Air Swimmers Inflatable Flying Shark

I have had a whole lot of fun with my Air Shark. It is a clever design, and as sturdy as it can be considering that all of its features are trying to save weight. I have used it for over a month now, and have put it through its paces well enough that I feel confident writing a review for it.It was a little tricky to get it put together, not very intuitive, so walk through the instructions once or twice before you start on it and take your time. It also helps to have another person help hold on to it. And definitely, definitely tie a string to it and lash it to something heavy before you start to fill the balloon! I had to figure out how to get it down from the ceiling a couple of times. You can take the string off later when you're balancing out the ballast to give it neutral buoyancy. The fins and tail are very lightweight, as they need to be to enable to balloon to float. They are springy and very flexible. They have bounced off of my textured ceiling, walls, light fixtures, blinds, cabinets, and various other things numerous times and still look pretty good. They also seem to function as bumpers between the skin of the balloon and other objects. The balloon itself seems rather sturdy. My shark was still floating (adjusting for buoyancy by removing clay from the Remora / Pilot Fish pod as needed) TWO WEEKS after initially filling it. I have never had a balloon retain helium that well before. I filled it back up again this weekend and it was back ready to go just like day one. The shark is surprisingly maneuverable, and able to turn in a much tighter radius than I ever would have thought. With a little practice with the remote, you can get it to dive and climb and make some pretty impressive turns. Not at high speed mind you, but much more energetically that you would expect a helium balloon to be able to do.A couple of caveats should be mentioned. When unattended, even though seemingly happy floating in the corner of the ceiling, the shark tends to wander around. You just don't appreciate how much air flow you have in your house until you have a balloon floating around it. Mine has a tendency to wander into the kitchen. Perhaps I should increase his meals... At any rate, it may wander into areas with sharp pointy things that you'd rather have it avoid, so when not using it, tie the shark down or confine it somewhere without a lot of airflow. Secondly, over time the balloon will gradually deflate. This causes the stickers holding things onto it to have gaps between the adhesive and the balloon body and come lose. This was easily remedied with Scotch tape. Also, when less inflated, the rubber bands holding on the tail tended to slip off. This is not a problem when fully inflated, but I did have to hunt a couple of them down on occasion. Lastly, my dog does not like the Air Shark. She generally just leaves the room or avoids it, but more aggressive pets could easily damage the balloon.All in all, I think this is a great toy and I highly recommend it, for small and big kids alike.

Absolutely terrible design! It works okay for the first day, after which parts start falling off and the ones that are attached to special rubber bands (the tail section) actually go flying across the room somewhere and then the hunt is on.... Because your finished if you can't find them, as they don't give you any extra "hooks" in the package! The main problem lies within the design.... EVERYTHING is held onto the balloon with very NOT so sticky double sided tape, and then what appears to be scotch tape strips over top to double up the holding power (NOT).... so picture this for an evening of fun.... You blow this thing up with helium, after which you have to stick a dozen or so of these items into a balloon... That constantly wants to "Get Away" from you (it's a chore even with someone helping).... Then you have to go back to all of those items and peel and stick flimsy scotch tape (which also wants to fight with you) over the top of them, which at least a couple have already fallen off of the balloon! So once you get this all done and your ready to fly this thing, you realize that it needs more helium (even though it looks like it is going to burst) so you fight with the tail section and you wrestle more helium into the a## of this thing! OK so now the grand kids have gone to bed disappointed because you didn't realize that this was going to be an all day "project" to put these things together (I bought two of them :-( ), so finally Grandpa fly's it around and tweaks the weight with the provided puddy and everything is working "kinda" OK, the controls are clunky to get the hang of, and you always have to be within 5 feet of it for it to get a signal..... So it's bed time for ole grandpa... The kids will be really excited to play with them in the morning....... So here we are.... The next day, I get the kids all reved up at breakfast, you know, for the big fish debut....I go into the spare room where they are "Docked", thinking I'm going to fly it over there heads at breakfast AND....WAH....Wah....waaaaah....NO JOY! The damned little sticky hooks that hold the tails on had popped off, and went to play hide-in-go-seek, so here we are again, chasing parts down and " re-sticking" them to the balloon (another two hours of my life I will never get back)! The long and short of it.... Until they make all of these taped on thingies PART OF THE BALLON.... It is just not worth the aggravation! Once you get it together and flying, it is actually pretty cool, but expect to go thru the same aggravation every couple of days of re-sticking the thingies on, AND buy stock in batteries and helium.... Because these things eat BOTH!If you don't head my warning and stay away from this evil torture device..... Then you get what you deserve!Good Luck!