Discount SmartLab Toys Weird and Wacky Contraption Lab

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I purchased this gift for my 3 children, ages 5, 7, & 10. They love to construct & I love the concept of this product. However, upon pulling it out of the box, the wall is made out of cardboard & the hook-and-loop covering is not secured to the cardboard in several areas. Also, when you set it up, some of the pieces fall away from the wall when the marble hits them, even if the marble falls with a small amount of force, because the velcro does not adhere strongly enough to the hook-and-loop wall. I am disappointed in the quality of this product, especially for the high price tag. I am especially disappointed that I will have to box it back up & return it. My kids LOVE it but I can't justify paying for poor workmanship.

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My seven-year-old son has been obsessed with contraptions ever since he saw them on "Blue's Clues" years ago, so when we set up the Wacky Contraption Lab on Christmas morning, he was very interested in how everything worked and was engaged in the set up. This from a child now mostly interested in video games. I was so pleased!

We followed the directions, got everything together, and set the ball rolling. Though the ball dropped squarely on the plate that is supposed to, as the grand finale, launch the pig, nothing happened. We modified. No launch. We called Dad over. Dad has a degree in bio-medical engineering. Dad couldn't make the thing work. Eventually three PhDs and an MD and two former grade-school teachers flailed and failed, and our previously engaged little boy wandered off to play a video game.

A less subjective response to this toy: the felt boards lose their shape after several rounds of pressing the velcro-mounted chutes to them, thus hindering the success of the contraption, and the strike plate for the pig launch is so narrowly calibrated that it almost never works when the ball falls on it. Also, the chutes tend to pull away from the backboard after one or two runs.

I usually pay close attention to the product reviews on Amazon, but I didn't this time. Christmas was a week away and I needed a gift. This one had such promise! But now the box and shipping information are gone and I am stuck with over-priced, poorly engineered wacky junk.

This purchase was worse than merely disappointing, it was a failure.

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Don't buy this toy !!!!! Purchased for my grandson for Christmas and we were very disappointed. It is poorly made out of flimsy material and the backing on the main frame is peeling off already. Parts for the contraption Lab do not adhere well at all even though the velcro is fairly strong....a huge rip off for the money

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I just wanted to add a review in favor of this very cool toy! I am glad that I went with it and bought it despite some poor reviews. Out of the box, this is very easy to assemble and get started a big deal with little kids ;) I have had ours for about 2 weeks now, it gets played with daily by a 5 y/0 and 3 y/0 boy, and I have not had any issue with the backing or velcro pieces falling apart. Our "flying pig" works everytime much to their amusement, you can even change the angle that the pig flies, fyi, so that you can aim it at yet another target in the room. Yes, it may take a little time fidgeting with just the right angles of ramps etc to get the thing to work, but to me that is what learning is about, trial and error, figuring things out, and patience during the process. I will be sure to update if the thing starts to fall apart. but for now it is "the coolest toy in our house".... maybe I will be able to hold off on buying that Wii for another 6 months ;)

Side note : for some reason when I preview my review I have different star ratings than what I actually entered... odd. I gave this 5 stars across the board in case the ratings remain incorrect after it is published.

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This is my first Amazon review and I'm sorry that it has to be a negative one, but I want to spare others the disappointment. We're having to return this and while we're okay with that -and so is our son -I imagine that some kid who is really psyched about this could end up very let down if he/she experiences what we did. First, I do think the concept of this toy is GREAT. We first saw this at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and my son wanted to buy it but instead Santa got it for us from Amazon. :-) Originally we were looking at a marble coaster (or "marble run") but ended up getting this not only because of our son's enthusiam but for how interesting this looked. (FYI, this is not a marble run; marbles won't work on this and we were aware of that; we used the steel balls that come with this toy). Anyway, here are the pros and cons...

POSITIVES: (1) The item is exactly as pictured, with lots of parts that you can configure differently for fun designs, so it definitely has lots of educational potential, since you have to try different things to see what works best, figuring out the right distance, angle, combination, etc. (2) The plastic pieces (when you get the right configuration) can work well together. (3) The "flying pig" that comes out of the rocket, when it works (not always) is quite a bit of fun. (4) The instruction insert was a nice surprise -full color, with lots of pictures, and specific instructions (in plain English) for five designs. It's attractive, well-written, and even has some humor thrown in.

Sounds great, right? So why'd I return it? Because of the whole "in theory vs. in practice" thing -as nice as it looked, it just did not work as pictured...

NEGATIVES: (1) First, I was surprised that this was kind of flimsy. When the whole thing is assembled, it stands upright okay but feels too light for what it is. The black boards that the pieces attach to also seemed a little "warped" (slightly curved, not totally flat) and maybe this also affected performance, which brings us to... (2) The fact that the pieces would not stay on! The chutes/tracks go on the board with some black clips that have a very fine "sticky" (Velcro-like) backing, but soon after we'd put them up, they'd start to separate from the board. We could run a ball maybe a couple of times before we had to stick the plastic pieces again, and as soon as we got done with one, another would start to come off. (3) Ironically, these clips that couldn't support the weight of the tracks were TOO strong for the fabric of the boards, and after lifting them off and putting them back a few times (it's hard to get the "right" configuration, so you have to try several times), the thin black fabric would start to lift off, no matter how gentle we were. We didn't get to play with this for more than a few minutes before some part of the black fabric (esp. along the edge of the boards) started to separate. (4) As nice as the brochure inside is, it does NOT have the "how to" for recreating the design on the box, which is more complex and seems to be a hybrid of various ideas. Of course you can set this up as you wish, but my son kept wanting to replicate what was on the box and we realized it was next to impossible.

Bottom line: with two adults (one an engineer who has the right instincts for this, and the other a writer who reads instructions!) helping out our son, we found it was more "work" than fun... not to mention that in less than an hour of play the thing was already starting to fall apart. So... great concept, but not a great product. I'm aware that I may have just gotten a "bad" one, maybe one that had been in storage too long or had some manufacturing defect, who knows. Maybe it was worth getting a replacement and giving it a second try, but I think we'll go "back to basics" and go for an old-fashioned wooden marble run. Sorry for the long review but "the devil's in the details," so there you have it!