I bought this Egg and Spoon race set last summer when we realised we were, after all, having children round for Hollie's fourth birthday. Both Hollie and one of her little friends had both missed their sports day with a tummy bug so me and Mark attempted to recreate it for them - no WAY were they playing with real eggs, even hard boiled, so I thought that particular race was out of the window as it never occurred to me to look for a set like this!

It's fantastic, a really clever little toy. Four spoons, each of which hold a perfectly sized egg for the bowl of the spoon. The really cute bit is the fact that when a child drops an egg it splits open like a more flexible Kinder Egg container and out falls a sweet mini beanbag designed to look just like a fried egg! It's excellent, or should I say eggs-cellent?!

The spoons and eggs are colour coordinated so the children in the race should be able to keep track of their egg even if several are dropped at the same time. The handle of each spoon is chunky and rounded, this helps small hands to grip it comfortably and also balances the weight more easily when the egg is on the spoon - the eggs are fairly weighty in relation to the strength of a four year old arm, so be prepared for a few false starts while the racers suss out the best way to handle these objects!

From there on it really is a simple case of how careful and/or experienced the children are at this particular game. The worst that can happen is that the child can't stuff the beanbag back into the egg and close it properly, but we quickly introduced a 'wait' rule if a little one was really struggling to get back into the race - turning it into a direct cross between an egg and spoon race and musical statues! It was a lot of fun, the kids didn't seem to get bored of the game and this was easily the most played during Hollie's birthday party.

I bought my set from Amazon rather than ELC; it cost £7 including postage and at the time was on seller promotion where I could purchase two sets for £10, which I did. The Egg and Spoon race set has had a huge amount of use in the almost twelve months that we've owned it, everything is still in tip top condition and a quick wipe down with a baby wipe is all it needs as far as maintenance goes - once when we played in drizzly rain the spoons and plastic eggs got so dirty that we had to actually wash them, but hot soapy water got them looking as good as new again. In a rare burst of foresight my eldest daughter had removed the beanbags from the eggs before taking them outside otherwise I think the mud would have ruined the almost completely white fabric.

My eight spoons and eggs have recently been borrowed for an actual egg and spoon race at Hollie's old nursery, the year she was there for 'activities day' it was a fairly traumatic experience involving warm cream eggs and I practically had my arm ripped off when I offered them use of the set when I went in to pre-register my son last week!

This lovely little set comes highly recommended by me and Hollie (and numerous other small visitors to the chrisandmark household). It's a fun way to coax the kids away from the X-Box (and god knows, some kids really should be coaxed away from it!) and into the garden for some exercise, there are just no disadvantages to this sweet little play set at all and I think all families should own one.