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Erin is a huge fan of the Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon Movies. She was first introduced to the original film from 2010 a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it, and her love for Hiccup and Toothless grew even more when she watched the second soon after!
With the much anticipated How to Train Your Dragon 3 – The Hidden World in cinemas now, we were excited to learn about a new range of How to Train Your Dragon toys from Spinmaster that have been released to accompany the film. The Hidden World is dubbed to be a conclusion to the How to Train Your Dragon series, and follows Hiccup as he discovers a hidden world of missing dragons as the mythical creatures are approaching extinction.
We were sent three toys from the How to Train Your Dragon toys range – here’s what Erin thought…
The Giant Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon
First up from the How to Train Your Dragon Toys range was the Giant Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon toy with it’s smoke breathing and plasma blast action. Measuring over 50cm long with 55cm wings when open, this larger scale Toothless is perfect for How to Train Your Dragon fans to re-inact key scenes from the movie and Erin was VERY excited to get him out of the box.
When unpacking him from the box, we noticed straight away that the colours on his back are really lovely – a shimmering metalic bioluminescent blue, which really helps make it feel a bit magical!
The Giant Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon does require some basic assembly before the little ones can start playing, but the instructions are very easy to follow (with visuals). The tail simply slots into the base of the torso, and clicks into place. The set also comes with a spare water tank and foam insert. We wrongly thought we had to insert this too, so took the top part apart, only to realise that this was actually a spare – presumably the foam element wears out over extended use, so we have kept this safe should we need it at a later date.
The Giant Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon requires 3 AAA batteries (which are not included), and therefore you will need a small pozi screwdriver to open up the base before play.
Before the ‘fire breathing’ element can start, you need to fill the pack on the dragon’s back with water using the small dropper included. We found it easiest to fill a small bowl with water, and then suck up the water into the dropper from there. The pack didn’t need a huge amount of water, and filled up fairly quickly.
Once the batteries are in and the switch turned to the on position, you can then push the button behind his left ear to activate lights inside his mouth (presumably the fire) and release smoke like little puffs of dragon’s breath. This is quite impressive and Erin was really chuffed with this, finding it fascinating to see the cool puffs of smoke twirling out from his open mouth.
The Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon can also be used to aim and fire at targets. Simply load a glow in the dark projectile into the dragon’s mouth and push the button behind his right ear to fire it and hit your targets! There is a bit of a knack to doing this, and I have to be honest at 5 years of age Erin did struggle to press the ears down in the correct way to launch the projectile, often requiring some assistance. It appears that the projectile has to be inserted in a particular direction (with the little ridge facing down) and clicked in far enough otherwise it won’t fire first time. Erin found this bit a little frustrating.
The Giant Fire Breathing Toothless retails at £35.99 at Smyths and Amazon can be combined with other Dragon and Viking figure sets (sold separately) with the Viking figures can ride on the special saddle on Toothless’ back
Whilst Erin loved playing with the Giant Fire Breathing Toothless Dragon, there are a few things we did struggle with. Firstly we found the mechanism of pushing down the ears in order to trigger the buttons wasn’t particularly easy for small hands and that there was quite an art to getting this right first time. The glow in the dark projectile also has to be inserted in a particular way (with the little ridge at the bottom) in order for them to be fired when the button is pressed. We found that unless it had been inserted correctly it failed to fire when pressed, and again this was quite tricky for Erin to figure out on her own, meaning I often had to help. She found this a little frustrating at times and therefore the projectile didn’t get played with very much.
Erin absolutely loved the fire breathing element when the smoke came out of his mouth, and I have no idea how this works but it really is pretty impressive, feeling cool on your hands as it spirals out of his mouth. There are however no noises or sounds to accompany the smoke, and we’d have loved to have had the addition of a growl or roar, as without it, it feels like it lacks a little something. Overall this How to Train Your Dragon 3 Toy was a big hit.
Lightfury Deluxe Lights and Sounds Figure
Out of the three items we were sent from the How to Train Your Dragon 3 toys range, Erin chose to open Lightfury first, presumably because she was the most feminine looking of the dragons – she loved the white shimmery body and the beautiful blue pop out wings.
The main feature of the Lightfury dragon is that the wings retract, slotting into two small holes on her back before you press a button and they flick back out. The holes are not very deep, and as such, the wings didn’t always slot neatly into place, meaning that again this was a little bit tricky for Erin to do on her own.
That said, Erin was happy to persist, and has enjoyed this toy probably the most out of the three we tested in the How to Train Your Dragon 3 Toys range. She is smaller in size that the Giant Fire Breathing Toothless, sitting neatly on the palm of her hand as in the photo below.
The button on her back plays a number of fun dragon sounds which add to the interactive element of this particular toy.
The Lightfury dragon retails at £19.99 and is available at Smyths and Amazon.
The final toy we reviewed from the How to Train Your Dragon toys range was the Hiccup and Toothless set – a dragon and knight combination set.
Similar to the Giant Fire Breathing Toothless, This small toothless features a firing projectile, however this is a little easier to launch that the projectile on the larger set. Instead of pressing down an ear, the projectile is fired by moving the legs backwards and Erin found it really funny when it shot out. It can even be used to aim and fire at some of the knight figures and knock them over.
The Hiccup figure (knight) easily fits onto the back of the toothless dragon as if he is riding him through the sky. The knight itself is quite small and therefore slotting his sword into place was a little bit fiddly, so Erin needed a bit of help with this. Older children may find this a little easier.
Overall the How to Train Your Dragon toys are a great addition for fans of the movie, and offer the potential for lots of creative role play. With a range of dragons to choose from, mini dragon fans will be able to create their very own Hidden World and reinact key scenes from the film.
There are a few features as described that I think could be improved to make these toys even better, but despite these, the toys were a big hit with Erin.
*We were sent these items from Spinmaster in exchange for this review. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own*
