When my brother asked me what my one year old son wanted for Christmas I was a bit stuck for ideas. My son is the youngest of three children and we have so much stuff for that age group it is hard to think of anything new for him. Unfortunately this means he usually gets clothes or money which I don't think is very nice for the poor boy. Ok, so he's not missing out on the toys because they are there but imagine if it carries on when he is older!

After searching www.amazon.co.uk for everything and anything I could think of the Tomy Thomas & Friends Load 'n' Go Thomas came up as a suggestion of things I might be interested in.

The picture on the Amazon website is slightly different than the one shown above and the toy looks quite big in it. I thought that the toy looked good value for money as it was big and only priced at about £9.99. As it was also available through Amazon this meant that the postage on the item would be free.

When we received the toy we were a little disappointed. It is much smaller than it looks in the picture and the Thomas part only measure about 17cm long. I can only imagine they used a very small child or have blow up the image of the train. It is quite deceiving.

We got the toy out of the box and put it onto a carpeted floor. What you have is a Thomas the Tank Engine and a flat trailer and a tractor called Trevor. Trevor is attached to Thomas by a length of cord that is retractable. What you have to do it attach the trailer to Thomas and then pull the tractor until the string stops then set the tractor down onto the floor and it will drive itself up onto the trailer and once in place Thomas moves forward a short way.

The first few goes my children really liked the toy and they were all laughing and thought it was funny that Thomas could move along by himself. Unfortunately they soon lost interest as the game is very limited. Trevor cannot be disconnected from Thomas so you have to play with all three parts of the toy together all the time. If you try and play without the trailer the tractors front wheels do not touch the floor.

I liked the toy because it is well made and very robust. It is a very good likeness of the Thomas characters and as my Children don't have many Thomas toys this is a novelty for them. It works well at what it does and moves along nicely even on a carpeted floor.

I was disappointed with the size of the toy after seeing it look quite big in the picture but this is obviously one of the problems with buying things online. I was a little disappointed with the entertainment value of the toy. There are only so many times you can pull the tractor back and watch it go up onto the trailer. My one year old gets very frustrated with it because he likes to free wheel his cars and tractors around the floor making 'bbbbrrrrmmmm bbbbbbrrrrmmmmm' noises. With this Thomas toy it is too many pieces for him and it comes apart too easily and Trevor slides of the side of the trailer. The toy is recommended for children aged 18 months and over so maybe he'll find it a little more enjoyable in a few months time.

I would say that this is a nice toy from the Thomas range at a reasonable price. We were disappointed with it but another child may really enjoy it.

The Load 'n' Go Thomas is available now (Jan 09) at www.johnlewis.co.uk for £9.50 with free delivery or from www.amazon.co.uk for £9.78 with free delivery. Although you do have to watch things on Amazon because when my brother came to buy the toy it was only available through Amazon Markeplace which meant he would have been charged about £5.00 postage so we got ours from John Lewis in the end.