Group test: children's bikes from Islabike, Frog, Hoy and Halfords

They're cleverly designed for tiny riders. But our four- to six-year-old testers were also interested in doing skids and playing with toy traffic cones

Bike companies spend months finessing the details of their kids' models - the scaled-down brake levers, mini cranks, a child-friendly low centre of gravity. And what are the children most impressed by? A set of toy plastic cones.

That, along with the apparently great significance of rear-wheel skids to the lives of six-year-olds, was among the lessons learned from a fun if exhausting morning trying out children's bikes with a collection of fun-sized testers.