Crazy Forts! 69 Piece Buildable Indoor/Outdoor Play Fort Playset, DIY, Build Your Own, STEAM toy , Purple

I've spent the last few days building, tearing down, and then rebuilding forts in various parts of my house with one very happy little boy. So to put it succinctly Crazy Forts has been a huge success in my household!I'm not sure what's going on with the many negative reviews. Those reviews caused me some hesitation before placing my order but I'm glad that I pulled the trigger and bought two sets.►In The Box:» 44 bright green plastic sticks» 25 purple balls» Two page instruction manual for various fort designsEach stick is 16-inches long and the balls are roughly the size of a baseball.►Assembly:One of the complaints I saw repeatedly in the negative reviews is that the forts are hard to assemble. This is not true at all! Each purple ball has four arrows that point to the top hole. As long as you align the balls in the proper orientation (using the arrows as a guide) you'll be building intricate and neat looking forts in no time. The entire concept of the "geometrically precise" purple balls is to ensure that the entire fort aligns for quick and easy construction. So if you can align 90° and 45° angles you'll be fine.The other trick to constructing a durable fort with this kit is to use a twisting motion when inserting the sticks into the ball-holes. This ensures the sticks are pushed all the way into the ball and a better overall construction. The various complaints that these forts fall apart is just not the case. I've got my son's fort draped with blankets and with a busy 2.5 year old constantly coming in an out of the fort along with two dogs. The forts we've build have not fallen apart.►Recommendations:If you're considering buying this kit I really do recommend buying at least two sets. One set is enough to build some of the plans including the pictured igloo design. But if your intending on playing in the fort with your child you'll likely want something a little more spacious. Two sets seems to have enough pieces to build a nice big fort that can comfortably fit two children, two adults and two dogs.►Closing:This has been by far my son's favorite Christmas gift this year and I'm sure we'll get plenty more use out of this set. Recommended!

I bought two sets, one because I was buying this set for a 10 year old so I wanted the structure to be able to be big enough.tonfit a big kid in, but also because I had read so many reviews stating that you can do so much more with two sets. The poles DO bend, but especially when you're not a pro at building with these that's a good thing. If they were so rigid that they didn't bend, my first time building with them by myself, six sticks would have snapped. They are plastic, and not tough like hard PVC pipe plastic, but definitely not as weak as say a laundry basket. It's a good in between... If that makes sense. If you're wanting to build squares of varying sizes, by all means, take the $40 down to a hardware store and buy PVC pipes and joints. You'll have yourself a pretty decent fort frame. However, if you're wanting to upmyour fort building game having fun WITH your child, and spark the imagination better than ever before, then buy this kit because the majority of the worth in this kit is not the poles, but the endless possibilities you have with the joints. Yes, if your kid is under the age of 4ish they will need help building the forts, but it's never a bad thing to have to spend time with your children. We built a very basic square with as many pieces as possible (the wobbliest of structures since everyone knows triangles are the strongest) and covered it with whatever we had. The WEAKEST structure you can build with two full kits, with no support beam in the middle to keep the middle of the too sloping inward held two queen sheets, four blankets, and a winter quilt over night just fine. Though because of the thickness of the blankets the inside of the fort was a lot warmer than outside. As stated before in other reviews, forts are intended to be sat IN, not sat ON, but nobody told my 23lb dog the rules of forts and he plopped himself on one of the walls of the fort.... It remained standing.

The kids love it, and it’s fun to assemble if a little tedious (can take some doing to properly line up the letters on the balls and needs adult help IMO); I wish it came with a few extra sticks and balls. Each “pattern” uses exactly the number included so if even one piece gets misplaced (as can easily happen with three kiddos and pretend play), you can’t complete assembly. We are missing ONE baton and haven’t been able to use the entire kit because of it.

Great fun for kids who like to build forts

My granddaughter is obsessed!

So i wanted to like this product. Even waited like a month to leave a review. But sitting in the living room right now i realized my kids havent played with this product in like 2 weeks. Shipping was good, although it did arrive later than projected, not a big deal. The maker of this product was really helpful as well and very nice which is why i wanted to like the product and was hoping it would work. After helping my 9 year old and 6 year old build a couple forts i realized pretty quickly these forts are way too hard for a 6 year old to build by himself and when completed way to small to keep my 9 year old interested in them. There are only enough pieces for a small sectional fort. So probably smaller than any fort your kids make at home with their bed sheets. In order to make the fort 2 or 3 levels high, the sticks have to go into the correct corresponding letter hole of the ball. Well thats going to be very difficult for most young kids to put together, which again because of the size of the fort, is probably the age group these forts are intended for.So to sum it up, i highly suggest either buying multiple boxes of this product if you want to get it for a kid 7+ years of age. Or buy it for a kid 6 and younger but just expect to be in charge of putting it together for them whenever they ask.Also, the sheets dont stick very well over the designs so unless you have 1 sheet that can go over the entire fort (like a king size bed sheet) anything smaller like queen, twin or full wont cover it completely and using multiple sheets doesnt work that well on these designs.