Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden Railway Set
by Melissa & Doug
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List Price: Our Price: $73.44 You Save: $56.55 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $69.99 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden Railway Set
Customer Review: Melissa & Doug Trainset Review
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this trainset on the recommendation of multiple others who cited its value for the money. I was highly impressed from the moment when we opened the box--this is the best value trainset out there. Although I couldn't tell from the box/reviews, it also includes 3-4 train engines and several pieces of cargo that connect by magnets. I bought extra Thomas engines, but I really didn't even need to. Of course, we had to buy a "Thomas" and we had a "Percy" already, but my son happily plays with all the others along with those. My son LOVES the little magnet cargo loader that can lift the cargo off of a couple trains. It also has several other functional pieces to utilize the magnets. We purchased 2 other pieces to go along with this as well but found this set by itself takes up an entire 3 ft x 4 ft table....you don't need much (or anything) else!! We bought the Thomas signal station (my son loves the noise it makes)--it fits perfectly in a little hole with this set, but we also bought the Maxim Mountain Tunnel recommended by a couple others, but we found this to be very bulky and difficult to fit in with the set. I only used the top of this, and the bottom we have in another place--my son plays matchbox cars with the bottom (12x12 is too big to fit with this set unless you massively change the design layout). We like the layout suggested by Melissa & Doug, so we just used that one. Overall, this is an AWESOME value trainset--high quality construction and more than big enough to keep a 3 year old and his parents entertained. This is the ONLY trainset to buy in my opinion--it is high quality and such a great value--I could not see any difference between this & more expensive sets like Thomas & they are all compatible tracks. I would recommend purchasing 4 boxes of Suretrack to use with this set if you have little ones. My 3 year old does pretty good, but sure track is definitely needed when my 1 year old decides to play with him. Between the 2 of them, they can knock everything winding. Suretrack does a great job of keeping everything in place. I only bought 2 boxes for ascending risers & problem areas (curves) but I found I had to buy 2 more boxes later (or at least 1 more box but shipping is free with 2 boxes and I wanted more just in case)--I have to Suretrack every single connection to keep it friendly for my 1 year old to play with. It can't come apart now. This much would not be needed with older children, but until they know better, I'd highly recommend Suretrack to keep it stable. I'd recommend Suretrack for any trainset though, not specifically just this one.Customer Review: xmas present for 28 month old
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw this on amazon and eyed it up for my 2 year old for xmas. i was going to wait until after black friday but i saw the price starting to creep up and i bought it for $85 (was $70 the week before and $100 the week after i bought it). I tried to build this and it is still sitting in the box. It doesn't look like they have a lot of circular pieces. I bought this because you got a lot of pieces for the money, i am a big "bang for your buck" type person. Well i think i might have went too far with that because there are TOO many pieces. I tried putting it together once and it sits in the box right now. What annoys me the most is that on the directions they are "lettered" to like letter "m" and there are no letters on the back of the train pieces so you have to first try to decipher which piece is which. If you get that for (and i didn't) the two year old is already causing a godzilla effect to your nice wooden train set.
All in all i am going to say this toy is a bust. If i bought this in the store (and instead of amazon where i'm sure i would have to pay to ship this huge box back) I would take it back to get my $85 back. My son does like the 'trains' that come with it though i do have 2 complaints about them:
1. they are hooked together by magnets which i don't think could ever come off but i try not to get my child things w/ magnets on them for they could become a hazard.
2. the "removable cargo" is a pain and i think my son already lost 1/2 of them.
overall this is probably good for a 5 year old and someone with the patience to put this together, which is not me lol.
***UPDATE 11/15/10***
my son found this around feb or march and we have put it together however we have never tried any of the "designs". If you have a toddler that throws temper tantrums I would NOT recomm. this product because my son got mad at throw a wooden track piece that hit someone in the mouth and slightly moved 2 teeth in that person. Yea so these tracks are the real deal. Personally though, i have found the cheaper plastic thomas tracks a much better deal as my son is very much into Thomas and likes having the battery operated trains go around the track and this track only accomendates the pack and play trains and not the battery thomas trains. I hope this helps!
Also PLEASE PLEASE buy those little white connector pieces other reviewers have talked about. For some reason they include blocks for raising the tracks and frankly they really suck! They easily knock over and not fun at all! Those little white things are life savers!
