Over the years we have had plenty of different toys come in and out the house. Children always seem to have a new favourite thing, leaving their old favourites to fall by the wayside. One constant in our house over the years has always been marble runs, whilst they have changed for bigger and better ones or been added to to create bigger sets, they have always been something the kids enjoyed playing with – they are always fun and to be honest the adults love building complex marble runs just as much as the kids do. Marble Runs have changed over the years and are getting more complex, more interesting but are still enormous amount of fun, especially with the Q-Ba-Maze 2.0 sets.
Three are several different options for the Q-Baze-Maze marble runs, including different colour options, building packs and stunt packs. We have the Q-Ba-Maze 2.0 Starter Box: Cool Colors – the next generation Marble Maze of colourful 3 different types of cubes that interlock together to create fun and interesting marble runs in fun shapes (this set came with instructions on how to build a moose shape run and you can download instructions to build a butterfly, flower and T-Rex). This small set has 36 cubes, 14 marbles and is suitable for children (or marble run loving adults) aged 6+. The Q-Ba-Maze system is an interlocking cube maze marble run that is easy to build using designs in the box, online or by even creating your own. The starter set comes with 3 cool colours of cubes: blue, green and clear (the starter set is also available in warm colours).
In this box:
- 9 bottom-exit cubes
- 18 single-exit cubes
- 9 double-exit cubes
- 14 metal marbles
- Instruction booklet
The Q-Ba-Maze Starter Box is suitable for novices (6 years old upwards) and you can build marble run maze sculptures in the form of animals, geometric shapes or any other design you can come up with. They are fun to play with and help children learn how to follow instructions whilst helping to develop creative thinking skills, and imaginative play as well as problem solving skills.
Building the designs or your own marble run is simple, getting the run to flow properly can take some thinking about – where will the marbles go? Slotting the cubes together is easy with their stack or slide system (cubes stack on top of each other or you can slide each cube next to each other locking them into place). Cubes have different exits, some have a single exit, some have a double exit, and some have a bottom exit so you do have to think about how the marble will roll through the maze and place cubes according to get the best route for the ball to reach the bottom. You can also create your own designs and try to guess the path and exit points that the marbles will take.
Overall, we love the Q-Ba-Maze marble run. It is a bit more complex that some of our other marble run sets but is lots of fun, easy to assemble and is much more stable than marble runs we already own. It does involve a bit more thinking about where the cubes are placed and how the marbles will run through them. The Q-Ba-Maze encourages creativity and problem solving.
The cubes are plastic but seem durable and hardwearing, we haven’t cracked on broken any despite hours and hours of play. The marbles are metal and reasonably small so if you have children that like to put things in their mouth you do have to supervise them with it (but you might enjoy helping them build the maze sculptures and seeing how the marbles flow, we certainly did).
For anybody that likes marble runs, the Q-Ba-Maze is a good step up. Slightly more complex when coming up with your own designs. And it can be expanded by adding other sets to create bigger and more complex creations.
A fantastic fun and quality creative toy with hours of playability. The starter set is great but the Big Box set is by far much better value.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: from £19.99
Available to buy from Amazon here.
