Saturday morning the Terrific Trio and Sebastian woke-up at 5:50 AM. In addition to buying the No Joy Buster surprise, I also bought Sebastian two more Leap Frog videos. He loves these videos and of all the TV he watches, this series is by far the most educational. For example, as a result of Talking Letters, Sebastian learned the alphabet very quickly. Therefore, while in the US I also bought Talking Trigonometry. No, just kidding, I bought Words Capers that teaches kids combined letter sounds (“ch”, “sh,” etc) and Math Circus that teaches counting and basic addition and subtraction. The point is I parked Sebastian in front of the TV while I secretly went off to assemble said surprise. (I had also been a very nasty parent, asking everyone, “What do you think is in this big box?”)

In the assembly area I hid any parts that might give away the surprise too prematurely. I knew that eventually Sebastian would show-up on the scene and figure out what I had bought. But there was something different about this item and I wanted to keep that secret as long as possible.

Sure enough Sebastian’s video finished and he arrived at the assembly area quite curious and wanting to help. Assembly of the German toy took about three hours (stopping to feed The Terrific Trio in the middle for half an hour.) At one point Sebastian asked me, “where is THE seat?” His question assumed there was only one.

“Hmmm, I am sure around here somewhere, Sebastian,” I replied coyly.

A little while later Sebastian asked again, “Daddy, where is the seat?” and I decided to start letting the cat out of the bag.

“Sebastian, how many seats do you think there are for this?”

Sebastian replied, “I don’t know, let’s see.” The little rascal then opened the cupboard behind me and pulled out THREE seats. “Daddy,” he exclaimed, “There are three seats!”

“Not quite, little buddy. You better go back and watch that video again,” I thought to myself but said aloud, “Wow, how did you know the seats were in there?”

Sebastian’s patience grew thinner and thinner. Eventually we lured him away from the assembly area with a promise of playing in the Blue Car. Sebastian LOVES our 7-seater Renault family van so he and De disappeared for 45 minutes. Their timing was perfect… I came around the last bend of assembly and snapped the final pieces in place just a few minutes before Sebastian returned home.

Sebastian walked in, took one look at what lay on the floor and exclaimed, “WOW!” It was a four-seater, German-made Kettler Trike. Sebastian tested the trike (left) as we adjusted the length for his legs and then we all headed down to the playground for the maiden voyage.

Sebastian takes a much deserved rest. Pulling the entire team is hard work but Jasper is ready for more! My apologies to those who searched mytoybox.com for this item. You would never have found in it’s entirety. The Kettler Trike becomes a multi-kid bike with the Tandem inserts.