The front wheel is then in "free wheel" and can rotate without slapping those poor little feet around as would happen on most tricycles. This isn't a feature you activate. It just happens automatically, because the front tire is rolling on its own and NOT because of pressure from the pedals.
7) The molded plastic seat with high back is comfy and safe-feeling for young children.
8) The hand-brake that the child lifts up on with his-her right hand (located alongside his/her thigh) is not only useful, but fun.
9) The geometry of this tricycle means that all children except the very youngest (the ones who probably like sitting on it but actually can't pedal yet) will be pedaling with a look more like they are pushing their legs out in front of them (like those low-slung 80's Hot Wheels plastic racing trikes). This seems to be somewhat more difficult for a child to get the hang of than a taller tricycle that has their legs in a straighter up-and-down position. However, we like that it consequently keeps the child very low to the ground. This lower-sitting position must feel safe to the kids - we've seen several other children like our tricycle when they wouldn't yet ride their own at home.
A novelty – the Tandem Seat Insert
I should mention that the disconnecting frame allows you to insert Kettler’s tandem seat. So you end up with a tricycle that has two seats and two sets of handle bars – one behind the other. The tandem seat has only stationary pedals, of course. I have seen cute photos on the Kettler site of a tricycle for triplets of quads, but doubt that even the tandem seat is practical. I have a hard time imagining that anyone would have two kids close enough in age to still be on a tricycle, yet with one of the kids being strong enough to haul both of them around. I guess it could happen, but it seems like such a rarity that I’m surprised the company justifies the costs of producing the tandem insert.
Is there anything we don't like about it?
Yes, and maybe:
1) Ours is an older Kettler model that has a handle that is a simple chrome bar with bends at each end. The handle was simply too low for my husband and I (5'10" and 6'1") because it ran back out behind the tricycle at a fairly low angle. We remedied this by having my father-in-law cut the mounting bracket and change it to a much more vertical angle. While that won't be a solution for everybody, the newer models are better. They accept the "deluxe" handle. Instead of being a simple bar, this is a handle the splits out like a "Y" and then has a cross-bar. I guess you could actually push it two-handed like a stroller. The deluxe handle can hold a bag and it has the angle-adjustment at the top like so many strollers now have.
2) Our Jumbo Air has a bucket in the back (as photographed), where traditionally tricycles have a platform that a second child can stand on. This bucket has a tilt-dump feature and is held upright by a plastic clip. Our children have had hours of fun loading up the bucket with rocks, water, whatever, but sometimes I wish it had the platform instead.
3) The tire size I'm not sure on. The front tire of the Air Happy is probably about 9 or 10 inches. This is wonderful for our 18-month-old who claimed the tricycle this summer. It is not so wonderful for our reluctant 3.5-year-old. She was too timid to hop onto the small bicycle with training wheels this summer. Yet she pedals as fast as she can and the small circumference of the Jumbo Air’s tire doesn't give her a hope of catching up to her older sister. You can see I waffle on this point, though. Bicycle enthusiasts such as Sheldon Brown (Captain Bicycle) advocate teaching children to ride bicycles young, since tricycles (and bikes with training wheels) are notoriously unstable when turning corners at any speed. So maybe it's just wonderful that our daughter can't ride the tricycle quickly because of its tire size.
Generally speaking, this tricycle just has "quality" written all over it. It was used for a number of years when we bought it and we've added 3 seasons to that. The frame is sturdy. The rubber grips on the handle bars are like new and not disintegrating in any way. None of the plastic parts are broken. None of the vivid colors of the plastic have sun-faded even though it gets left in our yard a lot. I would have been reluctant to pay $200CAD (including taxes) to buy a brand new one. But now that I've seen how nice it is, I think the price is quite reasonable.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 60
Type of Toy: Sports
Age Range of Child: 12 to 36 Months
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Epinions.com ID:
neuhofer
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Location: Manitoba, CANADA
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
"Inside I'm a redhead!" . . .nothing more needs to be said ;-)
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