Review: Manley's Motorized Bumper Boat & Thunder Boat VS. Bonzai Motorized Bumper Boat

As the weather turns warmer throughout the country many kids will be looking to get into their pools. If you have a pool at home there are some new pool toys that can be a lot of fun. These include three different battery powered boats your kids can pilot around your pool. They are the Manley Motorized Bumper Boat, the Manley Motorized Thunder Boat, and the Bonzai Motorized Wave Runner. I recently saw all three of these new pool vehicles demonstrated at a local swim center by a retailer that was selling them. The Motorized Bumper boat and Motorized Thunder Boat by Manley as well as the Bonzai Morotized Wave Runner are all basically the same toy just with different designs.

The Manley Motorized Bumper Boat, Manley Motorized Thunder Boat, and Bonzai Motorized Wave Runner are all inflatable boats to be used in your pool. They all take quite a bit of battery power to run them though. Each of these inflatable boats require 8 "D" Batteries to operate them. Those batteries usually only provide about 4-6 hours of playtime as well. So along with the $40-$45 purchase price you need to be prepared to purchase large amounts of batteries on a regular basis.

The Manley Motorized Bumper Boat, Manley Motorized Thunder Boat, and Bonzai Motorized Wave Runner all claim that their inflatable boats can travel at up to 2 feet per second. Maybe this is true if you don't have a child in the boats, but once you put a child in it more like 5 seconds per foot, so don't believe their claims. As the batteries start to get low, the speed reduces significantly as well.

The Manley Motorized Bumper Boat, Manley Motorized Thunder Boat, and the Bonzai Motorized Wave Runner all have a water gun like toy on the front of each vehicle. You don't have to load these water guns with water though. They pull the water right from the pool your kids are driving these boats in.

Keep in mind these boats are not designed to be used in open waterways such as the ocean, rivers, bays, or even ponds. I do not know of any public pools that allow these to be used in my area due to the size of the boats, and suspect that is true in most areas. This means you will need to have a large pool at your house to be able to use either the Manley Motorized Bumper Boat, Manley Motorized Thunder Boat or the Bonzai Motorized Wave Runner. If you have the space available it is likely your four to eight year old child will love these toys. The upfront cost is relatively affordable, but keep in mind the cost of batteries will get significant if they get a lot of use. Also be prepared to purchase more than one, after all what fun is a bumper boat when you have nobody to bump with?