Customer Reviews

Ravensburger The Solar System - Set of 8 puzzleballs

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

 

 

I bought these puzzleballs for my ds who just turned 7. He loves the solar system and these were right up his alley. They were relatively easy for him to put together. All the pieces are numbers on the back. So it was just a matter of putting them in their proper order. They are very sturdy plastic. We did break one piece and will be contacting the company to see if we can get a replacement.

So excited to get this for my almost 5 year old. He LOVES puzzles and planets. We knew that we'd have to "help" complete them but they looked so cool we didn't care. They came out better than imagined but we were slightly disappointed. First, the cardboard sun is terrible. Since the puzzle is not completely to scale, which didn't really bother us since we do realize that would have been difficult, they should have had a puzzleball of the sun too. I plan on getting a big styrofoam ball and painting it to look like the sun. I just can't use that cardboard one, especially since we plan on hanging the planets. It also would have been nice to include Pluto. While we know it's been downgraded to a dwarf planet for those of us growing with it as a planet it just doesn't seem right that it's not there. FYI, if you plan on hanging the puzzleballs like we plan to, you should know that while it does come with fishing line to attach to the puzzleballs, that's all it comes with. You'll have to make your own mobile unless you just hang them randomly from your ceiling (and that's a lot of holes!). The information pamphlet is great as it has info on all the planets and the sun. It also includes instructions on how to hang them, this time to scale. Overall, we like the product and would recommend it.

I bought this for myself. I'm an adult (more or less), and pretty good at puzzles. I started these after finishing a 540-piece globe puzzle ball, which I completed in about two days. I've also recently started doing a type of 3D puzzle that are made of solid-color clear plastic, so I have to do them entirely by shape, and can usually do one of those (around 40-60 pieces) in maybe an hour or two. I'm planning to hang the finished planets from the ceiling in my room, although I haven't done so yet, and since I didn't read the instructions for doing so in advance (they're just jigsaw puzzles -- who needs instructions for that?), I didn't know that I needed to attach the string before putting in the last piece, so I will now have to take out a piece from each planet to attach the strings, which is a bit difficult to do.

Like other Ravensburg puzzleballs, on the back of each piece is a number indicating where it goes, and a directional arrow indicating where the next piece will go, so the puzzle can be assembled entirely by following the numbers if one prefers this method, or finds the puzzle too difficult to assemble using only the picture. The numbers can also be used to check pieces one has assembled. In addition, the numbers can be used to sort out a "group" of pieces to turn a larger puzzle into what is effectively a series of smaller ones. I used this last method for my 540-piece puzzle to take groups of about 100 pieces at a time (pieces 1-100, 101-200, etc.) because I didn't have space to lay out all the pieces at once. In this set, I used the same method for Jupiter, but this time I was taking only 10 pieces at a time because the colors and patterns, as well as the shapes of the pieces, were so similar across the planet.

I thought some of the puzzles in this set were pretty good. I really enjoyed assembling Earth (although as one of the smaller planets, this was quite a short-lived task), and although Earth was the only one with varied enough colors and patterns for me to assemble it entirely by picture, the other three inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars), and well as Jupiter, were also fairly enjoyable. The last three planets (Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), however, were little more than a chore I had to do complete the set for display. While I generally enjoy a challenge, especially when it comes to puzzles, these three planets are nearly uniform in color, so assembling them based on the pictures alone is virtually impossible, and not only are the pieces very similar shapes, even when placed correctly, some pieces barely snap together at all, while others fit so loosely that they simply fall out until other adjacent pieces are in place, so it's almost impossible to determine whether a piece is positioned correctly based on shape alone. The only way I could complete these last three puzzles was to rely entirely on the numbers. To me, putting a few hundred objects in numerical order and snapping them together is not a very enjoyable activity. I already know how to count -- there's no challenge in it -- but it takes a considerable amount of time (almost as long as it takes me to assemble a comparably sized puzzleball by picture), and snapping the pieces together left my fingers sore (of course, this would still be the case had I been using the pictures rather than the numbers, but at least then I would have enjoyed the process a lot more). Although the images do appear to be pretty realistic, I think it would have made for much better puzzles if they had go with more colorful, higher-contrast images, even if this meant they had to go with more of a cartoonish appearance.

The completed puzzles do look pretty nice, and I think they'll look pretty good once I manage to hang them up. I'm not thrilled with the two-dimensional cardboard circle sun though, and while I did know this is what I would be getting and don't hold it against the set, I do wish that they had either included a puzzleball sun in the set, or even just had one available separately (preferably one that was about the right size to go with this set). Also, while I do realize that Pluto is no longer considered a full planet (it's been demoted to dwarf planet, and is not even the largest dwarf planet in the solar system), I would still have preferred if they had included it anyway. The did include Earth's Moon (not as a puzzle, but as a plastic sphere that looks as if it is an assembled puzzle), even though they did not include any other planets' moons, presumably because Earth's Moon is a particularly well known and "important" object, and since Pluto was considered a planet for so long, it too is quite well known, and similarly "important," and in my opinion should also be included (both in this set, and other solar system sets/models). However, when I hang up the planets, I might use the included Moon to represent Pluto instead since I don't have any other planets' moons anyway, and to me, Pluto is still the 9th planet even if it is a dwarf.

I got this for my daughter who is 10. It helps her remember the solar system very well. We had a lot of fun assemblying the puzzles. It is not our first time with ball puzzles. I had snoopy ball puzzles, earth puzzle etc. These ball puzzles have always been numbered on the inside of the pieces. Thus when assembling, we just needed to put the pieces in order of the numbers and the directions indictated. The numbers will not show up when completed as they are on the inside. Jupiter had nice colour and detail on it. A nylon line thread allows for haning of the planets. The sun was not a puzzle planet but a cardboard drawing. The pieces are very durable and the pieces need not be glued together.

I bought this for my five year old grandson. He had previously bought a small Ironman puzzleball and enjoyed putting it together. So when he saw this set at a local bookstore he constantly talked about getting the Solar System. However the price was $75! On Amazon I purchased this at a much lower price. My grandson was so excited to put all the planets together and needed very little help. The pieces are sturdy and fit together well. As he built each planet we read the accompanying booklet containing some facts about that planet. This has really sparked his interest in the solar system and "what's up there in the sky". Each planet comes with a little stand that can be placed on a "map" or string is provided to hang the planets from a ceiling. My grandson even liked the fact that all the information is given in different languages. He liked looking at different words in Spanish and German! My only criticism is that the size of the planets is not really all to scale, but I realize that would be hard to accomplish in puzzleballs.

7 year old son had a blast putting these together. We let him do one planet a day until finished. He learned the planets and there order. Although the "My very educated mother just served us nine pizza pies" (M,V,E,M,J,S,U,N,P) He had fun and all of the pieces were here unlike the globe ball my older son received which was missing a few pieces.

My 6 and 5 years old daughters love it..
The product was as described on the label; 8 planes, all pieces made of plastic except the rings, the rings and the sun are made of thick paper.
the set included the moon made of 8 pieces pre-assemble but it doesn't look like the moon.