My first Scalextric: A review

A Scalextric is basically a rite of passage for children.

If you didn’t have one as a kid, you wanted one, or knew someone that had one.

I thought we had a while to go until it would be a feature in our lives, but Hornby’s My First Scalextric is bringing the thrill of the race to children as young as three.

Featuring a simple and easy-to-assemble figure-of-eight track, and two 1:64 scale cars in red and yellow with matching controllers, the My First Scalextric is advertised as a great way to introduce youngsters to the race track!

What is in the box and how does it work?

Inside the box, there are;

• Nine pieces of track with coloured chevrons
• Two bridge pieces
• Two cars
• A pair of controllers
• A transformer
• A bag of spare parts
• Instructions.

The track slotted and clipped together and was simple for me to do; I’m not sure I’d trust my children with it as there is only one way that it fits together properly.

Once the track is set up, you plug it in to the wall, plug the controllers in, place the cars on the starting line and you’re good to go!

What did we think?

As I recall, most of the ‘fun’ of playing with a Scalextric back in the day was hunting underneath the sofa when the car had sped off of the track; with the My First Scalextric this doesn’t really happen. Due to being aimed at pre-schoolers, it’s thankfully more of a press-the-button and go toy. It doesn’t require a lot of skill to play as the older sets might, and the cars tended to stay fixed to the track all the way round.

My children enjoyed racing their cars against each other, and me.

They found it easy to put the cars on to the track at the starting place, although sometimes they got a bit stuck and wouldn’t move, and needed me to nudge them back on to the right place.

Although it is aimed at 3+, my smaller one who is a bit obsessed with moving vehicles of any sort, really enjoyed it once he got the hang of it. His big sister also got ultra competitive.

You pull the kit apart; it’s best to do this yourself so the little ones don’t get over-eager and break the clips.

The My First Scalextric would make a great Christmas present for any budding little driver.

Priced at around £29.99 it is not hugely expensive either. You can get it from most good toy retailers including Amazon here.

My First Scalextric is fully compatible with the more expensive Micro Scalextric range of sets and cars. This means if your children decide it’s a favourite (or you do manage to lose/break a car) you can keep adding to it as they get older.

We received the My First Scalextric free for the purposes of this review but views are mine.