re: Your most difficult Christmas toy assembly? In-Game Cuss Thread.

High end remote control car for my father in law for brother in law

Wasnt even one of my kids. Thing was unreal to assemble. Had to actually build the transmission. Servos, suspension, everything. Took me a week in my spare time before christmas


For me, the most miserable was a round trampoline at 2am in the cold rain by myself. I wanted to quit so very bad

I see a lot complaining of assembling outdoor playsets and kitchen playsets but my experiences have been different.

1 year ago I put together a gorilla outdoor playset with slide, rockwall, rope ladder and elevated fort. I done all of the assembly myself, 9:00 am - 7:30 pm on Saturday and 9:00 am - 12:00 pm on Sunday.
It wasn’t the my ideal way to spend the weekend but the playset came in a week early and the installers wouldn’t reschedule.
The worse part was the freight delivery driver wouldn’t park in my driveway and did not have a pallet jack, so me and him hauled box by box down my long drive way in the summer heat.

This Christmas, I ordered a Melissa and Doug kitchen playset and put it together a couple of weeks ago. The assembly only took about 1 hour and wasn’t a hassle at all.
We considered other playsets, including kidkraft. Glad we passed on those after reading these posts.

I'll put this Sams Kitchen playset up against any other. Pieces and instructions made sense.

Again, electric screwdriver made it enjoyable. I'd have been cussing otherwise. Lots of hardware.

Over the years I’ve had to assemble everything from Lego castles, backyard play-sets, to doll houses. But the one that almost permanently broke my Christmas spirit was a little toddler trampoline like this one…



You can’t see it, but the tension on this thing isn’t provided by a series of springs. No. Instead it has one single bungee cord that laces all the way around it. Stretching that damned cord the final 1/2” to get it to latch on the last corner requires close to super human strength.

What made it all worth it was seeing my 3 yr old little girl’s excitement to jump on her new trampoline Santa had brought her. She loved that trampoline. Loved it for all of maybe a minute and a half before she discovered the box her brother’s gift had come in. I think we kept that damned trampoline for a year or two. I never saw her play with that damned thing again.

I bought an outdoor play set, one of the big redwood ones, from a preschool that was closing down in north BR. Had to go take it apart, put it on a trailer in a very shady arrangement, and then get it home and put it together. Then I moved to Tennessee and brought it, so took it apart and did it again. But that was it, it stayed the next time we moved. And yes it was for Christmas - I had the flu for the first exercise, but I had gotten a steroid shot that got me through the move and assembly, but then when that wore off I was wrecked for 3 days.

I'm old enough to look at that and think, how is this going to f!ck me as a dad? The word "assembly" is an instant DQ for anything.

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Complex Lego sets for a 6 year after opening wrapped box, because my kid is the smartest ever, even though the box said ages 12+. Learned my lesson, am not as smart as a 12 year old Lego expert.

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I've done the trampoline, the swingset, playhouse, the basketball goal.

I never let out as many F-bombs as I did for those custom Lego sets and their super tiny specialized pieces.

In fact, now bad memories are triggered and I have to sit down.

I don’t mind building the Lego sets. I get pissed knowing it’s gonna be in a thousand pieces in a week

Trampoline, in the snow/sleet and in the dark. Solo.

Worst Christmas Eve ever. Kids did use that trampoline for ten solid years though.

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It fell apart while putting it together and, of course, it was my fault

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ALWAYS!!! My wife bought one of those cheap 10x20 party tents to put up, for last weekend. I told her it was not a strong tent and the wind would blow it away. Got the usual “no it won’t, if it was something you wanted, you would make it work”, bullshite! An hour later and 15 mph winds, it was in my backyard pond like a fricking parachute! Had it anchored down with metal spikes. What pissed me off even more was it took close to 3 hours to put up!