Hape was established in 1986 by Peter Handstein in central Germany and from there it has grown into the world’s largest manufacturers of wooden toys and the company has considered everything from packaging to surface treatment to minimizing the environmental impact of their products.

 We were given Hape’s UFO suitable for ages 3 and up, this wooden space ship comes with its very own green alien pilot and removable control pad. The UFO is beautifully painted with bold and colorful details and all corners and edges are nicely rounded off, there’s also a cool little door that unfolds from the edge of the spacecraft and folds neatly down into a set of steps to allow the alien to disembark. The alien is a bright green smiling character with bendy arms, legs and hands that allow it to hold onto the steering controls (along with his hands the only plastic part of the entire toy) and it can stand up without assistance. There is a little bit of transparent glue around one of the wooden components that detracts from the clean finish of the rest of the toy but this may have just been the model we had.

 We had hit and miss results from this toy, one reaction was that it invoked imaginative play and entertained our test subject for a good couple of hours, the other being the product was too limited to hold their attention for long periods. For £30 it’s a bit of a gamble if it ends up sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

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3.5 out of 5

Pros

Colorful

Durable wooden structure

Invokes imagination

Cons

Expensive

Limit interactive components