MY NEPHEW TURNED TWO YESTERDAY, and I sent him this train set. I was a little afraid of inflicting too much assembly-work on my brother, but it didn’t look too bad. He reports: “Hey… got the train set together quick & easy. I was a bit daunted at first, but it was nowhere near as complex or as large as I first thought. William took to it immediately, and, much to my amazement, was saying ‘toot toot, all aboard’ as soon as he started it going. Beats me where he learned that!”

My guess: From television. As Homer Simpson has observed, it teaches us so much . . . .

UPDATE: Wow, lots of InstaPundit readers like those trains. I’ve gotten many, many emails like this one from reader Neal Alcott:

The GeoTrax train sets are great for younger kids. We purchased one for our son when he was 3 (he’s now 5). Since they are relatively easy to assemble, he can take them apart and reconfigure. I help him with the layouts sometimes to keep everything in a “confined” area! Every Christmas and birthday he receives add-on kits, so you may start receiving “requests” for particular kits!

See, I had never heard of this — I just went by the Amazon recommendations. It’s the wisdom of crowds!