Great Gizmos
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The Toy Fair is rather different to Dream Toys in that the items on show are aimed at next Winters sales and Dream Toys are immediate so while I requested a number of items to review these are the only two to have arrived so far.
Kidz Labs - Super Magnets
Stated as suitable for 5 years and upwards this is one of a range of fun educational products. Magnetism in all it's forms has been popular with children of all ages and certainly all pre teens seem to love it.
There are a total of 69 items in the box allowing a whole range of experiments to be created. No real space to describe many in detail but the bar magnets are powerful and certainly the warning not to put fingers in between them in well warranted for young fingers.
The ten sides of instructions and suggestions show a total of eight different machines that can be made with the items in the kit. While some are quite simple others like the Compass Rover is an intriguing toy that gave everyone who tested it hours of fun. I suspect that five year olds may need some help in constructing some of the designs but no help whatsoever in playing with them.
Some of the magnetic sculptures create works that defy description and all based on magnetism. Everyone even older children brought up with computers loved these simple magnets.
Try looking at http://www.4m-ind.com/sc_webcat/ecat/product_view.php?cat=3?=1&id=16&curr=1&page=1 no idea of the likely selling price but I doubt it will be that expensive.
Zoob 250
This is stated for 6 years and upwards and has the ability to be more popular than Lego or that other toy of many years ago that needed nuts and bolts to put it together.
Zoob comes in a range of kits and some specific packs designed to produce certain products. The size I am looking at is the second largest but of course several kits combined make just about anything possible and a child with imagination could create their own creations.
What ever size pack or tub you buy has five different coloured pieces yellow - blue - grey - green and red. The secret is that they link together in range of ways a total of twenty different combinations are possible.
Each pack comes with a guide with detailed examples of the things it could make. The 250 tub has no less than six guides one for each of the six packs 15, 35, 55, 75, 125 and of course 250. So even if you have a larger box you still have the ability to make the items in the basic sets.
Because the illustrations are clear you can select the exact number of pieces of each colour and you are shown exactly how to fit them together to form the item you are
constructing, mythical beasts feature heavily in the sets but once a child gets absorbed his or her imagination is the limit. Prices for the small sets are likely to be less than £5 while my guess at the likely price for the 250 piece set I looked at would be around £40 to £50. The link below gives an illustration.
http://www.greatgizmos.co.uk/Toy-Wholesaler.htm type Zoob in the search then scroll down to Zoob 250.
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