Crazy Forts! 69 Piece Buildable Indoor/Outdoor Play Fort Playset, DIY, Build Your Own, STEAM toy , Purple

Does your child love building things? Do they enjoy creating home-made forts in your home? Do you like buying your children toys where they can use their brain and imagination? Look no further as this is the perfect toy for your child! Fort ideas come included with booklet. These forts will need to be built structurally sound and may need help from an adult to support a heavier sheet, otherwise a basic bedsheet works great. My only suggestion would be to buy 2 or more boxes so that you have enough materials to build substantial forts. Once you have built a few, you will want to buy more kits because it is addicting and fun!

I've spent the last few days building, tearing down, and then rebuilding forts in various parts of my house with one very happy little boy. So to put it succinctly Crazy Forts has been a huge success in my household!I'm not sure what's going on with the many negative reviews. Those reviews caused me some hesitation before placing my order but I'm glad that I pulled the trigger and bought two sets.►In The Box:» 44 bright green plastic sticks» 25 purple balls» Two page instruction manual for various fort designsEach stick is 16-inches long and the balls are roughly the size of a baseball.►Assembly:One of the complaints I saw repeatedly in the negative reviews is that the forts are hard to assemble. This is not true at all! Each purple ball has four arrows that point to the top hole. As long as you align the balls in the proper orientation (using the arrows as a guide) you'll be building intricate and neat looking forts in no time. The entire concept of the "geometrically precise" purple balls is to ensure that the entire fort aligns for quick and easy construction. So if you can align 90° and 45° angles you'll be fine.The other trick to constructing a durable fort with this kit is to use a twisting motion when inserting the sticks into the ball-holes. This ensures the sticks are pushed all the way into the ball and a better overall construction. The various complaints that these forts fall apart is just not the case. I've got my son's fort draped with blankets and with a busy 2.5 year old constantly coming in an out of the fort along with two dogs. The forts we've build have not fallen apart.►Recommendations:If you're considering buying this kit I really do recommend buying at least two sets. One set is enough to build some of the plans including the pictured igloo design. But if your intending on playing in the fort with your child you'll likely want something a little more spacious. Two sets seems to have enough pieces to build a nice big fort that can comfortably fit two children, two adults and two dogs.►Closing:This has been by far my son's favorite Christmas gift this year and I'm sure we'll get plenty more use out of this set. Recommended!

I love this toy, and might give it 5 stars if it were for me. You can use a lot of creativity with this toy, and we had the most fun with things we came up with on our own (a plane, a boat, a plain box fort). The downsides are that 1) the construction is a bit hard - the sticks don't always go smoothly into the ball holes and sometime have to be rammed in pretty hard or else they come apart. Also, in order to build some of the structures in the booklet, you have to do a fair amount of planning ahead. The holes you need for some of the diagonals may not be lined up properly even if the arrows on the balls are facing up and the perpendicular connectors are lined up properly. This means you either have to figure out all the connections you will need ahead of time, or unhitch the perpendicular connections you have made in order to rotate the balls until you have a hole where you need it. All this means that even for bright young kids (I have a 3 and 6 year old who school me regularly), some adult help will probably be needed at least for some structures. 2) The structures in the booklet are pretty short - really more appropriate for mini-sized rather than fun-sized kids. We had the most fun with what was basically a large box with a door in it that we constructed off-book, since there was enough room for both kids to sit comfortably inside. You may need more than one set to build most of the really cool stuff (I want a huge castle!). I don't know whether crazy forts offers an expansion set with maybe half again as many balls and sticks, but if they did, I would be all over it. It's kind of expensive to buy an entire new set.