My bright 4 1/2 year old grandson and I ordered this to play with while he was recuperating from tonsil surgery. It came within 12 hrs so that was great! He and I spent most of the next day obsessed with it. The set is enormously fun"”so much so that I almost want to play with it myself when he's not here. :) And he LOOOVES it"¦BUT"”as bright as he is, there's no way he can build more than a very simple, short run by himself. It takes an older person to understand that you have to build levels in order to be able to have a downhill run with momentum. Maybe if we continue to play with it, he'll eventually learn how to do that"”certainly, I would think, a 10-yr-old would get it. So don't expect to hand this to a small child and expect them to build a run by themselves. That's a recipe for frustration. That said, we took it to a family party over the weekend and kids of ALL ages"”toddler to senior citizens"”had a ball with it. This is a really fun toy.

This was a good value for a toy of this type - the blocks are well made but the instructions are in illustrations and I found them hard to interpret, but we figured it out. My daughter had fun with it

I loved the idea of this marble run. We have purchased several other Duplo compatible marble run sets over the years.

When we first bought one they were really only just a couple of options and the options didn't really come with a lot of fancy pieces or anything. Now you can get all kinds of cool gadgets for it. Anything from multiple different kinds of ramps to animal shaped pieces and now elevators even. It keeps getting better and better.

FYI the xylophone piece Pictured is from a company named "grabhappy".

My kids absolutely love it, with all of the variety we have now and all the different pieces they can literally spend hours building these runs and I love it. They get to use their imaginations and creativity and problem-solving skills and they get to do it in a way that is fun for them and rewarding when they finally get done with their creations and they can drop the marbles down.

There is in my opinion only just one notable drawback to this product which have me taking away one star..

This set uses the same plastic marbles that every other set uses I believe. They are not good. They come disassembled in halves, you must smash them together yourself.. which is ok, but they break back in half and the prongs break on them and they cannot be used anymore.

Also important to note is that is very difficult to find replacements for this. I have contacted the manufacturer of every single one of these sets I bought and here is how each responded:

Temi toys never responded.

Wx hobby, a company that makes a really neat but unstable electric elevator lift for these sets responded Simply by letting me know these marbles should be fine. I happen to disagree.

"couomoxa" (the maker of this set) said they could not replace the marbles because they do not have the ability to do that, but offered to send me a returned set with marbles included free of charge because of the hassle of the broken marbles. I thought that was very nice and because of the amazing customer service response I've added back the star.

Another company named klobroz does sell a replacement pack! But it also includes other pieces I don't need. It was $10 and has 6 marbles and some run pieces too. Not bad.. but also they had very low stock and I'm not sure if they will replenish the stock or not. Time will tell. I went ahead and bought two packs. It had been two years since I bought their marble run set, they did not offer to replace the marbles for free but did kindly offer to give me a $5 refund credit for the trouble to apply towards the purchase of their replacement pack. Good company response.

A company named "grabhappy" told me they cannot replace the marbles and did not know where I could find the exact marble, but they did offer to compensate me in the case of broken marbles. It is important to note that I just bought that set Within the last few months and I am not sure if I contacted them in a couple years after the marbles break whether or not they will go ahead and compensate me or if they would just say sorry it has been too long. Either way their response made me feel like they would stand by their product and I appreciated that so I am very grateful.

If you are going to buy this set then know that you may not be able to replace the marbles so keep good track of those as well. Klobroz does sell a replacement set but being it's low stock right now and no other replacement set exists, it may not be for sale forever.

Although the drawback of broken marbles had me take away a star, the great customer service had me add the star back and I cannot recommend this set from this company enough. Thanks My kids spent hours on this, building and using their creative imaginations and keeping themselves busy and they love doing it. It fits really well with Duplo"˜s so if you have a good stock of Duplos than this and other of these sets provide really cool creative opportunities to expand on your collection and have a lot of fun.

We got this as a gift for our niece and she loves it, but it did come with a broken slinky piece. I had asked about getting just a replacement piece so we wouldn't have to dismantle her gift and return it, but were told they couldn't only do a replacement and we would need to send this one back. Aside from the broken slinky (which is much needed to make the marble run work), it's a really fun gift.

We added this set to our duplo set and it's perfect! Also the pieces are nice and big so my 3 year old can easily make a marble run on her own!