Geo Trax is the One of the Best Toys for Toddlers Through Kindergartners

Fisher-Price has come out with the next generation of a childhood favorite toy - trains - with their Geo Trax brand. The brand includes easy to put together tracks, tunnels, covered bridges, remote control train engines and more. The trains with remote controls can go backwards or forwards, although older versions only go forward.

The brand keeps expanding with new trains and stations as well as new vehicle categories such as Geo Air. Geo Air consists of remote control planes that fly on flexible, bendable tracks that fly under and over bridges and barns and an airport as well as twist into circles, creating loop-de-loops. This year, Fisher-Price is releasing a whole new group of roads and characters from the Disney/Pixar movie, "Cars."

One of the great features is that all of these pieces are interchangeable. The cars work on the tracks and the roads and tracks interchange. Even the Geo Air pieces have ways to connect them to the tracks and other Geo Trax pieces.

Most of the pieces are easy for even a two-year-old to manipulate and certainly to play with the trains and cars. In fact my youngest son started to play with the trains at 18 months of age and my 18-month-old daughter is enjoying playing with the trains with her older brothers. Most of the pieces are safe for a toddler, but a parent will want to be cautious with the Geo Trax figures and some of the pieces that come off the bridges or roadside signs and signals around very young children who may readily put anything and everything into their mouths.

Each train, car, or airplane comes with a specific driver, pilot, or persons. In fact, the trains and persons all have names. As another marketing ploy, Fisher-Price has created episodes about the trains and persons from the Geo Trax brand and made them available on their website for viewing and as DVDs, often issued in the Geo Trax toy packages. You may also order a free DVD to be sent to your home.

My young boys were introduced to these toys before my oldest turned three years old. They have been a hit with my kids ever since. In fact, it's inspired at least one birthday party and probably more to come. They love watching the DVD episodes and then re-enacting them with their train sets and Geo Trax figures. The boys also make up stories, other than the ones they re-enact, and often where train engineer hats while they play. They also have learned to share the toys and to work together to make the elaborate track layouts.

Perhaps from a mother's point of view, one of the aspects I like about Geo Trax is the creativity and imagination and problem-solving skills I see the toys fostering in my children. My boys will spend hours playing with the Geo Trax, building elaborate track designs - all sorts of configurations of a figure eight, multi-tiered circles, hills and ramps that are as high as they are. They are figuring out what layouts work out best to connect all of their pieces and sometimes they try to figure out how to build the biggest, connecting train track out of all the pieces we own. My boys particularly like playing with Daddy and building super duper train tracks, ones that sometimes go in and out of all of our rooms on the main floor! (Warning, while the train sets are great for kids, don't be surprised if adults, particularly dads, enjoy playing with the engines and tracks as much as their children!)

I also see that the Geo Trax brand is a toy that my children will enjoy for years and may even come back to use in school projects to better understand physics and geometry and other aspects of science. I believe Geo Trax has the potential of becoming as classic and developmentally helpful as a toy such as Lincoln Logs, Lego's, or Tinker-toys. In my opinion, the Geo Trax brand is not too gimmicky or filled with over the top, cartoonish looking characters and toys that by the time my boys reach kindergarten and beyond - they are too old to play with such baby toys.

Like the classic toys of yesteryear, Geo Trax is also easy to take with you on the road. Now, you probably won't pack the larger stations, but a small bucket of some simple track pieces and a train or two will help occupy young ones who are otherwise bored in a hotel room (or even in the family mini-van). We took a small set of the trains with us on a trip to Florida recently and the boys enjoyed having the trains and tracks with them. Now, when we travel, we have a transportable Geo Trax zoo carrier that conveniently closes and has space for zoo animals, figures, and possibly a few small track pieces.

The trains are extremely popular with the five and under crowd, and while typically aimed at boys, there's no reason little girls won't enjoy putting the tracks together and making the trains go around in circles. Several of our friends have the Geo Trax trains. It is hard not to stock up on extra track pieces and getting several trains rather quickly. In fact, so many of our friends' children have the Geo Trax trains, we have thought about having a Geo Trax train-themed play date.

The one downside to the toys is that almost all of the trains, cars, airplanes and other vehicles use batteries and the batteries are used quickly. You'll want to stock up on batteries and look into investing into rechargeable batteries.

You may find the Geo Trax train sets, stations, and accessories at most retail stores like Wal-Mart or Target. The best place with variety is probably Toys R' Us. You may also order items through the Fisher-Price website. Because Geo Trax has been out for a while, you may also be able to find Geo Trax toys at garage sales, second-hand shops or even on e-bay.

So, as they say in the DVD episodes, "Go Team Geo Trax! All Aboard!"