There is a deep circle of Hell — deeper than the one wherein dwell

home-improvement contractors who help themselves to your favorite tools –

reserved for the makers of shoddy toys.

I asked my son what he wanted for his 9th birthday. He said he wanted a

remote-control helicopter. I went looking on the Internet, and found a

couple in my price range. I bought one: a Megatech “Helichopper,” retailed

by Hobbytron.

The Helichopper has an on-board rechargeable battery. When this battery is

fully charged, the thing will fly for about a minute. That’s OK for a

9-year-old to play with; except that the recharger base needs **eight**

D-size batteries. I bought these from Home Depot — cost was $10+. (The

hand-held transmitter needs six “AA” batteries, too; but we get through so

many of those suckers, it’s just a grocery expense.)

Went through a couple of charge-and-drain routines, according to the

instructions. Unfortunately, that pretty much whacked out the “D”

batteries, and the thing would barely fly.

I explained to my very disappointed little boy that I couldn’t keep shelling

out $10 on “D” batteries for a few minutes fly time. In the booklet that

came with the toy there was an ad for an a/c adaptor you could use for

recharging instead of batteries. I sent away for it.

Three weeks later the adaptor arrived. We charged up. The Helichopper

couldn’t quite get off the ground. We did some draining-and-recharging.

Still no good. Hobbytron has a 30-day return policy, and we were now over

it. So I packaged the thing up, adaptor and all, and sent it back to

Megatech with a letter that I’ll confess was not altogether temperate,

asking them to refund the cost of (a) the Helichopper, and (b) the adaptor.

Instead they sent me a replacement Helichopper, explaining that they didn’t

do refunds. No adaptor, though. I wrote and grumbled, politely, and by

return mail they sent not only an adaptor, but eight “D” batteries, too.

Fair enough. This Helichopper did fly — three or four times. Then the

stabilizer fin snapped off. Then the tail rotor motor stopped working, with

the kind of effect you see in movies when a real helicopter’s tail rotor is

shot out. I checked the wiring to the tail rotor motor. it looks OK; I

guess the motor itself is just no good.

I suppose I could pack it up and ship it back to Megatech, but I can’t be

bothered. This one’s a write-off. As my Chinese mother-in-law used to say:

“Hua qian mai qi” — You spend money to buy vexation. This is basically a

shoddy and disappointing toy, much more fragile than it should be for a

thing that goes up in the air and then comes down with a bump. And why

don’t they ship it with an adaptor in the first place? Grrrrrr.