Review: Bigjigs Marble Run

Well, it's fair to say I've had a fair bit of fun testing out the Bigjigs Marble Run that we were sent to review as part of our role on the Play Patrol. Part of this particular challenge was to create a video, so here you are!

It's very hard to convey all our thoughts in a video though, so just to give you a few pros and cons…

As soon as Little Miss C saw the box she was very excited – even in an age of electronic toys there's something about marbles that is still magical. She instantly wanted mummy and daddy to set it up as per the box. The problem being that a three year old isn't all that gentle-handed when trying to drop a marble into a small hole. Many times we ended up with her knocking it slightly so that it either fell over or the holes no longer lined up, meaning that the marble got stuck. Cue lots of frustrations!

The recommended age for the Marble Run is 3+ but to be honest I think this is actually a bit low. LMC is three years and two months and pretty dexterous for her age, but she really struggled with this. She was able to play with help, but at that age she wants to be independent and do it all for herself.

The only other downside was that compared to some of the plastic clip-together marble runs that I've seen this one is actually a bit dull. There is only one design of block through which the marbles run (a straight line) yet other marble runs I've seen do include curves and even loops! I think the fact that this one is made from wood is the limiting factor. You can't necessarily make all the same shapes that you could with moulded plastic. Plastic runs also have the advantage of clicking together, so you also avoid the problem of little hands nudging things out of line.

That needn't stop a child's imagination and as you can see from what I came up with in the video, it is definitely possible to be inventive, but that doesn't necessarily work so well for very young children – going back to my suggestion that the lower age range for the product is actually a bit young.

As with all Bigjigs products this was beautifully made, nice to look at, sturdy and had that old fashioned toy feel that I love, it just left us a bit wanting. Maybe it's because it just wasn't all that well suited to LMC's age, or because we'd just seen some very adventurous plastic marble runs recently? None of that stopped me from having fun with it though. And hopefully LMC will too when she's a bit older.