High speed wheels make it easier for bots to zip around the arena evading their opponent. High torque wheels have better steering and more power. Kids can choose either high torque and high speed wheels for their bot. The toy version isn’t quite that intricate, but it does give kids opportunities to customize their own bots, thinking strategically about which combinations give them the best chance of winning. On the show, the robots are products of hours of design and construction by small teams of dedicated competitors.

Once they’ve set up the arena they can go about assembling the bots, which are fairly small and fit easily in the palm of your hand. And if they can force their opponent’s bot into one of the corners closest to them, there are push button hammers that can inflict extra damage. Kids can play with the robots outside of the arena, but the walls will keep any pieces that go flying off in battle from going too far. Plastic corner and side walls snap into pre-cut holes.

It’s made of cardboard and folds out to a square approximately two feet on each side. Luckily, toymaker Hexbug realized this and came through with the BattleBots Arena Pro, a toy set that includes two remote-controlled, customizable robots and an arena to stage battles between them. There are few TV toy tie-ins more obvious than miniaturized, remote-controlled, battling robots modeled after the full-sized, remote-controlled, battling robots that fight it out on BattleBots.

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