Customer Reviews

Quadrilla Marble Railway, Twist and Rail

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My sister recently got this for my son's fourth birthday, and I am really impressed with it. The quality is excellent. The blocks are solid wood, but for strength the rails are a multi-layer plywood. This hopefully will avoid some of the breakage our Brio tracks saw in the hands of the younger brother.

The other thing we were impressed by is how interesting they are to build and play with. In the beginning the kids wanted us to build them, and they would just roll the marbles. However, now they are already working out how to build their own runs!

In terms of which set is the best to start with, we'd have to pick this one. The Quadrilla Marble Railway, Basic Set is really too small to do very much with, and may get boring sooner than it deserves to. This set is a good size to start with. It includes many different kinds of pieces including rails, curves and the ever popular spiral and teeter-totter! I think the number of different creations you can make will also help this toy age as well, as the kids get older they will make more complex creations, but can still have fun.

The grown ups enjoy building (and designing) runs as much as the kids. The biggest frustration is that our "helpers" occasionally knock over the masterpiece that was just about to be so unbelievably awesome. Almost enough to make you want go build when the kids are not there to play!

Addendum (Sept 2009): Three years later we are STILL playing with this. Many toys have come and gone. Toy tools have been given away, and we've moved to little Legos. But the Quadrilla are still in active use. Not everyday, but fairly regularly. So we're pretty happy about how our investment has aged!

We got this set last Christmas. At the time it was almost completely ignored, and seemed too complicated to mess with. We had a big problem with them crashing down. Put it away for months. When I got it back out (I was thinking of selling it)and tried one more time; we started again. This time we watched the dvd that comes with it. We had made several mistakes. The two most obvious are not using the wood base plates on the bottom supports, and trying to make it go down using gravity. By building the sides level and letting the dropping motion move it forward you get a much more stable structure. By starting with small runs, and building on them, constantly testing the run as we built it...had a whole different experience. Our mistake at Christmas was trying to make the fabulous run, without building up to that point. We also tend to put those cool spirals at the bottom, not the top. They are the harder pieces to balance. This is not Discovery Toys Marbleworks..it takes planning and experimenting. But the result is more satisfying. Now my kids can make wonderful things, and want more add-on pieces. My kids who play with this are 10yrs,9 yrsand 6 years old.

We've tried other type of marble work toys and none of them come close to the quality of this set. It is worth every penny of investment! This set is high quality construction and will not break. It sets up very well and is very sturdy (unlike the plastic warble works) if on a stable surface will stay up ... no wobbling. You will keep this set forever and pass it down through the family for generations!

Go ahead and splurg on this set you will not be dissapointed!

You will get more than hours and hours of entertainment out of it for the young and old!

I bought this set for my three children 5,4,2 last Christmas at a fancy toy store. This product is top of the line and my kids can not get enough of this. The marble runs are easy to build, sturdy and so much for them to play with. There are a variety to build with the more advanced sets also we bought a few more "fun" and cool looking marbles as they raced them down. The kids can change out the different blocks to make the marbles react in different ways- which is a creative aspect. I LOVE THIS TOY!!!! My kids beg me to make them a new marble run all the time. You do need a hard surface to build on, since we didn't have a "train table" we put it on a hard piece of cardboard so it laid flat on the carpet, that way you don't have to hear the clink-clink of the marbles as they hit the bottom...

We received this item for Christmas as a gift for our 4 year old boy and our 6 year old daughter - neither child was able to set it up in any functional state. First point is : the exact positioning of the pieces that are required to make the marbles roll in the desired direction ( which was sufficiently confusing even for an adult ) - to be more specific each connecting block has several possible functions built into each one depending on its desired use. Second point is : the set as a whole from the first layer on up is incredibly unstable and it requires great care from even an adult to keep the entire structure from falling apart under its own weight until it is completed and tied together at the top - ( not a very favorable condition for children ) . Third point : once set up ( on a level surface the marbles would not roll on a simple circuit - at times would just stop or would roll some distance and would fall off the rails. In summary - my wife and I with some measure of patience spent a minimum of a half hour in setting it up - The children were not able to begin setting it up or even helping meaningfully in our efforts - the setup time and its lack of proper function once setup made it unuseable for our purposes. Others may and I am sure have had other experiences with the product but I felt it my responsibility to write this review as most of the reviews found here are glowing in their praise and do not reflect the nature of this product as we found it. I hope this is of help.

We have other marble runs, and I really balked at purchasing this pricey set (which is rarely, if ever on sale) in spite of how fascinated my children were by a Quadrilla set at a museum store. A doting relative purchased this for my kids last year, and the kids play with it regularly. It is the clear favorite of all our marble runs.

It has relatively simple construction (unlike say, the Skyrail marble run), so it is a great game for getting kids of all ages to work co-operatively together. Everyone is excited to see the marbles run along the track and they are very supportive of other kids (and adults!) who say, "what if we do this?"

Plus it is beautiful - bright, high quality wood, and it comes with lots of marbles. When you use lots of them at one time, they have quite a mesmerizing sound as they glide across the wood tracks.

It is such a wonderful toy that I've since broken out the wallet to get a few of the expansion sets :)

This is also my first review ever - but I felt compelled given our enthusiasm over this toy. We gave this set to our son this Christmas - he will be five next month - and he and the whole family LOVE it! The quality is excellent and well worth the higher cost (compared to the more inexpensive plastic runs). So far, my son has wanted me to build the runs, but I know that as his confidence grows with the toy he will take off into building on his own. And getting as many marbles as we can, as quickly as we can, going down the run is just flat out addictive fun! We felt that this was a great set to start with since (as another reviewer said) it comes with both curved and straight rails along with a spiral and a teeter-totter. I'm already looking forward to buying some of the accessory and add-on sets for my son's birthday and other holidays! I'm sure we are going to get years of enjoyment out of this toy. I highly recommend it!

My son (4-1/2) was given this as a Christmas gift and it's the hands-down winner for best toy in the household. We have two other "marble run" toys - one made of wood blocks the other of plastic - and this is by far the most creative, versatile and exciting to use. Each of the color-coded blocks does something a little different, which makes for endless variations in building runs. The "twist and rail" set is an excellent starter since it has such a large variety of pieces. There are several layouts included in the pamphlet with step-by-step illustrations that our son can follow by himself. It takes us parents a little playing to remember what each color piece can do; so it's a fun challenge for young and old alike. We can't wait to add onto this set!! This is an heirloom-quality toy that is will be played with for many, many hours of fun by all of us. It is very sturdy and well-designed. If you think in terms of money spent per hours of play, this is a sound investment.

This is the first time I've written a review, but I had to write this one. We gave this to our (almost)6 year old son and he LOVES it! Absolutely his favorite toy. It's the first thing he plays with when he walks in the door. (My 4 year old daughter enjoys it too!)

I finally found a toy to keep my children (and husband) occupied for hours. The best part, there are no lights, no sounds and no plastic, just good old fashion imagination and creativity. By keeping the safety of children in mind, Hape Toys created their marble maze, Quadrilla, lead free and toxic free.


Recently, they turned their attention to the safety of the earth by creating the first ever collection of games constructed from bamboo. In addition to being lead and toxic free, these games are made from a lightweight but durable and sustainable source.