When buying gifts for my children my Mum likes to buy toys for the garden as it encourages the children to play outside and doesn't clutter up our house. When my fourth child turned one we couldn't think of anything she might need as we had so many garden toys. My Mum had been to visit my brother and noticed my nephew had a little trike that he played on inside the house but was obviously a favourite. After a quick search on the internet my Mum found the trike online and ordered one for my daughter and another for my two year old nephew.

As with most things the price of these scuttlebugs varies greatly from around £18 up to around £30 at the moment (August 2011) these are available online from www.amazon.co.uk for £21.99 with free postage or the red one is available at Argos for £24.99.

The scuttlebug is made up of a hard plastic seat with metal legs and hard rubber wheels. The steering is controlled by the small handle bars that move the front wheel and the back legs are rigid. The seat is quite long and shaped to fit nicely between little legs. The scuttlebug comes in a variety of colours such as yellow, blue, green, red and pink. Each scuttlebug has little eyes and a mouth on the front which are just stickers but look very cute. We have the pink scuttlebug and it has bright pink wheels and purple flowers on the seat. The flowers are not stickers but sprt of sprayed or painted on. The back of the seat has a shaped groove that looks to me like it could be there for the child to rest it's knee while using the other leg to propel itself along a bit like a skateboard or scooter but I haven't seen it used like this yet.

The scuttlebug comes in a box and is completely assembled including the stickers. Once you get it out of the box all you have to do is unfold the legs and away you go. I think this is a real bonus because it can save time on Christmas Eve assembling things and also means that you don't have to fight your way through wire and screws to get at your new toy.

When my daughter first received the scuttlebug she had a sit on it but wasn't impressed as it was a big too high for her to reach the ground properly. Also as we didn't know what my Mum had bought we had also bought a little car ride-on for our daughter which she could sit on more easily and was able to whizz about on within minutes of getting onto it.

My Mum assured me that both my nephews (both aged two) really liked theirs and although she hadn't seen them used outside as it was only March they were great fun for indoors too.

Our daughter in now 16months old and the scuttlebug has become a real favourite for both inside and in the garden. She still hasn't quite worked out how to get the scuttlebug to move but she can get up to quite a speed anyway. Sometimes it looks like she is just standing over the scuttlebug with it between her legs and walking along but other times she is definitely sitting down.

We have been away a few times and it is so easy just to fold the legs up and sling the scuttlebug in the back of the car as it takes up hardly any space and a lot less than a normal ride-on or trike. I imagine that this would also be beneficial if your little one wanted to ride the scuttlebug on an outing because you could always fold the legs up and put it in the basket of your buggy when they got fed up.

I would recommend the scuttlebug to anyone with children aged between one and about two and a half. My three year old does play on the trike but is a bit too big really. The scuttlebug is very sturdy and robust and really well made so in my opinion it will be a good toy to hand down as it won't perish like some of the plastic ride-ons.