Turning Mecard Mechanimals

Cars that transform into robots with no batteries required.

Every now and then a toy comes along which Mr 9 gets really excited about.  The Turning Mecard range is one of these, and I have to say that as an adult, I think they are pretty impressive too. I can totally see why the kids love them. They are based on an animated South Korean TV show in which mini cars morph into large alien robots. These toys do exactly that, in quite a spectacular way.

The small Turning Mecard Mecanimals are these cool little vehicles that transform in a flash to become robotic characters!

Just roll the car onto the front edge of the Mecard (little red cards) to trigger the morphing mechanism. With an impressive flip it springs from a car to a hero creature ”mechanimal” in a flash. It’s really cool! Check out our video below to see what we mean.

The little cars are translucent so you can see the parts inside it. Each one is styled differently and they are small enough to pop into your bag to play when you’re out at dinner or waiting at an appointment. You just need a flat surface to roll the car onto the card to transform.

You then assemble the robot back to a car and repeat again (and again).  If playing with friends there is a sheet where you can ”battle” with other cars and score attack points on the “battle arena”.

It can be a little fiddly re-assembling the creature back to car form but after a few turns Mr 9 was able to do it without any trouble. It involves a few steps clicking each part back into place. Be aware that younger kids may not be able to do this on their own and would need help from an adult to do this (which may drive you crazy).

The little cars are cool on their own, but if you combine it with a large Mechanimal it gets even more clever. Roll your small car along the ramp of the van and when it travels through the van it tranforms into a huge super hero creature. We have the Mega Dragon pictured in the video below but there are others as well. Put a card in front of the van and the small car also transforms when it hits it. It’s pretty cool when you get both transforming in the one go like this:

Here is what the Mega Dragon looks like once it’s transformed. These larger mechanimals have more parts so require a bit more work to click back to the van form. Again this took a little bit of perseverance by Mr 9 to get the hang of it at first, but he was able to do it like a pro pretty quickly.

Please note: we have found that you can use other small cars to turn the large van into the dragon, or you can press the latch (in case you don’t have one of the small Turning Mecard cars).

In the video below Mr 9 shows us how to turn the Mega Dragon back into the van form:

What We Like About Turning Mecard Mechanimals

• We love that these toys don’t require batteries.
• They also encourage kids to work out the mechanics of the toy when turning them back to their car form. It’s kind of like a puzzle in that each part has to snap back into place in the right order to get it back to a car.
• The toys can be played in either car form or robot form and are sure to encourage imaginative play.
• We’ve been transforming ours many times since we got them and they seem to be very robust with no parts threatening to snap off.

Look out for special offers for these. We got our small cars recently at Myer on special at $25 for 2 cars – the normal retail price is $17.99 each. So we grabbed a few extra for presents. We checked with other stores and no-one else had the small cars in stock. The large Mega Dragon, and all the mechanimals this size, are $79.99.

We predict these will be a hot item for Christmas this year and may sell out.  I often buy things like this for Christmas online and get them delivered to the office so they are hidden away. It’s also a great idea if you can’t get to the shops very often by yourself without little people in tow. If you would like to buy them online, they are available from Mr Toys Toyworld.

CLICK HERE TO BUY

At Play & Go Adelaide we make every effort to provide accurate information to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. 

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This post contains affiliate links. In order to provide our free news service to families, we receive income from advertisers, and in this case, we receive a small amount for each sale when purchased through the link above, at no cost to you. However, we only promote offers, services and products which we have used and recommend ourselves. We purchased the toys in the review above. 

Image Source: Photos by Play & Go Adelaide

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