The Learning Journey Techno Gears Marble Mania Genius

We love the idea of this but has flaws that needs to be fixed. When the marbles come out, there are several places that they go shooting out of the maze and my son ends up chasing them all over the floor. We are having to make shift on the areas where they go flying out so they don't and he can enjoy it. This is a long process of putting it together for this to happen and if it hadn't taken that long to put together, I would return it but....now we're stuck with it. I would say yes to get it, if they fix the flaws but otherwise spend your money on something else. But, again, the idea of this item is awesome and if we can fix it, it's going to be great but we must fix it before it is.

This was fun for my daughter age 8 and myself to build. You can rebuild it into your own design, but due to the deign of the components it will be very difficult. The gears used to drive the marbles up the columns are plastic and have round teeth, cheaply made. The marbles constantly get stuck at the entrance of the columns which takes them up, causing the motor to bog down and stop! The motor is weak and is powered only by 1 AA. Also the marbles do not stay on the tracks. This needs serious modifications before it will be truly playable.

My wife and I actually enjoyed assembling this toy. It took about 4 hours (on Christmas Eve) to assemble, which was not a surprise because the manual says it may take 4 to 6 hours. The instructions were pretty clear, though there were a few contradictions graphically.Before we assembled the whole thing we tested the motor with a new AA battery and it didn't work. After about five minutes of tinkering and turning the gear it started to function.Once we got it assembled we were a little worried because some of the towers and chutes felt a little flimsy. Poorly designed, needs better bracing. The first marble wouldn't even enter the motorized lift mechanism because the opening and track didn't properly align. Then the same with the second lift. When we physically aligned things and got the marble in the lift it got stuck at the intersection of the two vertical shaft pieces. After sticking a finger in to free the marble it finally got to the top. As it wound its way down it fell off the track and hit the floor. This happened about 75 percent of the time as we continued "playing" with it for about a half an hour.We decided not to give it to our son on Christmas morning, as it would have caused nothing but frustration for everyone. We will be returning it.

I have to admit I was hesitant to buy this item after reading the negative reviews. However, my family found that the negative issues others experienced were simply not the case with us. There are claims that this toy is a "one trick pony," or in other words that it is only good for one thing. However, the products own webpage has plans for several ways to reconstruct the parts in different configurations.The bottom line is that if your child is inventive and likes building, they will like this toy. Ours even found uses for the parts with other toys like Legos, Bionicles, etc.However, it can be annoyingly noisy at times. And pets like dogs can activate it its on/off mechanism pretty easily. Those are the only two warnings I would advise potential purchasers of this product.

If your a parent - you will spend a lot of time helping a young kid set this up. Once setup - your kid will loose interest faster than the time it takes a marble to go from the top to the bottom of the set! So with those two comments - probably not worth the cost for such short thrill for my kid.

The pieces take a lot of strength to put together, and some of the parts don't line up correctly. Was expecting more for the amount paid for this item.

My son loves marble runs and this one is by far the most complicated and fun! It took us three days to puut it together but we enjoyed it!

I bought this for my grandson for Christmas. My 39 yr old son could not get it to stay together. One expensive piece of junk!