If there’s one problem with giving the young person in your life the X-Treme Cycle Moto-Cam for Christmas, it’s that in big swaths of the United States, the weather is going to be pretty miserable for the next few months, making it difficult to use some of its best features.
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The toy, which retails for $79.99 (though smart shoppers can find them for $20 less than that online) and is available at online retailers as well as brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Walmart, features a GoPro-style built-in camera so that it’s not just a remote-control toy motorcycle, but one that allows you to record “first person” video from the perspective of the cycle’s rider.
Wicked Cool Toys is offering the XTreme Cycle as one of their big holiday gifts this season. There’s a camera-free version that is smaller and will run you around $29.99, but this Moto-Cam version gives users the option to record up to an hour of video, which can be anything from a tour of your yard/neighborhood to point-of-view video taken during stunts and the like (the cycle comes with an included stunt ramp and has an internal gyroscope that makes things like jumping off curb possible).
There is a short learning curve involved, as the cycle is…well, it’s a cycle, rather than a car, so since the “driver” doesn’t have the ability to stabilize himself it can be a bit of a trick the first few times you try to get the toy started. That said, once you get used to it, one of the pleasant surprises about the XTreme Cycle was how stable it was once in motion. Obviously you’re never going to have a rollover-free RC motorbike, but this one is about as close as you’re likely to get.
The other side of that? One reviewer on YouTube, who modified the heck out of his cycle to get it to do more of what he wanted, called the bike’s steering “imprecise,” and that’s a good way of putting it. We didn’t have as many issues keeping it upright as he did (although, admittedly, we didn’t offroad the way he was doing, and only steered along pavement and grass), but we will acknowledge that the biggest trick is just getting a feel for the steering. The first handful of times you attempt a ramp trick, you’re probably going to hit the thing at a bad angle and need to re-approach. Just know this isn’t you — and it’s also not a steep learning curve. You’ll get the feel for it.
That’s something, of course, that parents with small children will do quick enough as the kids demand they “make it work,” but reviewers have been hit or miss about. Looking on YouTube, you can see a few video reviews where people are having a real hard time keeping the bike upright, but in our experience, the correction for that was simple: confidence. The bike performs better not at top speed, but at speed. The biggest problems are starting, stopping, or when you throttle down too much before making a turn (sharp turns especially).
“Featuring a patented gyroscope stabilization system, Xtreme Cycle Moto-Cam is specially designed to always right itself after it falls for non-stop action,” reads the original release for the toy, inviting users to “Capture Xtreme Cycle Moto-Cam’s flips, tricks and sharp turns, just like they do in extreme cycling, with a real working helmet cam!”
The helmet cam is a cool feature, and it seems likely a lot of kids will be taken in by it, so don’t be too surprised if this is a hot item this year. The camera-free version is a nice entry-level version of the toy, and as we hinted at, snow might impede making any truly impressive videos in parts of the country right about now, but once things start to clear up in the spring and your kids are able to take the XTreme Cycle out in the yard or on the road/sidewalk, you’ll be glad you sprung for the extra, which will make the toy feel new all over again when the next set of features can be used.
A cautionary note: While the included 4 GB micro SD card should provide about an hour of video capability at the specifications the bike supports, it isn’t recommended that the bike go for more than about 20-30 minutes without a recharge (it’s a battery pack with a USB charger). As we noted, keeping the bike’s speed up is a key element to performance, so if you push its limits — especially with the camera engaged — you’ll start to see why it’s a bad idea.
That said, barring bad road conditions or a hard fall, the bike doesn’t seem capable of moving at a speed fast enough that an abrupt stop or a crash into a stationary object will do significant damage to the toy. That’s likely a huge relief to kids who will revel in using the camera function to record an hour-long supercut of the bike riding its ramp into walls and into holes.
For more information, links to purchase, or to replace your lost instruction manual, you can check out the toy’s official website here.
