Last christmas my eldest son wanted a picoz palm r\c plane which santa duly delivered. Himself and everyone else had great fun either flying it or avoiding the darn thing all last Christmas day but after a serious collision with a lamp in my brothers house within 12 hours of opening the darn thing it would fall out of the air as soon as it was launched and was resigned to the bin.

This year he asked for a r\c helicopter hoping it would be a little more stable, we searched online and they all seemed to be made of the same polystyrene as his defunct plane but once we came across this black ghost helicopter we decided to forget the polystyrene look and thought it was perfect. It was about palm sized slightly larger than the tiny picoz helicopter range but what set it apart was the double rotor blades, green searchlight and cool black colour.

The helicopter claimed to be:

Highly manoeuvrable and easy-to-fly with full altitude and directional control. They also claimed it was very stable with an ultra-tough lightweight body (very important after last years one day before breaking) with a range of upto 10 metres and that the controller which takes 6 AA (not supplied) batteries would recharge the helicopter each time for 10 minutes flight time. There was a two channel infra-red frequency control and it was marketed as suitable for indoor use or outdoors on very still days only

When my eldest son opened it on Christmas day he was very pleased. The helicopter looked very cool and was fully assembled and very light to hold, it was small enough to fit in the palm but large enough to look a little sturdier then the previous plane and included adhesive transfers to allow you to decorate it. There was also a new tail rotor and a stabilizer included as spares.

Once the batteries were inserted the green searchlight on the front of the helicopter switched on and looked really cool. I did discover however that when you turned the lights off to get the full beauty of the searchlight that the pilot could no longer see the controls properly and would start accidently attacking people innocently sitting around the living room.

Its powered by a lightweight lithium polymer battery (supplied) and the black infra-red transmitter has altitude and direction controls with a central stick for adjustments.

The claim is that if you do crash, the Ghost's resilient shell means there will be virtually no damage to the helicopter, my son and various others did do a number of rather fast landings on everything from the wooden floor to the dining table with seemingly no major damage inflicted. It actually made it through intense playing for the whole of Christmas day fully working and intact with the same six Duracell batteries still charging away.

Boxing Day - Up we got and the helicopter was soon buzzing away around our heads, tempted though I was I didn't swat it (it cost me good money) but then one crash landing to many and suddenly the little mite couldn't soar to the sky anymore, just kind of left your hand whirred a bit and fell downwards. Hubby who is quite good at this sort of thing tried to glue the offending bit which had came off back on but nothing could save it. The bottom rotor had disconnected from the piece that spun it and when we tried it with only one rotor on it spun out of control unflyable.

On the plus side it looked cooler than the plane, was almost as easy to control, the light was a very nice extra and it lasted twice as long as the remote control picoz plane. On the minus side for £17.99 I expect toys to last for more than two days.

A super remote control lightweight helicopter which it is reasonably easy to control but which breaks far too easily.