Customer Reviews

Quercetti Marble Run Vortis 80 Pieces

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

My kids (ages 3 and 5) like this Marble Run, but they really can't build the structure very well by themselves. I have to build it for them and then they play with it for a while. Unfortunately, this model doesn't have very stable "bases" upon which to build. I've seen other brands which are much more stable and easy for kids to build upon. Perhaps this model is better for older kids.

We gave this to my 3 year old for Christmas and he loves it. We have to build the tower for him, but he's been playing with it ever since. It's great because it's not too fragile. Unlike some toys when gets excited and bumps into it, it may fall over, but it doesn't fall apart. So less rebuilding on our part. The only concern is that we also have a 1 year old and she wants to put the marbles in her mouth all the time so we have to watch out for her. But other than that it's great.

My five year old son got this for Christmas. He is frustrated because it is difficult for him to build by himself. Once I finish building it he loves it except that one of the three base legs doesn't lie flat on the table and this effects the stability of the game. A bit frustrating for both of us but my son does enjoy playing with it.

We have this brand as well as the Galt brand marble run. We hardly ever use this set and the two are incompatible - I'm about the throw this one away and get more of the Galt brand. This marble run set is flimsy (our 2 year old can do the Galt by himself but needs our help for this one). This one also requires special smaller marbles - which we can never find! And the marbles sometimes need "help" getting all the way through the course (due to the flimsy construction). Don't waste your money - get the Galt brand instead: Galt Marble Run. LEAD FREE.

This toy passes my test for toys: what my kids can do *with* it is must be a larger category than what it can do by itself. Great toy, endless possibilities.

Skip this Marble Run and get the one made by Discovery Toys - I wish I had! We have spent hours playing with Discovery Toy's version at Grandma's house - it is so much better. I'm so surprised because I thought Quercetti was such a good quality brand. This marble run is terrible. It is flimsy beyond belief. No matter how long I spend to get it upright and working (admonishing my excited children to STAY BACK! Don't touch it til I get it ready!!), it only takes a few seconds of play time for it to get knocked over again. The supports are too light.
Thumbs down. Big disappointment.

We spent a weekend at a friend's mountain cabin where the kids and adults had so much fun with the marble run there. It was sturdy, could be built 3-4 ft high and entertained everyone for hours over the rainy weekend. We had 2, 3, 4 years olds, teens and adults playing with it. The toddlers were most enthralled and were able to do a lot of building on their own with little assistance. The big kids loved building complex runs for the little ones to play with. (Yes, adults were supervising the marble handling) When I came home, I was determined to get a set for my daughter(almost 3yo) and nephew (8yo), but didn't know the brand. I came across the Quercetti Marble Run Vortis 80 Pieces on Amazon and bought it based on the fairly positive reviews. I might have thought this Quercetti set was ok (just ok) if I had nothing to compare it to, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment.

We *just* came home from exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve, and I'm so disappointed in this toy it caused me to write a review tonight. I was anxious to play with the run, so I got started on my nephew's as soon as he got it unwrapped. My mechanically-minded brother-in-law and I both worked on putting the run together and were determined but frustrated by the entire process. Our review: "Junk". Its parts are flimsy, it barely stands up on its own, the swirls require tiny little braces to support them and keep them at an angle that allows the "marbles" (small, plastic balls) to keep their momentum. I can see these easily being lost and the toy being useless. This set is such poor quality compared the run that kept us occupied at our friend's cabin. There is no way that my 8 year old nephew would have the patience to work on this and the flimsy result would only further frustrate a kid. I apologized to my SIL, asked her and my nephew if they would allow me to return it and brought it home. I just placed an order for two of Discovery Toys Marbleworks Starter sets (the mountain set was much larger than a starter, I'm sure). I'm fairly confident that they are the brand I was looking for in the first place. I guess I'll find out. But, I can't recommend this Quercetti product at all.