Customer Review: The Most Bang for Your Buck
Summary: 5 Stars
This is our 3rd wooden train set and I would have to say that it is by far the best for the money. We started off with a very cheap set for our oldest daughter when she was around two. We then went for a Thomas set and added several of the trains to it. I will say that set did have the best quality if you are just going by appearance. We got rid of that set after all of the recalls for lead paint. We have 2 younger children as well and we did not want to keep up with all the recalls, for the price of those trains and accessories lead paint should NOT be an issue IMO. So, this year our middle child who is 3 1/2 really wanted a train set from Santa, after a lot of looking around we decided on this one. I have to say that we are very pleased, we own a ton of Melissa and Doug toys so we felt confident that the product would be on par in quality with other M & D toys. I had read other reviews so I knew that the track layouts provided do not fit on standard train tables so we made a few modifications when setting it up Christmas Eve and it fit very well on our standard size table (I think only 2-3 pieces had to be omitted for it to fit). I had also read about the SureTrack Clips (2 packs do the job) and I will say that they are a MUST have with this set (or probably any other). This set comes with a lot of elevation pieces and the SureTrack really saves a small child a lot of frustration. There are 2 elevated bridges in this set and I used wood glue to glue risers onto the ends to make them sturdier as the SureTrack would not clip to those. Other than that we made no modifications. I know other reviewers have glued or nailed down the entire set like they do in the stores but we wanted to avoid that as our son is pretty good with configuring his own tracks even at 3 1/2 and we wanted him to have that option as well as being able to put the train away and use the table for other things. So again SureTrack helps with that dilemma. This set does come with mostly all usable pieces and few road signs, trees, etc that other sets are loaded with and that is also a plus as others have stated. Last but not least after 3 days of being set up the turn table and track that connects to the roundhouse had warped a bit and curved upwards making it impossible for trains to go over the track smoothly. I sent M & D an email on a Saturday and received a phone call that Monday and they shipped the replacements right out. It is very hard to find customer service like that these days. All in all this is a great set that your child will enjoy without spending a small fortune.Customer Review: Ok, if one can overlook a few defects.
Summary: 3 Stars
As I child (in the 1960s) my neighbors had a wooden train set. My favorite thing in the world was going over to their house to play with it. Later I got a cheap imitation plastic one, but still spent hours and hours playing with it. So when I saw this in a local toy store I snagged it for my children last Christmas.
I was very pleased that the track seems to be made of solid oak that will last forever. I like the two trains that came in the set, and how the cars work with the loading and unloading facilities. I like the diversity and quantity of pieces.
I am disappointed with the quality of the turntable. It is hard for a child to turn and jams regularly.
I am really disappointed in the geometry of the pieces. It is supposed to take 8 curved pieces to make a circle so each curved piece should be exactly 45 degrees in curvature. This is not true. Even in the simple circles the short curves require the slop in the connections to make it fit. It really takes 9 pieces to make a nice circle with them. Then there is the turnouts. The curved section of the turnout should match a big curve track exactly. They are short by over 1/8". The straights come in 6", 2", and an odd ball 4.25"? At first I thought this was intentional to make up the difference for a reverse curve coming off a switch track. Unfortunately this is not true with either the short or long curves. The only way to make a nice siding is to use enough pieces that the slack can force the configuration. Properly designed track pieces would make it easy to build standard configurations without the joints straining to make it work right.
Finally the track layouts they provide in the few instruction sheets are difficult to build (especially for young children) and worse to run. It is like the person designing them threw them together because they looked good and consumed most of the pieces in the set. Many of them (including the one on the cover) don't even have the same distance of straight on the opposite sides of the oval. The errors in the usage of curved tracks is even worse. It is impossible to teach a child good geometric concepts using the plans provided with the set.
Customer Review: A solid little train set
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, a few words about wooden train sets in general - they're awesome! I think it's great that we were able to get this one at this price, and have a toy that is so fun and educational and absorbing for parent and child alike. As for *this* train set, the quality is good for the price, but not entirely up to Melissa and Doug's usual standard - that is to say, it's not perfection.
Strengths: The pieces are nicely balanced and provide a smooth track given half a chance (we don't have a hard surface to place them on). The trestles and ramps in particular work surprisingly well dry stacked, and there are some nice design touches that help things stay together. The set comes with four labeled pictures of sample layouts that make it easy to get a kid up and running when neither of you know what you're doing (some assembly required ;-).
Weaknesses: There seem to be a few pieces of track in the set that are a different kind of wood from the others. In addition to looking different, they don't fit smoothly with the other pieces. I am also having trouble with the fit of the switching track pieces. I recommend the addition of Suretrack, particularly if you are working on an unstable surface such as carpeting. I haven't received my second shipment of Suretrack yet, but I believe that four boxes will do it to secure every piece of track in the set, which is what will be necessary for the conditions I'm working under.
Other pitfalls: There are supposed to be two trains in the set; my daughter wants the longest train she can get, so she puts all eight cars together in a single train, which doesn't work all that well. She also noticed that there isn't a platform for passengers to board. In fact, there isn't anything along the lines of a destination for the train to go to - it's all just train yard infrastructure. My daughter seems to want a broader range for her imagination, and I suspect that we're going to be acquiring and/or creating some new pieces to go along with the set.