As a child of the 80’s, Playmobil was one of my absolute favourite toys growing up. I had a fairly extensive collection, and loved lining up the Playmobil characters as if they were in a school assembly, walking them in one by one and sitting them down next to another child in the line (quite sad really when I could have gone ANYWHERE in my imagination but I did love school!!). I used to play for HOURS, and so when they finally got put away as I grew older, my Mum very sensibly packed them away in the loft, confident that future generations of children would enjoy them once again. She wasn’t wrong – Erin is as much a fan of Playmobil as I was then, and we have witnessed many hours of creative and imaginative play with both my originals from the 80’s and the new sets we have purchased.
We were recently asked to review the Playmobil 5024 – The Playmobil City Life Children’s Playground, a set exclusive to Smyths Toys which features a carousel, swings, slides and skateboard ramp, loads of accessories, and a massive 9 Playmobil figures in adult, child, and baby sizes! The Playmobil 5024 set looked absolutely great online, and even I couldn’t wait for it to arrive, for a period of nostalgia if nothing else!
Our Experience of Playmobil 5024
The Playmobil 5024 City Life Children’s Playground came in a larger box than I was expecting – pretty substantial in size and impressive looking based on it’s £39.99 price tag. The first thing I should say here is that if you haven’t bought Playmobil sets before, do not underestimate the amount of time it takes to put all the pieces together prior to play. If you have younger children who are likely to become impatient waiting, you may want to consider doing this yourself before giving it to the child as a gift – that way they can get started with the play time straight away. For older children, they may enjoy putting all the pieces together with you – it is an easy process to do and quite enjoyable to follow all the steps, however it does take a little time.
Inside the box are 7 packets full of little pieces, and most of it is very simple to assemble, simply clipping wheels into place, slotting pieces into each other and snapping bits together. Don’t do what I did – make sure you check that each of the bags are empty before you throw them away! I almost threw away a tiny clear piece by accident as it had got stuck in the bottom of one of the bags!
The process of putting all the pieces together took around 20 minutes, and for me, the longest part of this was figuring out which part of each tree went where (as all the pieces looked kind of the same but could slot into various different parts of tree branch!) – I also clipped some of the carousel seats on the wrong way round, but was quickly able to adjust and fix this without any hassle.
The Playmobil City Life Children’s Playground set is pretty extensive and a great starter introduction into Playmobil, with plenty of parts, accessories and figures to keep children occupied.
About the Playmobil City Life Children’s Playground
There are 4 main elements to the set.
The main slide and picnic area includes a large skateboarding ramp (also great for the bikes and scooters to “weeee” down), a large slide, and a sandpit area at the bottom. There is also a large picnic area where the portable barbeque, picnic table, bench, basket and bottle crate can be stored ready for the family to have their yummy lunch.
The swing set features two different types of swings – a tyre swing and duel rocker swing, both of which actually rock backwards and forwards. It can be a little tricky to get the characters in and out of the smaller swing, however with a bit of patience you can even get the figures to hold on!
The main element of the set and my personal favourite is the carousel – it comes with 6 seats which the smaller children characters can sit in, and each seat has a safety harness which can be lowered when securing the child in their seat and then bought up to hold them in place. To rotate the carousel, you simply spin the top and all the seats flair outwards like a fairground ride, very similar to one of my favourites from Drayton Manor when I was a child! This is a really fun part of the Playmobil City Life Children’s playground – and with no batteries required, it is pretty impressive how realistic the effect is when the carousel is spun.
Finally there is a mini sandcastle shaped slide and see-saw. The see-saw has little clips to hold the children in place when they are sat down, and characters can be positioned at the top of the slide and then pushed so that they slide down to the bottom. There is also a little door for opening and closing the entrance to the castle.
Other accessories in the set include a bike, scooter, skateboard (again with a little clip to hold characters securely in place), and a Mum pushing along her baby in a pushchair.
Overall I think the Playmobil 5024 City Life Children’s playground is fantastic, and in terms of value for money, you really do get a huge amount of Playmobil for the price; especially when you consider that some tiny sets are around the £10 mark and normally include just one character. There is so much to interact with in this set, and it can easily be played with my multiple children at the same time, each playing with a different element of the playground.
The Playmobil City Life Children’s playround has great attention to detail – I love the little elements such as the flowers, birds and squirrels, the latter of which can be positioned at various different points on the trees.
From a parent’s perspective, it’s also great that all the children are wearing helmets for riding on scooters and skateboards, reinforcing safety messages for children who will also be doing the same!
As always one thing to be conscious with Playmobil is that there are quite a lot of very small pieces with this set, and for that reason, it is not suitable for children under 3, and I would recommend having somewhere to stash away the smaller parts when not being played with to ensure that any younger siblings don’t accidentally get their hands on them.
A timeless classic toy, I think this set is something that the girls will be able to enjoy for many years to come, and who knows, maybe this one will end up in the loft for their children to play with too! 🙂
The Playmobil City Life Children’s Playground is available to purchase at Smyths for £39.99. You may also like our Playmobil Tiny Paws Pet Hotel review and our Playmobil Summer Villa Review
*Disclosure – This is a collaborative post. I was sent the Playmobil City Life Children’s Playground free of charge for the purpose of this review and compensated for my time. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own*
