Gearhead Mom

Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Magnificent Magformers

Posted by Gwen R. @ 4:42 AM

Ed. Note: This just in from my sister, Gwen. Her daughter is seven, so we’ll get a good round of older kiddo toys reviewed post-Christmas. Thanks, sistah!

I’m usually right about the toys T is going to like.  I was wrong about Magformers. She likes things with personality (little creatures, storybook figures, etc.), things that torture parents (like Polly Pockets), or things that are crafty. She is not into building things like Magformers by Rainbow Products.  We don’t do Legos or blocks (and never have, much to my husband’s dismay).  So when I saw the Magformers unwrapped in the holiday crush I was lock-solid certain it would be a miss.

Boy was I wrong. 

T opened the package and pulled the magnetic squares and triangles out of the wrapping.  “Do you have to build things?” she asked me skeptically.  I gave her the ‘just-be-polite-in-front-of-your-grandmother’ look and hoped to ride it out quickly.  But a funny thing happened.  She pulled the first square off of the magnetic stack and turned it around in her fingers.  They have this cool translucence to them and are surprisingly solid in your hand.  She experimented with snapping it back together with the stack and then pulled a few off and tested how they held together.  They held like magic.  “Cool,” was all I got, but in seven year old parlance, that is a ringing endorsement. 

And I have to say, they are cool.  As she sat at the living room playing (ignoring a whole stack of other presents waiting to be opened), all the adults crowded round.  “Hey T, look how you can pull them up from the middle and make a tower!” called out my husband.  “Yeah, dad, I know that already – you can make all sorts of things.” Duh was implied.

The thing that sets Magformers apart is, first, the striking power of the magnets.  When you build things they stay together.  But even cooler is the way the geometry of the forms go together.  When you connect them together flat on the table, you can then literally pull your flat design into a 3-D structure.  Really.  It is cool.  You start by making one of those unfolded shapes they use on IQ tests (where you then have to say what kind 3-D object could be constructed, something I was always terrible at, incidentally).  With one pull, you literally build a structure.  Soon we adults were asking for one more square, just two triangles, to complete more and more elaborate buildings.  For the less unimaginative (or sleep deprived), they come with an instruction booklet that gives you examples to build. Very fun. 

The set we have is all red and blue but I’ve seen them now in a number of different colors and kit sizes.  Our kit has 30 tiles and I’d say that is the minimum you’d need for relatively complex structures.  One entry I read somewhere was from a family with a collection of 200 (I have to assume many packages put together).  That seems a tad excessive, but they probably have kids that like Legos.

Since the holidays, I’ve left them on the coffee table and every kid - and adult - that has come through has played with them.  I have some in my purse for restaurant play and recently I noticed some had migrated into the car.  They are educational, good for a broad range of ages (I’d say 3-99), and reasonably priced for the quality of the product.  Finally, I know what I’m going to be gifting at birthday parties this year!

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