Building Interest

It may say age 4 and above on the box, but I find there are some pretty good toys in the Mattel/Matchbox Mega-Rig line. A case in point is this rather cool Rocket Transporter from the space series. This is a fairly modern release and Matchbox have taken it upon themselves to scale up the old line of toys from the late 90's and slightly 'dumbed down' the build and manufacturing quality.

The first series of toys had figures on a par with Spacex, the figure above is about 5cm high, closer to Coleco Starcom. That said, the vehicle still has more than a passing resmblance to a 'expanded universe' SWORD toy and is quite well designed. The concept behind Mega Rig is that all parts are interchangeable with any other toy and they can be built into a number of different forms. This one has a launchable 'stomp' rocket which fires the barrel and the orange capsule after you stamp on a rubber bellows in the shape of a moonrock! The set also comes complete with a dodgy green alien that you can cram into the capsule to blast off into space - very xenophobic!