Oh no not one of those things.
I have the Barbie version and if I had to do it over again I'm not sure I would have gotten it. But it is so short we can use it in the house, so I guess it's not all bad.
Gracie can kind of cast my spinning rod, but can cast the Barbie rod all by herself.
But if we had put the same amount of work into the spinning rod I think she would be just as good and could cast farther.
The problem is that the Kiddie rods don't cast very well without a lot of weight.
If you get one put some fresh light line on it, I re-spooled ours with 4lb and it casts much better. You can get a crawler with a light float out 15 feet now, with a tail wind :-(
I've looked and looked and can't find spinning rods shorter than 4'6" (I think I found 1 four footer).
So while the Kiddie rods aren't all bad don't feel that you need to get one. It might take a little longer to get him casting (but this isn't necessary to fish yet any way), but in the long run he'll be better server by learning to fish a real spinning rod.
And gracie has reeled in many fish on my rod and fishes it some times, just needs help with casting since we haven't worked with the spinning rod at all this year.
Just my humble opinion.
Happy fishing.
Matt
