Review – Flip Force Construction to Destruction

The WowWee Flip Force toy cars (official website, Amazon.com search*) fascinate me. The engineering is impressive and I find myself staring at the car as it transforms between modes, trying to watch every piece to figure out exactly what’s locking which pieces in place. Very cool toy cars.

Two Cars in One

Like the Rally/Muscle design I already reviewed (review here), this Flip Force toy car changes from one car to a second design by simply rotating the car so that the bottom becomes the top. Four parts automatically fall into place — rear, front, and both sides — with gravity providing all of the energy necessary to change from a tank to a dump truck and then back again. I think I have decided the transformation ability is powered by magic, because what is happening is too neat to be anything mundane.

We Need Robots

What I’d love to see WowWee attempt is to take this auto-transformation design and give one of the two sides of the toy a robot mode. Automatically transforming robots with this chunky, blocky look would be lots of fun and I’d go insane trying to track down every robot. I don’t know if the designers at WowWee could apply this design concept to transforming robot toys, but I hope that someone there is already on the case and finding a way to make it happen.

So Very Fun

The Flip Force toy cars (official website, Amazon.com search*) are more expensive than a lot of toy cars out there, but they’re bigger than Hot Wheels toys and have a feature that’s so neat that I suspect kids would love to have at least a few of these cars in the toy box. I’ve got two opened so far (and need to get the launcher playset opened) and it’s taking all of my willpower to resist ordering more from the WowWee webstore. Those Off-Road to Off-World sets are just too tempting for me to ignore for much longer.

Closing Thoughts

Recommended! If you’re a collector of toy cars, or if you’re shopping for Christmas presents for a young boy who loves cars, I’ve gotta say that it would be a crime not to have a least a few of the Flip Force toy cars (official website, Amazon.com search*) in the mix. The packaging is cool if a little frustrating (see my Rally/Muscle review) and the cars themselves are amazing. Seriously, these toys deserve more attention than they have been getting.

Philip Reed will drive his cars around the house now and pester the kitties. Dump truck to tank transform!