Matchbox: Where the Big Rigs Come Alive

by Jamie Wiersma

Welcome guest contributor Jamie Wiersma.  Jamie loves crafting, playing piano and singing, reading and spending time with her family.  She has been married for 11 years and has 3 energetic boys (7, 4 and 1).  Jamie works part time as Worship Director at her church as well as teaches piano lessons in her home. Jamie is a Facebooker, emailer and now blogger.

My 4 ½ year old got the opportunity to test out

Matchbox’s Big Rig Buddies: Scrap Yard Adventure. Matchbox has taken things to a whole new level and has created a fun, hands-on adventure! Appropriately labeled for 3 years and older, my son had a blast with the set. It is built with very durable, colorful plastic and is very easy for young hands to manipulate. There are multiple play zones with the ability to create the scrap yard in a different way each time you play! My little boy loved making the big rig go up the ramp, slide into the barrel and roll down the ramp and then fly off the table. The gear ramp was a hit as well. There are also additional big rigs that can be purchased to add to the set.

The set took about 10 minutes to assemble the first time around. I found that once I looked at the pictures on the box, the assembly went much faster because I could compare colors, sizes and shapes of things. The instructions for assembly were a little hard to read because the parts were not numbered and the pictures were hard to figure out. Once you know what pieces go with what, it is very

easy to disassemble and put back together, making it easy to put away and take back out.

My boy immediately decided he wanted to connect the different portions of the yard so that the big rig could go from one obstacle to the next. The one improvement that could be made would be a way to connect the sections better so that each piece stays in place better when on a table or other hard surface. When played on the carpet, things stayed in place better but then the vehicles did not move as fast.

Matchbox could easily expand on this set. Creating roads that connected to the course, more obstacles and maybe even other themed sets would be great. There is a ton of potential to create a whole little city of play! Well done, Matchbox! I would definitely recommend this toy to little boys that like to play “truck.”

Conquering the gear ramp!

Making the big rig ride the rolling barrel.

*Matchbox provide the Big Rig Buddies: Scrap Yard Adventure for our review.  All opinions are my own.