Toys, toys toys, gotta love ’em, I know I do, especially the remote control ones! Today for review I have a remote control toy from our friends at Uncle Milton Industries, it’s more aimed at kids but I can say I really enjoyed playing with it as well. It’s creepy, it’s crawly, it’s a remote controlled Tarantula, and if it didn’t have the LED eyes it could pass for the real thing. This thing is just plain cool, kids of all ages should love it, at least the boys anyway….
Uncle Milton RC Tarantula
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Uncle Milton
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Remote Control Tarantula with Light-up Eyes
It’s RC Tarantula! Watch it crawl with real spider-like movement. Its furry texture makes it seem like the real thing! Use the unique spider egg remote control to send RC Tarantula scurrying across any smooth, flat surface. Go ahead, scare your friends and family!
Ages 6 and up
Adult assistance recommended
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Features:
-Realistic furry texture
-Light-up eyes
-Independent leg movement
-Spider egg remote control
Batteries not included. Tarantula requires 2 "AAA" batteries.
Remote requires 2 "AA" batteries.
Price $24.99 Buy it direct from Uncle Milton
Here’s a little about Uncle Milton:
Founded in 1946, our company designs, produces and markets innovative toys which have outstanding play value and maximum kid-appeal. Our brands include Ant Farm, Back2Nature, Explore It!, Jet Hawks and Farm Fresh. We continually develop exciting new products for these brands and currently have more than fifty products in our line.
Our most famous product is the fascinating Ant Farm brand ant habitat. This universally recognized icon of American pop culture was introduced to a fad-hungry public in 1956 by company founders Milton M. Levine and E. Joseph Cossman. Ant Farm was an instant hit. So far, more than 20 million Ant Farm brand ant habitats have been sold worldwide. Ant Farms have been featured in many network television shows, major motion pictures, newspapers and magazines. In 2000 the Toy Industry Association selected Ant Farm as one of the 100 "Toys of the Century."
Our products have earned numerous awards and accolades: Parent’s Choice Gold Award, Family Fun Magazine’s Toy of the Year, Dr. Toy’s Best Toys, Parenting Magazine’s Toy of the Year Award, Parents Magazine’s Best Toys, Informal Education’s Product of the Year, Toy Industry Association’s Toy of the Year Awards, Great American Toy Test, and Toy Tips Magazine’s Top Ten Picks, to name just a few.
If you want to learn more about them, and check out all there great products please stop by and visit them at http://www.unclemilton.com
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A Better Look at Things
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The Uncle Milton Tarantula is something, like all of their products, that is aimed at children to help them explore the world around them and learn about different things. Seeing this is aimed at children, I can’t be exactly very critical of this great product, and for the price it’s a great deal actually. I will however be handling this review just like any other, and be giving my honest opinions of this toy, along with the rest of the standard type review.
So as with any review we’ll start by looking at the packaging, the box is very bright and colorful, the purple highlights are not quite what I expected to see for the packaging of a Tarantula though. Overall it is very professionally done, on the front of the box there is a large window where you can see the Tarantula itself and it’s ‘spider egg’ remote control. The back of the box has the same specs and features I already listed in the last section.
Opening the box we find another half-box inside with the Tarantula itself attached to it, and the remote as well. The inside of the box is made to resemble sort of a desert background where the Tarantula might live.
The only things included with the tarantula are it’s remote control and a brief instruction booklet.
We’ll check out the remote control first and then on the next page I have tons of pictures of the Tarantula for you to check out. The Remote Control is supposed to be a Spider Egg, it’s plastic and is molded with a texture that one might find on that of a spider egg, and the texture helps to get a grip on the remote as well.
The Spider Egg has two buttons, one that makes the Tarantula move forward and the second one that makes the Tarantula turn to the right, very minimalistic controls overall, but it gets the job done well.
The back of the Spider Egg is where you’ll find the On/Off switch and the battery compartment as well. The antenna is just a thin piece of stiff wire with a small plastic tip protector on it, the Tarantula itself does not have an antenna.
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A Better Look at Things
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The Uncle Milton RC Tarantula is rather large and very hairy, I’ve never actually held a tarantula, but I’ve known people that have had them and got a close up look at them, it really does closely resemble a large Tarantula.
