132 Piece Fort Building Kit - Indoor Play Engineering Set with Connecting Sticks & Balls - Creative STEM Building Toys for Kids Play Spaces, Tents & Hideouts

This item I highly recommend if you guys have very active creative young kids very easy to put together very sturdy for the amount of money that this is I've got a lot out of these with my child she's enjoyed every moment that we play with this we build houses is she has seen it with thrown sheets over it she's played it for hours fell asleep in it the size of it you can create it but we basically took up almost half a nice little area 4 it very great for kids my other nieces and nephews has came over and played with it as well it's very functional works like a charm it very keeps them busy it's strong enough to hold sheets over it I would not suggest leaning on it like I said the size of it is massive if you build it that way or you can build it tall

This was a great idea for the kids however, parents will need to help. The kids became frustrated as they weren't always able to get the rods(straws) into the holes on the balls. The fit was snug and sometimes near impossible. Free ideas do not really work when they were creating as the structure would tilt and fall. If you follow the guide they give you to assemble different structures it does work. The kids aged 5-10 got discouraged with how tedious it became and didn't really play with more than a few times.

As an interactive building toy this works well. It takes both strength to press-fit the rods into the balls and a bit of figuring out the orientations of the balls as it is put together. Don't expect to throw a comforter over it, though; it's not that strong.The rods are of a stiff but flexible plastic tubing, like a [very] heavy-duty straw -- strong enough to hold a light sheet but can be bent to collapse if you have a will to. They are close to the same length, but not uniform (up to a third of an inch difference in my set). That makes things a little out of square.The balls are of hard plastic with three lines of eight holes around it (two series at 90-degree angles from each other and one series around the equator). On each ball, there is a single hole with a marking (blue had circles, green had a flat side with arrow-like indentations) which indicates the best orientation of the balls -- to make it easier to figure out. It seems like the orientation shouldn't matter, but it does help to figure out how to turn the balls to get the angled roof pieces at the corners. If you are getting bent rods in order to make a triangle at a roof section, the ball orientation is wrong. Expect to redo your first build.As we built it was apparent that placing multiple rods into one ball at the corners takes a bit of dexterity. Things tend to come apart at one end or the other. Having someone to help makes that part easier. It also takes some arm strength. That's not an issue at the floor level, but it makes a difference as you build since you can't use the floor for leverage and you have to press things together "in the air" so to speak.Once built, the kids played in the fort for hours. It's big enough for children to crawl in and out of. A small adult can wiggle in if there's room to sit.For improvement, the system could use some longer rods to go at a diagonal for a couple of the squares to stiffen the play structure up, particularly as the structures get taller. Uniform lengths of the rods would also make for a better building experience.

The crazy for bran is 55$ for a 69 piece set. This is 25$ for a 132 piece set. People complaining about cheap, go buy the name brand.

The idea of this product is good, but there is one big problem: it’s impossible for a kid to fit the rods in the holes of the connecting balls. I could barely do it myself actually, after building one tower using only half of the items my hands hurt I couldn’t even finish all the connections. I’m the end this product is useless as kids cannot build it.

One of the best gifts i have ever given. Mr and my sibling have had hours of fun with just one kit. I plan to get another for us to make even bigger forts!

The poles are very weak and fall over. 2 of them broke upon putting them together. I would not recommend.

So much fun! My 5 year old loves this- easy for him to build and create different forts.