Radio Flyer's first scooter has a foot brake

The scooter conversation starts in a driveway, usually because a four-year-old two houses down has one and your kid has now seen it. Radio Flyer listed a new answer on Tuesday: My 1st Scooter Sport, $39.99, a three-wheel beginner scooter for ages 2 to 5 that is built around the two things that decide whether a toddler stays upright.

Two wheels in front, one brake at the back

The front end has two wheels rather than one, which is what keeps a two-year-old from tipping the first time they lean. The turning radius is deliberately limited, which Radio Flyer describes as safety without giving up mobility and which in practice means the handlebars will not jackknife the moment a foot lands wrong. And there is a foot brake on the rear wheel, the kind you step on. That last one is the reason to read past the price.

The deck is extra wide with a raised grip surface running the length of it, so a small foot has somewhere obvious to go and somewhere to stay. The whole thing is 27.17 inches long, 19.9 wide and 24.21 high, and weighs 4.41 pounds, which matters more than it sounds: a three-year-old can pick it up off the sidewalk without calling you over. It is rated to 50 pounds.

The rest of the sheet

Two colors, red and pink, both $39.99. Radio Flyer calls the manufacturing conscious and the carbon footprint reduced, which is the kind of sentence we normally skip, except the company is a certified B Corp, it plants a tree for every product bought on its own site, and it ships carbon-neutral from there. Buying direct also gets you its double warranty. As of this morning the red is backordered and ships when stock returns, so check before you count on it for a birthday.

Who should buy it

Buy it if your kid is two or three and you want the version with a brake rather than the version that stops by running into the garage door. Two front wheels and a wide deck is the right shape for that age, and $39.99 is roughly half what the three-wheel scooters everyone photographs cost. Skip it if your kid is nearly five or tall for their age: the 50-pound limit and the slow turn will be the wrong scooter by spring, and you would be better off spending once on a two-wheeler they grow into. For the two-year-old in the driveway, though, this is the one.

Radio Flyer is in the club: free shipping for Cubbie Club members. See the Radio Flyer offer →