I don’t know if real Tarantulas shed there hair, but i know this one does, I had hair everywhere while I was taking its picture.
The RC Tarantula does have eyes but when they are not lit up they are very hard to see, if you get the light just right though you can see them.
The RC Tarantula feels very well made, and sturdy, my 1 year old smacked it a couple times, cause mom’s afraid of spiders and that’s what he sees her do, and the Tarantula just kept on going no worse for wear. It’s essentially all plastic with prickly hair stuck all over it, it’s legs are stiff but still semi-flexible to withstand some abuse…
Turning the Tarantula over we find: WHEELS! Hey, it doesn’t actually crawl! You didn’t really expect it to did you?
On the main part of the body is the wheels that make our little Tarantula go, there is a set of two wheel that will position themselves straight when you push forward and then turn when you push turn. The bottom of the Tarantula is textured as well to resemble the real thing.
There is another set of wheels located on the spiders abdomen to keep it stable and rolling along. The abdomen is also the battery compartment and where we’ll find the On/Off switch for the spider as well.
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Installation, Testing and Comparison
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Of course the first thing you need to do is install the batteries, the Tarantula uses two ‘AA’ batteries and the remote uses two ‘AAA’ batteries. The covers are held on with a single screw so it’s fairly easy to install them.
To give you an idea of how large the RC Tarantula is here are a couple shots of me holding it, I have average sized hands for a 35 year old geek if that’s any help for scale purposes..
And here are a couple shots in low lighting to show the eyes lit up:
The RC Tarantula will only work on hard smooth surfaces, so I’ve got a video that a little over a minute long of the Tarantula scurrying across my table for you:
As you can see from the video he sort of resembles a spider, to an adult of course it’s not that great looking or acting, but I can tell you my kids loved it. They think it is the coolest thing I’ve got for review yet, at first my 1 year old was afraid of it, but after a few minutes he was kidding it and petting it like it was his new pet. I’m still not sure if he knows whether it’s real or not…
My other two boys ages 5 and 6 just love it, and think it’s just great.
My wife thinks it’s just creepy and wants no part of it, but my kids want to play with it all the time, they fight over it and I have to set the timer for them so they can take turns playing with it. I have to say it’s very easy to use, I let my 1 year old try it and in a few minutes he was controlling it all by himself, he liked making it dive off the table actually, he thought it was really funny, but he figured it out quickly, and if he can, any kid can no matter the age.
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I also took it took his daycare as well to see the reaction of the other children to it, most of them, including the girls loved it and in no time I had them over petting it as well. They were all huddled around watching it scurry in and out between the legs of the chairs around their table. The female teachers though wanted no parts of it, and one actually ran from it. One of the parents was there also, her husband happens to own a real Tarantula and she was saying about how he would just love this RC Tarantula and that I had to let her know where I got and when the review was up so he could check it out. She said it does look fairly real, especially from a distance, which is where she kept…
The RC Tarantula is a bit on the noisy side and sort of spoils the illusion for me, spiders are supposed to be quiet, but the kids love it, and I guess that’s all that counts right?
Depending where you are the range of the RC Tarantula can be limited, in my house I found the range to be rather short actually, only about five feet, but at my sons daycare it was about ten feet. I can only think that possibly my Wifi was interfering or possibly something else in my house, but the Wifi is the only thing I could think of that might interfere with the signal, as most everything else was turned off.
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Summary:
Honestly the RC Tarantula is very cool, even for an adult I think it’s cool, but I’m a big kid anyway, and yes I’ll admit that… Seriously though, it passed probably the biggest test of all, the children loved it, and they had no problems with the controls and were begging to play with it more. If I would let them they wouldn’t put it down, and of course be fighting over it. If you have a child, get this, they’ll love it, and it doesn’t have to be a boy either, the girls loved it too…
DragonSteelMods gives the Uncle Milton RC Tarantula a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
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Pros:
-Hairy, and almost lifelike
-Inexpensive
-Very easy to use
-Scares girls
-Kids absolutely love it
Cons:
-Limited range
-Sheds its hair
-Wifi interferes with transmitter/receiver apparently
-Noisy
I would like to thank Uncle Milton Industries for the chance to review the RC Tarantula and for their support of DSM.
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