We received a package of Monster 500™ toys to play with and review. Opinions of those toys are 100% my own.

Andrew helped me with this review because Eva was too freaked out by the packaging. The poor kid, she is so easily scared. Granted the toys do look a bit scary if only in a comical way, at least to adults. Although, I think that we are all in agreement around the house that the Evil Clownevil™ character is really freaky no matter what age you are. Andrew wasn’t freaked out at all, he dove right in to play with the Monster 500™ cars and playsets.

The sets we received and the characters that came with them were”
(1) Monster 500™ Small Vehicle – CrocPot™
(1) Monster 500™ Large Vehicle – Lead Foot™
(1) Monster 500™ Toxic Terror Trap Playset – Evil Clownevil™
(1) Monster 500™ Graveyard Gauntlet Track Set – Drac Attack™

The Vehicles:

Lead Foot™ the larger size vehicle, not compatible with the playsets. This is a toy vehicle just to play with and maybe race down the hall against another large vehicle or your terrified older sister.

Drac Attack™, CrocPot™ and Evil Clownevil™ were the smaller sized vehicles that either came in individual packages or as the vehicles with the playsets. These sized vehicles work in the different playsets and are pretty fast, die cast metal cars. There are a bunch of them and even some chase cars that glow-in-the-dark or are a solid color or specially painted. There are 10 core characters in the first series from Werewolves to Zombies and more.

The Playsets:

The Graveyard Gauntlet is a race track playset. You put a car on each track and then press down on the skull head which launches the cars. Andrew helped me by manning the giant skull in the Graveyard Gauntlet. He loved launching the cars down the track to see who was fastest. There is 8 feet of purple track that the cars race down.

Halfway down the track there is a swinging skull that can knock your car off track. If the cars make it past the swinging skull then they race through the mouth of the final skull. As each car passes through the mouth of that final skull a flag automatically pops up for the winner. I was pretty impressed by the finish line mechanism, it is very accurate and easy to reset. We raced over and over while I assembled the Toxic Terror Trap Playset.

The Toxic Terror Trap Playset was a beast to put together. It was tougher with a 3 year old losing interest in the thing he was playing with in favor of the next fun and exciting thing. Partially this was my fault. I should have assembled everything when he wasn’t looking and then introduced him to the playset. After throwing Evil Clownevil™ across the room into the couch cushions in frustration I assembled the playset and we enjoyed playing with that.

The Toxic Terror Trap playset lets kids place their car on a platform and then pushing down on a mutant in a hazmat suit which brings the vehicle to the top of the playset. It then races down some hairpin turns till it races through the mouth of the twisting toxic monster. The twisting changes the trajectory of the cars. The car can sail out of the set free and clear, it can sail out and knock the toxic monster over or it can get eaten by the mutant gator. The set is battery powered by 3 AA batteries and that makes the movement happen as well as sounds. Andrew kept turning it off so that every car got eaten by the giant purple gator.

The App:

Each car comes with a special trading card that has a Monster 500™ code to unlock a car in the Monster 500™ Racing App. This allows kids to bring their fave monster characters to life in this full of action racing game! The card and character that you have does not necessarily open that character in the game. That is random. I used all of my cards and unlocked four different vehicles and only a couple of them were the same as the physical ones that I had.

The app is a fun one where the vehicles can be upgraded with better parts, weapons and gear. Then you race your cars against other cars while avoiding obstacles, toxic spills and more.

Monster 500™ is exclusive to Toys R Us and it is the perfect month to pick up a few of these cars for your own little monsters.