Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video: The Review Done During Naps
Written: Mar 10 '04
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Pros: it's Billy!
Cons: IT SHOOTS WATER! REAL WATER!
The Bottom Line: This is an inexpensive member of the Rescue Heroes line, but better relegated to bath toy or outside-in-the-summer toy. Or, pretend that you know nothing of the water-shooting feature.
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| pippadaisy's Full Review: Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes ... |
My son, at age two, is reaching that point where he realizes that his slightly older cousins have cool toys, and he wants cool toys too. As a result, I let my sister talk me into letting him have Fisher Price Rescue Heroes for Valentine's Day and his birthday, with her supplying the playscenes, and me supplying the figures themselves. That is how Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video entered our house.
~&~ The Basics ~&~
For anyone immune to Fisher Price's incessant marketing of these toys, the Rescue Heroes are a group of everyday heroes who go out into the world and battles the elements to save common folks like you and me. Billy Blazes happens to be the favorite of both my nephew and my son, so Billy was the one we had to have. Several Rescue Heroes collections are released a year, each one with a specific theme.
Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video is part of the HydroTeam collection, a set of Rescue Heroes that is water-safe, which is great for those kids who want to take their Rescue Heroes in the tub. Billy is wearing a black and yellow fireman jacket with a red and blue tool belt. He has a molded-on red fireman's hat complete with silver microphone for "communications" with the other rescue heroes, and a silver molded antenna on the hat. He has the bushy brown hair, eyebrows, and mustache that identify him easily as Billy Blazes, and his gloves and boots are translucent teal plastic with lime green painted accents. Billy is articulated at the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hips (legs).
Accompanying Billy is his trusty Rescue Heroes backpack, which in this case is mostly black with red, blue, lime, and silver accents. At the top of the backpack is a red stopper connected with a black cord. Open the stopper, and you can pour in real water for Billy to put out fires with. The water tank has two side areas painted blue, and at the bottom is a lime pump, much like the pumps used in the Super Soaker water guns. The backpack has a small black tube that connects it to the water cannon, which has a lime green handle that fits into either of Billy's gloves. The handle is adjustable so that you can point the blue, silver, lime, and black water cannon at your target. To fire the cannon, pump the lime pump on the backpack several times, and then pull back on the red lever on the water cannon in Billy's hand, and a stream of water will shoot out.
Included in the Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video is a Rescue Heroes video. The one that came with our Billy Blazes is "The Fire of Field 13," a 22-minute episode about the Rescue Heroes trying to put out fires at natural gas wells before the storage tanks blow up.
~&~ Parents Perspective ~&~
I'll get my usual Rescue Heroes blurb out of the way first; I have a really difficult time writing reviews or watching videos about characters with names like Gil Gripper, Jack Hammer, and Jake Justice. The fact that Billy here has a bushy 70s-era Burt Reynolds mustache doesn't help the fact that I think the Fisher Price employees named them after imaginary porn stars.
Okay, that out of the way, I have a second confession to make here; my children do not know that Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video can really shoot water. In fact, even after playing with him for quite some time, I had to surreptitiously grab him today while they were napping, fill him up with water, and test the water cannon just for this review. Were the product designers temporarily insane?! I'm not about to let my two-year-old and four-year-old fire water sprays around my living room, and while I'm sure that Billy would be great in the bathtub, there is no way for my kids to differentiate between Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video, who is totally water-safe, and Mission Select Billy Blazes, who is NOT water-safe, and who would probably have his battery-operated pack ruined if he were to be put in the tub.
Hence, Billy's pack is a pretend water cannon, and I hope you do not let my children in on what is now our little secret.
As always, my biggest bone to pick with Fisher Price is over the ridiculous marketing of these toys. As if it isn't enough that they include the brochures featuring the 800,000 different Rescue Heroes lines (unlike Barbie, you have to buy a NEW Billy with each new line, not just a new uniform and accessories), but they include the "free" video, which is essentially a 22-minute animated commercial. Even the video sleeve boasts that this "action-packed adventure" features the Rescue Heroes Quick Response™ Vehicle, and the Rescue Heroes All Terrain Vehicle. And THEN after all that, they have the audacity to ALSO include their commercials for related products, which are phased out so often you are sure to be surfing eBay for figures your children want that are no longer on store shelves.
Oh yeah, and Billy's jacket really looks like he is wearing a dress.
~&~ Play Value ~&~
Even without having any clue about Billy's water cannon abilities, my son loves his Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video. Both he and my daughter clamor for the videos, and Billy is, after all, his favorite. He seems to have no trouble reconciling the fact that two Billys exist in his Rescue Heroes world, and he loves the bright colors on this Billy.
I frequently find Fisher Price Rescue Heroes HydroTeam Billy Blazes with VHS Video plugged into the Mission Select Rescue Fire Truck, which can get annoying, since plugging in THIS Billy results in the speaker bleating only one phrase over and over and over again. I occasionally have to hide this Billy, or relegate him to "Car Billy."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Read more of my Rescue Heroes Reviews:
Fisher Price Rescue Heroes Mission Select Billy Blazes
Fisher Price Rescue Heroes Mission Select Ariel Flyer
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 7.99
Type of Toy: Action Figure
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
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pippadaisy
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Divorce seriously cuts into the amount of time for reviewing.
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