With all the style of an icon reimagined as a tricycle, your child can take a ride on the coolest wheels in town with the Lil Sting-Ray tricycle by Schwinn. Just like the vintage Sting-Rays of the late sixties and early seventies, this tricycle features a real low-rider banana seat and sissy bar. Add in scalloped chrome fenders and your little rider will be turning heads around the neighborhood in no time. Steel spoked wheels with air-filled tires provide a smooth, comfortable ride. Sidewalk fun never looked better than with the Lil Sting-Ray by Schwinn. The MyRider Midi has no extras, but it accommodates older kids.
But this trike is well made, and it’s quick to build and convert. The Joovy Tricycoo 4.1 Kids Tricycle (our previous pick in this guide) was loved by our kid testers, and it has a short, five-minute build time. The materials are mostly plastic, schwinn mountain bike which got dinged up after just a few weeks of testing. Many parents complain in reviews about losing pieces of the Joovy over time; the screws, the plastic basket, all tend to fall off. It also got stuck on any surface that wasn’t pavement.
The XJD 5-in-1 Kids Tricycle is a trike that turns into a balance bike. It takes 10 minutes to build, and it’s easy to adapt from trike to bike by adjusting the two back wheels into one (they slide together) and removing the pedals. It’s sturdier than many of the trikes we tried, with hard rubber wheels instead of plastic.
Make memories that will last a lifetime with the Schwinn Kid’s 12 in. This retro-styled children’s roadster trike is designed with a low center of gravity, making climbing on and off during play easy and safe. The trikes were then turned over to their kids, so they could test their durability, ease of use, speed, and inherent fun-ness.
It has the same four configurations as our top pick, but the harness isn’t as simple to use. We also like the slightly pricier yet more-durable INFANS Kids Tricycle. The Schwinn Roadster Tricycle is a stylish low-rider model for bigger kids. And the Angeles MyRider Midi is an upgrade that will likely outlast the rest. Best suited for easy-going rides around the neighborhood, just give the reliable 3-speed shifter a twist to smoothly shift gears and make pedaling easy on gentle hills.
And our kid testers found it less easy to use, likely because the IFANS trike is about 4 pounds heavier than the Radio Flyer tricycle (20 pounds versus the Radio Flyer’s 16). The seat should ideally include some back support to help brace a child’s trunk, especially if they’re under age 3, said Rebecca Talmud, DPT, a pediatric physical therapist in Washington, DC. We looked for trikes that can be passed down from child to child. We tested tricycles made from steel, aluminum, and plastic, in varying combinations. Compared with trikes that were 100% plastic, trikes with at least some steel tended to age better and more consistently stood up to a beating.
This trike looks like it should be driving both rear wheels and letting the outside wheel freewheel through turns. If that’s the case, it may be that one of the freewheels is sticky. This versatile schwinn bicycles trike will grow with your child, converting from a stroller alternative to a big-kid trike they can steer on their own. It comes packed with accessories and has an easy-to-use harness.
As Adam Rice surmised, your tricycle is designed so that the chain only drives one of the rear wheels. Based on your description, it’s probably the left that is being driven. That’s the bit that lets you coast along without pedalling, and the rear chain will keep moving with the rear wheels. The axle there the back chain connects was moving, but where the front chain connects was not moving. I started to walk it home and it started to work again. The Doona Liki Trike S5 has some great features, such as the ability to fold down for travel (it’s designed to fit in overhead bins on airplanes).
We considered more than 50 of today’s most popular tricycles. And along with several dozen kids (between the ages of 1 and 7), we test-drove 21 models. In the end, we think families with toddlers should get the Radio Flyer 4-in-1 Stroll ’N Trike.
Kids took the trikes on neighborhood strolls, and they tested them on grass, pavement, broken concrete, and dirt. We paid attention to how the wheels performed and how long it took to get the trikes moving, as well as their stability. Kate timed her 3-year-old as he rode a block on a concrete sidewalk and took a corner at full speed. This demonstrated how easy it was to start and turn each trike, and it provided evidence of wheels lifting up or a trike seat being unstable.