I bought this to entertain my oldest son when he was 4 yrs old and recovering at home from surgery. At that age, he would pick a layout from the sheet provided and I would build it for him. He could assist by handing me the colored pieces as I asked for them. He would then play with it for hours.

Fast forward a bit .. he is now 9 yrs old and still LOVES this toy. He can obviously now build the pre-designed layouts on his own from the picture sheet and even makes up new ones to see how they work. Five yrs later, nothing is broken, everything still wors and he is still easily entertained by this toy. I now also have a 3 yr old who likes to play with this, but gets a bit frustrated not being able to build a layout like his brother. But, once it's built, he'll launch marbles down the ramps endlessly.

This toy has been a WINNER in our household for 5 yrs ... and much to my delight, it uses no batteries, makes no noise and makes the kids work together and problem solve.

My girls are 9 and 11 and seem to enjoy it. It's certainly something that my 11-year-old can set up herself, although I can understand that with them marketing this to younger children that they may need help setting it. The problems can arise with young children attempting to interpret the plans for the completed marble runs. Still, I can see the educational value in this as my 11-year-old has been able to build the few designs that come with it and branch into inventing her own. In fact, that's what I recommend for the younger children. If anything, it's a useful bonding opportunity for the kids and a parent, or something they even have fun doing if a sitter is over. When they get to the point where they choose to invent their own, it stimulates their creativity and forces them to do a bit of planning or at least some brief decision-making as they reach points in the design when they have to assess how many pieces are left and how they want their design to turn out.

The designs that come with the set are really not designs, they're just photographs of completed marble runs. I emailed the company in Italy asking for additional designs but the contact attempts always failed. As such, I'd be interested in knowing if there are other ways to get to new designs as sometimes the kids feel more confident in building an existing marble run. Overall, the product is fairly durable plastic. The pieces fit together well although the trickiest pieces are the two yellow spirals that come with the set. They require some snap-in braces and luckily they provide extras in case you lose these tiny pieces (TIP: use a tin that popular mints come in to store both marbles and the small spare plastic braces in). Anyway, the spirals are the parts where the marble is most likely to get hung up, although there are some wheelhouses where the wheel snaps out so make sure that they are properly snapped in before adding them to your current marble run design. They're easy to snap back in. We've had luck with designs where the slower spirals are placed high up in the design thereby allowing the ramps and drops to then allow the marble to gather speed. As the set includes multiple start and finish pieces, you can set up different starts and "race" marbles. This is also mildly educational as you can have kids estimate which marble will finish first.

We've had this product for at least two years and I see it being used a bit more as they've gotten into the pre-teen age. The pieces held up as we've had no breakage but I must say that I've never gotten the pieces to fit back into the original box without sticking out somewhat, but I am guessing that is because it comes packed in a certain way, especially when it comes to the yellow spiral pieces that are probably packed flat whereas I store them with the plastic brackets/braces in them to make them ready-to-use right from the box for our next marble run design.

I ordered this Quercetti Vortex Marble Run for my 3.5 year old (he's long past the stage of sticking things in his mouth). My husband and I would have had a lot more fun playing with it ourselves, but our son didn't want to share. My son actually chose this for the bright colors, and now that we've had it for over a month, he's finally starting to want to put it together himself (instead of having us do all the setup for him).

It comes with 80 pieces (including a dozen smaller-than-standard marbles). One of the purple plastic slides has cracked at the end, but that was b/c my son was pushing too hard, trying to force it into the slot (not b/c it's hard to get in, but b/c he's 3.5 years old). His favorite parts are pushing the yellow buttons to release the marbles and watching the marbles spin around the yellow wheels and then the red vortex. Note to parents--be sure the yellow wheels have clicked into place, or else they won't turn smoothly.

Thankfully it came with several examples of how to set it up in different configurations. My husband could have figured it out w/o the pictures, but I would have been lost. It's a great way to introduce the effects of gravity, but an older child would definitely get more of an education out of it (that whole physics thing).