Upon breaking the Battlebots Rivals, from Hexbug, out of their box, I knew just one thing: The battle was on.
The bots are based on a show of the same name in which real robots duel in a match. Each robot is created by a team of experts that controls their every move. It’s a knockout challenge similar to boxing, but sometimes judges have to decide who the winner is.
Those who care about the show might expect Bite Force to reign supreme. Since 2016, it has only lost a single match — its second one. The Hexbug version is about a 4-inch-long rectangle with a spinning blue contraption on the front. It has four pointed claws in the front that can be used to create maximum damage. The top piece is the only one that can fall off easily. No matter the damage inflicted during my battle, it stayed put.
Blacksmith is the other included bot and is a whole other story. The actual bot it’s based on has lost nine out of 14 matches over its three-year career. Blacksmith does, however, have a hammer at the top that activates when the power button is pressed. It doesn’t necessarily inflict damage, but it is fun to try.
The remotes that control each bot should be set at separate frequencies, and figuring out how to do that is a little challenging at first. To get started, kids need to press the power button on the remote whose frequency is set to one through four at the same time as they press the power button on the bot. This should make it only controllable by one remote. If both bots are in the same frequency, then they are controlled by the same remote at the same time.
Parents may want to vacuum before kids play because Bite Force does tend to collect hair in its spinners. This didn’t affect the battle at all, but it was a healthy reminder that I needed to clean. Also, note that it was also loud enough that I was worried that my downstairs neighbors could be upset, but not so loud that it bothered anyone in my home.
In the case of my battle, the underdog stayed the underdog. Blacksmith hit Bite Force several times with its giant hammer, but it offered little effect. Instead, Blacksmith had three pieces that fell off the second that Bite Force approached it. There’s still hope, however, that Blacksmith could win one day.
