I am a huge fan of Real Steel. It’s a fantastic movie, plus I had the opportunity to meet Hugh Jackman, Sugar Ray Leonard and other people behind the making of this action packed film.
If you have not seen the movie yet the DVD/Blu-ray will be released on January 24, 2011.
Real Steel is the story of a man (Hugh Jackman) trying to build a relationship with the son he didn’t know he had. Hugh Jackman’s character travels around the country with boxing robots.
There are several robots in the movie. After watching Real Steel I even wanted my own robot. They are pretty cool!
Prior to seeing the movie I was concerned that Real Steel was more so “Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots” meets the Transformers with hottie Hugh Jackman tossed in the mix to appeal to women. That is not the case at all.
It’s hard not ot think of Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots when you think about boxing robots. Therefore it comes as no surprise that there IS a Rock ’em Sock ’em Robot inspired Real Steel toy.
The Real Steel WRB Built for Battle Set features a replica of the World Robot Boxing (WRB) ring and two robots from the film – Atom and Zeus.
The ring is super easy to set up. It even has real elastic ropes around the ring.
Each robot has it’s own controller that is attached to the ring. The bottoms make either arm on the robot mov back and forth in a punching motion.
With the Rock ’em Sock ’em game the objective was the box your opponent and try and pop his head up. The Real Steel WRB Built for Battle set is similar. You are suppose to pop the other robot’s head up. We quickly learned that arms can be punched off too. I’m not sure if it was suppose to do that or not.
The game was exactly like the Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots I had when I was growing up. Instead of robots in primary colors these robots are exact replicas of the robots from the Real Steel movie.
When we first started to use the game nothing much happened. You could press the buttons to your heart’s content, but nothing would happen. The arms would move but not with enough force to cause damage to the other robot (pop his head up). After repeated use we were finally able to get one robot to pop the head up on the other and a few times we punched an arm off.
My kids quickly lost interest in the game. Just like the classic boxing game, there is only so much you can play the game before you get bored of it. There is not a lot of action and the outcome is usually the same.
The game didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would. We could box for long periods of times and nothing would happen. With the classic original game a head would pop up after a few minutes of playing.
The Real Steel WRB Built for Battle play set is not a total loss. If your child is a fan of the movie and doesn’t mind not having a clear winner with each game, then they will like this toy. They can use this as a play set rather then a game. The robots can be removed and played with so your child is able to re-create scenes from the movie.
The Built for Battle play set sells between $30-$40. I honestly don’t think it’s worth that much money. I think $15-$20 would be more appropriate. If the game worked better (meaning you were easily able to pop the oppenents head off and the arms moved better) then I would certainly think it was worth it’s current price tag.
You can find the Real Steel WRB Built for Battle play set at various retail locations like Amazon and Target.
Kimberly
*I received a free product sample in order to do this review. There was no compensation. The opinions expressed are my own.
Betty Baez says
oh man i wish i would’ve seen this sooner i got my kids the rock’ em sock em ones, but this one looks WAY better darn!
anna pry says
You got to meet Hugh Jackman?? I’m so jealous!! I haven’t seen Real Steel yet. I have to wait until they show up on Netflix