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Worlds Apart In The Night Garden - Ninky Nonk Train Pop Up Tent
by taramorg23
My mum bought this for my daughter and my nephew as a joint Christmas present as they both like In the Night Garden. This cost £30 from Amazon but I have also seen it in Toys R Us.
It took about 15 minutes to put together and basically consists of some fabric pieces held together by plastic rods. The sections can then be ... joined together by velcro.
The tent consists of 4 sections the first of which is the largest and in the shape of a triangle, the second section is a semi circular shape, the third is a tall rectangular shape and the fourth and final section is sort of a semi circle and smaller than the other pieces.
Each section of the tent is brightly coloured and features little windows which your child can look out of. The tent also has various Night Garden characters. Each section of tent also has wheels printed on.
The tent is not as sturdy as I expected it to be and the canvas is rather thin. It is also a lot larger than we expected and even though my mum has a large living room the tent when it was all placed together dominated the living room. The sections are only held together by velcro so they can easily be taken apart, my mum has now placed half of the tent upstairs and the other half in the conservatory which is where all the kids toys are stored.
When my daughter saw this on Christmas day she was very excited, she had just started to crawl too and in no time was crawling through the sections and waving to us through the windows. My nephew who is a year older was a little bit cautious at first but once he was in he started to really enjoy crawling through the sections. One thing we did notice was that at times when the kids were going through it the sections can become detached but they can easily be placed back together.
My daughter goes to my mums every weekend while I work and since Christmas this tent has been regularly played with. She likes to hide her toys in there and also to play 'Peepo' with us through the windows.
When we have had some nice weather we have taken the tent out in the garden, it is very light however and will blow over unless something is placed inside a few toys normally does the trick.
We haven't put this tent down since Christmas so I can't comment on how well it folds up. However for the money it has been well played with and my daughter seems to enjoy it as does her cousin who now treats it as a house and eats his lunch in there.
I would give this 4 out of 5 stars, I think the velcro to hold the sections together should be a little stronger but all in all this was a worthwhile buy and a toy that will last a few years yet.
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Worlds Apart In The Night Garden - Ninky Nonk Train Pop Up Tent
by chrisandmark
My daughter has owned the Ninky Nonk Train Pop-Up Tent for just under three years now, after I purchased it for her second birthday in 2009 - it's still in use (in a fashion) so you might be forgiven for thinking this is a durable product and worth spending your money on. Well, I say 'pffffft'. The fact that it's still useable is ... because it's such a nightmare to put together (and not really a whole lot of fun) that we've hardly taken it out of the box - over these three years it's probably had a total play-time of less than fifteen hours, the majority of these being when we had it out in our large living room last year and Hollie decided to use it as her 'sulking place' after being told off, or whatever other reason a four year old can have for sulking!
The Ninky Nonk is made of a very thin fabric, the edges of the train compartments are strengthened somewhat to ensure they keep their shape but the whole thing has always felt extremely flimsy and looks to constantly be on the verge of collapsing. The fact that it has never collapsed on Hollie is cause to be impressed, although now her sixteen month old brother is learning to love the Ninky Nonk (being a rather more boisterous child) I suspect it won't live for very much longer in this house!
To assemble the train you need to push flexible plastic rods through the edges of the structure, this can be quite fiddly and it's not a job I'd want to do regularly to be honest as it's very time consuming in relation to the amount of time the kids' are going to want to play in the thing! You have the choice of putting the whole Ninky Nonk together and using it as a train, or just assembling one of the compartments and letting the children play in it as a kind of tent. As the length is around eleven feet you need to ensure you have plenty of room if you're using it as an indoor toy, it's suitable for use in the garden so that may be a better option if you're struggling for space inside. I've tried to convince Hollie that using each compartment separately is the way forward, although some of the fun of crawling through the 'tunnel' is lost at least I don't have the stress and bother of putting it together.
My main issue with the Train is the fact that once put together this doesn't necessarily mean it's going to STAY together - in fact it doesn't stay together at all! It might look (reasonably) good when first assembled, but within ten minutes of play you'll find either, or both, of the end compartments are coming adrift from the rest and then you need to either rethread the poles or convince your child to play with it like that. Not so much now, but in the past we've had real tantrums as Hollie realised her toy was slowly falling to pieces...
It doesn't even LOOK that much like the Ninky Nonk! It's all done in the right colours and the pictures of the various In The Night Garden characters make it instantly recognisable, but you can't really shape a fabric 'tent' structure to follow the whirls and curves of the Ninky Nonk - so they haven't and have given it a boxy look instead. It actually looks very cheap, and considering the RRP is just shy of £40 it definitely isn't a cheap toy. While writing this review I've made a decision, this is going on Ebay when I have my annual mega-list after I've finished my spring cleaning and decluttering - I've been mooching around the garden toys recently and am certain I can find something a bit more fun and substantial for the kids to play in, to be honest a basic two-man tent would be more fun in the garden than this thing!
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