Magnetix - 80pc X-treme set product reviews

These magnetic activities are so much fun...for children and adults alike. I bought a set to use in an early childhood centre and the children thought outside the box and used it every which way but the way that it is intended for. The children will have a competition between each other using a magnetic board lying flat on the table, and the children would stack the rods end to end going upwards to build a tower, the winner was the child how made it the tallest without knocking it over. The metal ball bearings didn't even play a part in this game.

The coloured rods are perfect for the children to learn their colours as well, they group together the same colours stack them in a tower or make lines of the same colour in the magnetic board. At the centre we have metal legs on the chairs and the children enjoy sticking the rods to the metal legs of the chair and rolling down the metal ball sort of making their own obstacle/marble run. Their imaginations are really stretched while playing with this activity.

The durability of the rods is amazing as they seem to stand the test of being stacked up and allowed to crash down onto the table top or the tiled floor and I haven't seen one break yet. The only thing I have seen is the metal balls and some of the metal attached to the rods do tend to go rusty, or discolour somewhat, but that doesn't stop the fun of using them though...and the smaller pieces aren't actually the best for young children so adult supervision is needed but I have had this set for a few years and haven't had any incidents so far.

The children will make shapes with the rods and balls but this usually only happened when a teacher was sitting at the activity and the children copied what the teacher was doing...other than that the children played their own games. But this shows the versatility of this activity and having a toy that has any uses is perfect because there can be hundreds of ways to combat boredom....and when an activity is as much fun as this one the possibilities are endless!

Having this little kit to play with was great. I showed it to a friend who has a 7 year old son who is right into things like lego and duplo. he fell on this like a wolf onto a plate of fillet steak and within minutes had already started to build some wierd and wonderful things. he then took both his mum and I by surprise and grabbed a double handful of the pieces and started building some funky stuff on the fridge door. last thing I expected let me tell you. of course his mum was impressed at his inventiveness but she wasnt too pleased at the use he put her brand new brushed steel fridge door. no damage was done much to her relief. a very cool toy with such a huge range of possible uses for an inventive child or adult. personally I enjoyed just clipping them together and having fun but also propping a plank of particleboard up and using the magnets to drive the steel balls around in a race with the little chap. we drew a racetrack on the board and had to keep the balls inside the lanes or start again. it was a lot of fun and by the end of it there were 5 of us all racing after his mum and a couple of visitors joined in the fun. if you only buy one christmas present this year make it magnetix.

How on earth can I write a second rave review for another fantastic product in the same series? I had a hard enough job finding enough wonderful words in my vocabulary for the glow-in-the-dark version, now I need to get my thesaurus out for the X-treme version.
An extra-ordinary concept, prodigious, marvellous, astounding, phenomenal; need I go on?
Fun? Amusing, entertaining and pleasurable; provides mirth and merriment, jollity, gaiety and cheer.
In short, and less verbose, I am very taken with this product, as my daughter is too. So far, Magnetix X-treme has provided many pleasurable hours to an easily bored daughter and will continue to do so in the future. The only problem I can see is that I will have to spend lots more money on building up a collection for my daughter. Each Magnetix set blends seamlessly with all other Magnetix sets and it has provided some stimulation to my daughter combining the Magnetix X-treme with the Glow-in-the-dark version.
There must be something about the male of the species who enjoy making mathematical shapes from these Magnetix sets. Icosahedrons spring to mind, pentagons, dodecahedrons and so on. It must be a male brain thing.
I really cannot rate this product highly enough, and recommend that it is an integral 'educational tool' (ok, toy, if you prefer) in every house.