Customer Reviews

LEGO Inventor: Motor Movers Monkey on a String (4094)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great toy, like all Legos. The motor seems nicely versatile, usable in as many ways as a kid can think up.

I'm writing this review because I note in the Amazon Editorial Review that the reviewer says "...and a fish (that really swims in water!) were just some of the things you can make."

Because of this, we used our fish model in water and after a couple tries the motor became waterlogged and quit working. After a day of drying out, it started working again, thankfully.

I just got an email from Lego Tech Support verifying that the motor should not be used in water.

I had my suspicions because the User Manual has icons showing "no water" whenever they depict the fish but the Editorial Review here said you could. Only now do I realize (upon a second reading) that Amazon's blurb is not an official toy company description but just an Amazon in-house review perhaps.

At any rate, don't put the motor in water.

Have fun! : )

My son is 8 years old and received this toy for Christmas last year when he was only 7. I ordered it from the Lego store in Florida as it was not in the stores, yet. He got the product to work as the walking on a tightrope thingy, but he did tell me that he had to modify one of the parts or replace it with a piece from another lego set. This was my first sign of pleasure from the toy because my son began to think out of the box and got it to work.

Later, I would enter the house to find my precious artwork removed from the walls and replaced by string on the picture hangers and a new invention that was like a robotic spider. After, he completed the sugestions in the book, he was on to personal inventions with this robotic. The batteries are still operating nearly a year later with no replacement. He has made some of everything and now he thinks he is a master inventor. I'd say that makes this toy worth all 39.99 plus the effort to get the right item brought back from Florida.

My son now notices parts from automobiles on the ground and can identify them as the brake shoe, etc. Lego is amazing and for any child that has the interest or tenacity to continue in this creative area, I'd say keep buying sets like these.

This is my son's (age 5+) favorite Christmas gift this year. He plays with it for hours each day. The instructions are easy to follow for a child with patience and good fine motor skills. When he's not creating something from the instruction book, he's making his own "thing-a-mi-jig" and loves hooking the battery pack up to it to see what it will do. As the other reviewer noted, only six step-by-step designs are included in the instruction book. The other designs are suggested by various photos and angles to give the adventurous (me) a real challenge. I would buy it for a gift and I plan to buy other "Inventor" series LEGO products for my son.

Our kids (2, 4 & 6) think this Lego toy is fun. After we put the monkey together we were disappointed to discover the motor did not work. I went to Lego's web site, submitted my problem and got a new motor in the mail a couple of days later. The kids then strung up the string and we watched the monkey climb back and forth from one end to the other. It's kind of amazing how realistic the monkey looks, with his head swaying from side to side as he moves. If you put the monkey together properly, and tie the string to two solid objects, then the monkey will definitely climb along the string without any problems.

Of course, it falls apart quite easily, especially when dropped, but that's part of the fun of Legos. You get to put them back together.

In general Legos are great toys. They inspire creativity, give kids an opportunity to observe and understand spatial relations, and teach kids how to follow instructions. If your child works on an age appropriate Lego toy he'll feel a big sense of accomplishment when finished. If you have a Lego set designed for older kids then it gives you an opportunity to work on something fun with your kid. You can't go wrong with Legos.

I got this set mainly for the geared motor, which is very

good. But I decided to build a couple models anyway. I

built the monkey, and although I didn't try it on the string

it seemed too heavy and off balance to work. So I built a

spider and the motor just made it flop back and forth. It

kept coming apart. What good is that? My only reccomendation

for this set is the motor, so you can use it on other technic sets.

Unlike the supposed success of the original review of this toy, we did not have such luck. Two parents attempted to put it together and after hours of trying to get it to work (crawl hand over hand across a string), it would not work. It is not designed well at all. The weight of the monkey pulls it to the side and the "hand" does not connect with the string. The hands seem to be at an incorrect angle for them to be in the right position to catch the string. It would not work going forward or backward. We double checked all of the steps and are sure we had it built right. Maybe we will have more luck with some of the other designs.

As for durability, if it missed the string and fell to the ground, it fell all to pieces.

The cover is also misleading - saying you can make 17 different things with it. I'm sure you can, but they only give you 6 plans, not 17. These lego things are so complicated that unless you have the detailed designs, I don't see how they expect you to be able to make those other 11 items, especially if you are only an 8 yr old.

Our son was so disappointed that it would not climb the string. That was a shame since it took a couple of hours to put it together and then nothing.