Customer Reviews

Fascinations First Time Clock Puzzle Clock

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Wow is this a great object. 'Toy' is the wrong description, however. I bought this for my six year old son and we assembled it together. The instructions are not great. They are also not terrible. We tried to use the instructions as little as possible in any case, and the picture of the completed clock on the box is enough to deduce it all if you are mechanically minded and have the time to think through the elements you can't see very well (though part-color is not perfectly reliable from the picture). Both of us learned a lot in making this. That surprised me a bit. I'm college science professor. I've opened many clocks over the years. I did not, however, realize that a clock could be this simple, or this tolerant of imprecision (these parts are cheaply molded plastic). Half way through making this "clock" I became convinced that it was not as the box suggested. I thought it was not a clock, but instead a clock-like toy that would show how the hands could move at different rates, all in a highly sped-up form. I thought it wouldn't keep proper time. And I concluded that was ok. It was still fun to build and was well worth the price, even if the box was misleading. But then the last few steps (the hardest ones to deduce) rendered the entire thing functional. I was wrong! It keeps time. You have to adjust the pendulum to get it to do so precisely, just as someone must in any real pendulum clock. My only complaint is that this clock removes all the black-box elements from a clock except one. The spring that stores the energy that drives the clock is not possible to see. So there is still a black box, and for no good reason. The spring gear apparatus could be transparent so you could see every moving element. But at the price, I can't complain. It's tremendously educational, enough that I'm thinking of buying a stack and putting my students through he exercise of discovering how comprehensible things can remain un-comprehended in a consumer culture where a clock is typically something you buy, use, then throw away.

This was a gift for my six year old who is very good at following instructions and working with his hands. We sat together and navigated the terrible assembly drawing. The basic drawing problem is that the step by step drawings are too small and the persepective chosen for their rendering has two pins that overlap. If you could figure out the drawing, assembly was pretty easy. The color coded parts helped a lot.

The operational problem with this item is the regulator (pendulum) mechanism. The fork and escape wheel are not made with sufficiently high precision for this item to work. When you first start the pendulum and it has high amplitude, these items engage and disengage properly. In 10-20 seconds, the fork and escape wheel actually start missing each other and the escape wheel goes several ticks per swing and then many as they miss each other and then the pendulum and the escape wheel stop moving together and the clock stops. There really isn't anything you can do about this problem. These parts have to fit perfectly and they don't.

Given the problems with the toy, I could not possibly recommend it.

My 6 year old son bought this. He worked for weeks to make enough money to get it, he loves clocks & the inner workings of them. To save us from him tearing apart clocks & watches, we agreed to order this for him. When I saw this out of the box, I really thought it looked quite junky so I was prepared for a failure from the start. My 9 year old daughter & I helped my son build it the first time but we could not get it to work. Then his sister took it apart & built it again, still it wasn't right & I was ready to send it back. Then, my son tried one more time & he got it working perfectly. The gear pieces have to be 'engaged' & there is some room for error but if you check & double check that everything turns before you seal it up, then you have won half the battle. Once you get it set & working, don't mess with it or it may cause you problems. Ours ran for the whole day yesterday, I was tiring of the constant tic tocking BUT my son has already learned so much about something that doesn't use batteries & shows the beautiful workings of mechanics. The process of building it & rebuilding it probably taught him more than if he would have built it right the first time.

I would not recommend this for a child who isn't careful with their toys, I could see the parts disappearing or being broken quite easily. Aside from that, it is an excellent learning tool!!

My wife Barbara bought this as a gift for our 7-year-old daughter, Helen, and I to build together. We had a great time assembling the clock, with Helen doing probably over 90% of the work.

Like some other reviewers have noted, the written instructions are not detailed at all. Still, the sequential pictures made things pretty clear. Helen is very intelligent, but sometimes rather impatient and impetuous, and the instruction format actually helped with this. This may sound somewhat counterintuitive, I know; but instead of Helen having to read the instructions for each step, or wait for me to read them to her, she was able to use the pictures to identify each part, its proper orientation, and its proper place in the assembly. Once or twice, she got ahead of herself, but overall, she was able to follow the pictures in a methodical, effective way. While assembling the gear trains, Helen was able to see how they all interact, and quickly noticed that turning one at one rate resulted in the next turning at a different rate, and so on.

Once assembly was complete, and we wound the spring, we were all quite pleased to see that the clock ran rather well. We adjusted (lengthened) the pendulum twice over the course of about 40 minutes, and the think seems to be keeping very good time.

I would agree with the reviewer who suggested the preassembled spring assembly be made of transparent plastic. While I understand this subassembly would probably be too complex for most kids to assemble, it would have been cool to see how it works, too.

All in all, a great, educational, fun project for a very reasonable price!

I purchased this for my grandson, he wanted a clock for his room. jFun to put together but the fun ends there. Doesn't keep time unless you keep winding it and the tick tock is so loud to be annoying. Not worth the price, should be listed under toy not clock.

This clock, like in many other reviews, is hard to put together. I did it with my older son (5) and it was hard to teach him how to build it. The instructions are hard to read and understand. I was hoping to complete this with my son but it was to difficult based on the instructions.

I had to rebuild the clock twice to get it to function correctly.

It is not a perfect clock, so do not set any confidence to the time or you might be late for your appointment. But it was cool to build with him and he enjoys having it in his room because he helped build it.

This clock was given to my 5 year old son as a birthday present. My son loves clocks, and loves gears. It was a very thoughtful gift! Unfortunately, we were unable to put it completely together. There was no way the bell was securing inside the clock. Also, the clock face did not line up with the body of the clock, so we could never get the face flush against the body. Due to the horrible manufacturing of the parts, I think anyone who orders this is most likely wasting their money.

The instructions were pretty clear on how to put it together, I of course had to help my 5 yr old with it. He loves clocks so this has been one of his favorites. Its quite loud once it gets going so we use it more for teaching than as an actual time piece. The pieces are plastic so the clock is very durable for curious hands.

Review is from my ten year old son, who actually put the clock together. He thought it was fun, if a little tricky, to put together. However, the pendulum is easily knocked off and is difficult to reassemble. If it gets bumped the spring mechanism will rapidly rotate and the clock will have to be wound again after the pendulum is replaced. The time cannot be set without removing the pendulum.

This clock created more excitement in our home than I had seen out of my daughter over any other thing. It was so easy to put together that my 4 year old daughter did all of the work with me just reading the instructions and handing her the right piece.

Unfortunately the plastic that it is made from is somewhat easily broken, and only a couple of days after we had assembled it my younger 22 month old daughter got her hands on it and that was the end of the clock.

It really is a great item that kids will love if they are old enough to understand about caring for it, and keeping it out of reach of their younger siblings.

Also it creates a fairly loud ticking noise.