One of the presents my granddaughter received for Christmas was a set of characters from the Roary the Racing Car television programme, the set included a Roary and Marsha figure and was a gift from her uncle who knows nothing about buying for babies or children.

It's not a very good toy, in fact my granddaughter has barely played with it at all since she received it as it just doesn't do anything. In fact my daughter has now placed both figures on a shelf in my granddaughter's bedroom as they are better as ornaments than toys!

The characters look just like they do on the tele, Marsha is a jolly blonde lady and Roary has a sweet face who looks perpetually happy with life. Roary is made of metal which is good as he feels like a substantial toy, but Marsha is plastic and unfortunately is stuck in one pose which makes playing with her difficult as my granddaughter's imagination isn't developed enough to create a game with a waving lady who does nothing else!

Not long after my granddaughter started playing with these figures the paint started to wear off on Roary, at first it was just a little bit but my daughter noticed each day that the worn part was getting bigger. My granddaughter is 21 months old and she does throw her toys around but I would have thought the toy would have lasted longer than this as the damage has obviously not been caused by a drop and the paint has simply worn away.

My granddaughter has played with it on occasion, she giggles when she takes him out of the toybox and has just learned to say Roary (in a very, very sweet way!) so it was flavour of the month then but she soon became bored and went back to playing with the more cuddly and interesting In The Night Garden characters.

I wouldn't bother with this if I were you unless you have a Roary mad child, when I learned it cost £4.99 I was surprised as it's sch a poor quality toy which doesn't even have any play value for a younger child such as my granddaughter. I think the proof is that given the choice of playing with Roary and Marsha or a toilet roll tube last week she immediately went for the toilet roll and Roary was left discarded.