Good STEM toys tick the boxes marked challenging, interesting, satisfying and inspiring - but they also need to be fun. A decision to play with something is always going to have more worth if it is the child’s choice rather than that of the parents. Will the latest offering from Geomag get that 'new toy thrill' thumbs up from children?
The kit under review is the 'Geomag Mechanics Gravity – Loops and Turns'. What’s in the box? There are around 120 small pieces of plastic (made of 74 per cent recycled plastic), ten-ball bearings and an instruction booklet. Straightaway, there is the first realisation that this is not the Geomag of old, where ball bearings and magnetised rods could be assembled in infinite combinations – the imagination was the limit, as they say.
This kit is aimed at those aged eight years and over, rather than the simpler Geomag toys that target five-year-olds and above – although when first introduced back in 1998, it...