My boys are crazy about Thomas & Friends and the love the new Spills & Thrills DVD. It gets watched several times a week while they are busy playing with their trains! We have quite a collection of Fisher Price Take n Play sets for their engines, so they were very happy to get the chance to try out the newest addition to the Take n Play collection – Fisher-Price Take-n-Play Spills and Thrills on Sodor and the Fisher-Price Take-n-Play Stephen Engine

This set is a very exciting looking tall structure with a super fast track for the engines to race down! It need some minor assembly once it comes out of the box, but it’s just a case of clicking all the pieces into place.

Once the track is assembled, you need to learn it against the wall to give it the right angle. The track is not intended to stand upright on it’s own. It needs the lean to give it a slight slant so that the engines can race down properly.

There are plenty of twists and turns and the track includes a signal on the track, a drawbridge, a zip-line, and paint shed destination, which comes with a special clip on paint costume for Thomas!

This attaches to his front via magnet and allows your child to recreate the scenes were Thomas gets covered in paint! Mr R found it so funny to cover Thomas with the special green paint! The set grabbed all of the boys attention straight away and they have been playing with it daily.

They love to make up little stories as they ride the trains around on the track, both stories from the Spills & Thrills DVD and their own original little stories. There’s enough space for two at a time to play with the Spills & Thrills track, but they can connect their other take n play tracks from the end of this track and make a much larger play space, as they are all compatible. This really allows them to expand their play.

The set is portable, you can pick it up from the top and move it around but I did find that it’s best just to keep it in one place really otherwise you might need to just pop some of the bits back in. Compared to some of the earlier take n play sets which we have, this one definitely does not have the “compactness” of being able to fold it down tiny and take it in your hand bag to keep the kids entertained while visiting relatives or friends, but it is a great toy for at home and the kids love it.

All of the Take n Play die cast engines are compatible with the Take n Play sets. We were sent a Stephen engine too, which made Mr T so happy – Stephen is his favourite engine ever! The take n play engines are all great quality. Ours take a lot of wear and tear from the boys especially as Mr T and Mr R love to take them outside with them wherever we go, but they always stay looking just like new.

There are loads and loads of engines available in the Take-n-Play series, and they are pretty reasonable priced for kids to collect them all.

If your kids are fans of Thomas they would definitely love this new Take-n-Play Spills and Thrills set, and I’m happy to recommend it!