Marbleocity Triple Play 4-Bar Link — Build A Wood Marble Machine — Tinkineer STEM Kit — for Ages 9+

Fun. Easy to build. Enjoyable!

The way the marble moves up is unique, what I expected from a miniature easy assembly.

I had no idea what to expect with this STEM toy, and was definitely surprised when I opened it to find all the pieces were etched into wood. After a short but terrifying exercise of popping everything out, I was pleased to discover that nothing broke, and the prices seemed to be of a very high level of precision.When my kids and I started assembling this, we were a little annoyed to discover that it required glue, which wasn’t contained in the box. It’s not a big deal, but it was annoying. A little work, and we successfully assembled the device... only to find that it didn’t really work.First, it didn’t come with a motor. That’s sold separately. That’s really annoying, but okay, we powered it by hand.Second, marbles started falling out of the orange elevator thing. (Speaking of the marbles, they’re smaller than normal marbles and all but two were lost within minutes.)Third, when the marble succeeds in getting to the top... it doesn’t fall currently. This is a sort of big deal because it’s on that third level that it would fall onto a diverter which could connect it to another kit from the same set.All in all... it’s a good start. I can’t bring myself to rate this just two stars. But neither can I recommend it as is. If marbleocity were to make a few small changes (include glue, include a motor, but a wall over the elevator so marbles don’t fall out, and either change the angle of that second floor or put some sort of bumper at the edge) this would be a very respectable STEM toy...but it’s not a terribly good one right now.

Got to do together with a 4.5 yr old who’s unusually good at puzzles. He had never done any 3D-like puzzles or STEM kits and honestly, I just needed something to distract him from the black hole that is tv and iPad. He’s clearly too young for this toy (says 9+ on box), but I figured I’d mostly put it together myself then he could do the marbles. Well, I was mistaken- it’s a really wonderful activity to do together w/ a kid but 4 is probably the youngest possible and even at that you need to be willing to mostly do it yourself. We talked about the idea of it and he was excited to be the helper. he helped with finding the shapes like the pictures and I just led him each step of the way. It took incredible patience on my part not to just do it myself faster. But as we built it together we had a really good time. Once done, it took some tweaking (after my pictures I fixed it a little when he wasn’t looking and added some extra glue). The hard part for him though was waiting for glue to dry. It also has to be kept from any other kids in family smaller than 4 (especially the balls as they are choking hazards). We probably spent almost 2 hours in total so far and he was already asking to pull it out when brother naps tomorrow to play w it. He’s so proud and thanked me for getting it for him.It’s on the small size. The metal balls are smaller than standard marbles. Some of the pieces are very tiny and take a few tries to get in correct spot. Nowhere near as bad as a lego Death Star to put together, but it is in a bunch of pieces (and that’s the point).The mini comic was lame and he lost interest on third page. It was too technical for a very small kid.I think the price was ok for how much use we got out of it. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into designing this. I was skeptical upon opening it- thinking- is this it? And thinking the wood would surely break, but all the pieces were fine and worked together. There’s some good qaqc happening here and I’ve never said that about anything!Overall impressed and I’d definitely buy or suggest to an older kid. Great activity for summer, cabin w no tv, vacation, winter lazy day, etc.

Very complicated for a young child. We tried putting this together with a 6 and 7 year old and they got very frustrated after a few minutes and the adults ended up putting it together. They literally played with it for about 15 minutes and lost interest. You need to have the other connecting sets to make it more interesting. One single set didn’t really keep the kids attention. For the price I don’t think we will end up purchasing the other 3 sets that go along with this. The pieces are very small too. I though this was going to be much bigger. It’s actually really tiny. This just wasn’t for us. Cute idea though.

A fun project for the whole family! This is a great educational and fun set for all ages. Easy to assemble by punching the pieces out of the wood sheet and gluing in place. This is a pretty basic set compared to some of the others from Marbelocity, so even younger ones can have fun helping and participating with adult supervision. If your 9+-year-old kids find this a fun project, look at some of the bigger, more challenging sets!

I bought this item as a gift. I heard no complaints -

I would give this a five star review if it worked well and didn’t fall apart while trying to use it. It was too advanced for my 5 year old so I ended up doing most of the assembly while he watched. It was pretty fun to put together, but disappointing how small the overall toy actually was. The “wax” they give you (a birthday candle) was pretty useless to slick the wooden gears. Once it was assembled it legit didn’t work. The marbles didn’t fit into the opening, the gears broke like matchsticks, and the balls go everywhere. This is a great concept but was disappointingly anticlimactic.

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