HEXBUG 409-5123-00GL04 Battle Ground Tower

You can only press one button on the remote at a time otherwise the spiders power down. Also if you are moving and get shot it powers down also! Hex not very helpful, asked me to send them back at my cost for a repair. Will return via Amazon

The children had saved up for ages and split the purchase between them. New batteries were needed immediately and once they did have some power one hexbugs legs doesn’t work and the others head doesn’t move. Really disappointing.

Did not work out of the box, almost sent it back but changed the batteries in the bug and it worked. Batteries in both bugs were dead.

My grandson was delighted with it. Thank you for getting it here so quickly

Pros:- Very accessible and fun (my youngest likens it to playing a console game in real life without the palaver of booting up etc).- Good battery life (though get extra supplies in).- Easy to control and responsive.- Love the way they move.- So many possibilities for games. e.g. maze races or obstacle courses (with or without shooting). We used our rug as a football pitch and had the bots dribbling and tackling a tennis ball and scoring by pushing it over the opponent's end. Chinese wrestling (upend or force your opponent to upend themselves).Cons:- Though battery life is good could be better. A rechargeable version would be preferable. Also they start to malfunction as battery life wanes.- Set up can be hit and miss - in fact instructions are poor on this front. You need to set up separate channels on the controllers then make sure each player connects one at a time. It's very easy to end up controlling both bots simultaneously which is great for synchronised robot dancing but not much else.- The walls in the pack are pretty redundant when it's easy to use natural obstructions - so taking these out of the pack would reduce the cost.There's so much potential for Hexbug to develop these toys further:- Make set up easier.- Allow multiples of robots to play simultaneously.- Allow the bots to interact with objects - e.g. if proximity to the ball slowed the bot down to allow opponents a sporting chance to tackle.- Self righting mechanisms to flip overturned bots.- Timed recovery when shot - rather than having to manually switch the robot back on.- Timed games with a scoreboard on a central control app.- Interface with controller to allow programming with tablets, iphones etc.All in all a great toy and I'm looking forward to future iterations.