Blutrack is an aftermarket toy car racetrack designed to work with many different brands of toy cars. We bought ours for our son in January of this year and we've been enjoying it quite a bit, so I thought I'd post a write-up here at my favorite parenting website.

As a Christmas gift, my mother-in-law gave our son (who is currently 1.5 years old) a starter package of Hot Wheels cars. In the box where five cars, and a few feet worth of racetrack. Our son absolutely loved this gift. Although at Christmas time he didn't yet have the dexterity to send the cars down the track, he giggled and laughed hysterically when we did it for him. I got down on the floor with him and we played with those little cars for hours.

I played with Hot Wheels quite a bit as a child - I inherited a shoebox full of them, along with many lengths of track, from a cousin - and I have some fond memories of them. The cars and tracks as I remember them were well made and durable - they held up to years of abuse-by-child. Well, the same can't be said of the Hot Wheels tracks that are being sold in stores these days. The tracks my son got for Christmas literally started falling apart on December 26th. It's unbelievable what a cheap, low grade plastic they used for the tracks - they must be made in China.

We tried repairing the Hot Wheels tracks with duct tape, but it was to no avail, the duct tape just caused the cars to hang up on the track. This really peeved me, so I went online looking for a replacement track, and through Google I found Blutrack.

Blutrack doesn't come in small sections like Hot Wheels track. Instead they sell lengths of straight track which come coiled in a box. They have different lengths available but I bought the 18 foot version, which I thought would be a good length for inside the house, but could also eventually be moved to the backyard. You can buy different lengths of track, but it only comes in one variety - blue, with two lanes.

Here's a picture of our 18 foot track, coiled in the box, with two Hot Wheels cars shown for size comparison.


This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.

The track is made of a nice, thick, flexible plastic. If it gets bent or squashed, you can apparently soak it in the tub to straighten it out, but we haven't had to do that.

Like the original Hot Wheels tracks, the Blutrack is gravity powered, and the kit includes a little bit of hardware to assist hanging it up. There's a suction cup that you can use to attach the track to a window or kitchen appliance, and there's a wall mount that you can use to attach the track to a nail or screw (you'd probably take a picture off the wall, and attach the track to the nail that the picture was hanging on - I can't see putting a new hole in the wall just for this). Here's a picture of how we hang the track in our house. That piece of plastic that the suction cup is attached to is heavy duty - this thing is not going to fall apart in the course of play.


This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.

The track comes in a straight line only, there are no curved sections available, so play on this track will resemble drag racing, not Formula 1 (with its chicanes) or Nascar (with its oval). You can make loop-de-loops by coiling the track into the appropriate shape, and can do a "half loop-de-loop" to affect a 90 degree turn, but to successfully run a car through that type of track shape requires a little bit of finesse that younger kids might not be capable of. Given the age of our kid(s), in our house, we just run the track straight. You can make the track more interesting by placing items (books, pillows, etc) underneath it to give it some hills and valleys. Here's a few pictures of the track in action in our living room. You can see in one pic that you don't have to use the whole track, you can leave the "finish line" in a heap and the cars will stop when they get there, either if they run out of energy or just plain roll off the track.


This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.

(Yeah I know our house is a mess, what are ya gonna do).

According to the manufacturer, Blutrack is supposed to be compatible with lots of different types of toy cars (Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Darda). We only have Hot Wheels in our house, and they work just fine on the track. The Hot Wheels tend to run really fast, which I think is due to the quality of the plastic.

This toy track has been a big hit in our house. We bought the track in January, and we still use it, almost daily. It's the "go-to" toy for us, when we want to occupy our son so that we can do something else. In fact we usually just leave it up in the living room, with a bucket of cars next to it. He loves lining up the cars on the track, racing them up, racing them down, smashing them into each other, and so on. Once he sits down to play with the track, he often stays occupied for up to an hour, which given his age is quite an endorsement for a toy. Currently, he obviously isn't doing any advanced stunts or physics experiments, but I believe this track has been good for developing his manual dexterity, and letting him learn a little bit of cause-and-effect (roll the car uphill, it will come back down, etc).

I guess you can tell by the tone of this review, that we really like this toy. I feel like it has long-term potential - a toddler can have fun racing his cars down the track in a straight line, and an older child could also have fun trying out some advanced track designs. (I like playing with it, too). I think my 18 foot starter kit was about 50 bucks with shipping, and in my opinion it was money well spent. There are a few aftermarket accessories available, like plastic ramps to help build structurally sound loop-de-loops but we haven't bought any of them yet. We bought our Blutrack online, although the company's website indicates they are carried at some toy stores, as well.

Blutrack

edit: I'd like to add, this toy is designed and manufactured in America, which for me is a big plus.

This looks awesome! What a great hack. I'm gonna promo this on the social -- hopefully hear from others that are interested or have used this toy.

DIG IT!! Great write up Roger!

We play with HotWheels occasionally ourselves. But I have to say, it can be a chore to set up and clean up. BluTrack looks like a lot of fun, because of the simplicity of it being ONE piece. Adding curves and such with traditional HW track that we have is fun in our tiny living room, BUT, I like the idea of unroll and play/roll up and done. And 18' will go a long way in our backyard. (Actually, it will about go all the way across.)

Thanks!

I'm glad you guys enjoyed the review. We really do love this toy racetrack. It's laying out in the living room as we speak.

Nik, the speed with which the Blutrack can be set up/put away is one of its strengths. We can unbox it, and have it ready to race, in about a minute. I think that's one of the reasons we use it so much. If you want to spend the cash, they have some really long tracks (up to 100 ft.) for sale.

DaddyClay - thanks for promoting this review on the Facebook feed - I would say this track would be great for little girls as well as little boys.

I feel compelled to expand a little bit on my description of the track configuration. To do a 90 degree turn, you'd do something like this:


This image is hidden for guests. Please login or register to see it.

And here's a video of it in action (I slowed it down to half frames per second, and yes, I'm on a conference call right now, which has given me a lot of spare time to work on this review :P ):

video

As you can see, it is fairly advanced to set up a turn on the track. The track has to be set up 'just so', and the car has to be going pretty fast to make it through the turn. Older kids can probably manage this, for most younger kids, you'll want to just keep the track straight.