Q-Ba-Maze Marble Run

Product Description

What’s better than building challenging, complex, and intriguing contraptions? Nothing! Designed to effectively stimulate child and adult minds alike, our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box employs snugly fitting, non-warped pieces that don't have breaks or skips, meaning the ball will never move unpredictably or careen off. Guaranteed to entertain rather than frustrate! With 72 cubes consisting of 3 different designs to be used as scaffolding, ramps, paths, and much more, this playset is perfect for any anyone looking to improve hand-eye coordination, problem solving with basic physics, and planning skills. Plus, our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box set is ready to play right out of the box. Simply unpack and build! Great for keeping you or your child’s mind sharp, limber, and most importantly, interested.

Features

• WELL DESIGNED CONTRAPTIONS: Unlike other Rube-Goldberg or marble run type toys, our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box employs snugly fitting, non-warped pieces that don't have breaks or skips, meaning the ball will never move unpredictably or careen off. Guaranteed to entertain rather than frustrate!
• TOYS THAT TEACH: Our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box is a fantastic playset for teaching children to embrace their creativity and design engineering marvels. With 72 cubes consisting of 3 different designs to be used as scaffolding, ramps, paths, and much more, this playset is perfect for any young builder looking to improve hand-eye coordination, problem solving with basic physics, and planning skills. In no time at all you’ll have a skilled architect on your hands!
• NO HASSLE: With no glue or connectors needed, our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box set is ready to play right out of the box. Forget the hassle of having to round up a laundry list of non-included tools and components. Simply unpack and build!
• FOR ADULTS: The Q-Ba-Maze Big Box isn’t designed purely for children. Educational and entertaining for older individuals as well, our Q-Ba-Maze Big Box challenges even the most honed mind to make complex engineering marvels. Great for keeping your mind sharp, limber, and most importantly, interested!
• INCLUDES: Package includes (72) cubes, including (36) single exit cubes, (18) double exit cubes, and (18) bottom exit cubes, (20) steel marbles, and (1) design ideas booklet.

Top Reviews

I SOOOO Wanted to Love This!
by Momtographer (2 out of 5 stars)
January 16, 2016

I truly wanted to love this toy! I love the idea of it! We got one for Christmas from my husband's brother's family and it lasted about a week before we had some issue. The kids went crazy over it! Marble runs must be a great thing around here. They played with it constantly, but they are not rough with things (which is saying something since one is a toddler). They built and the marbles went down.

After a couple of days I was taking some apart to put away and as I did I noticed hairline fractures all over the female part of the block. Over half were affected. Then, a couple days after I was checking the blocks and the male end didn't come out perfectly straight and it cracked like the photo below.

We hoped we just got a bad/brittle one. We returned and bought a new one. Within a week it did the same thing and I just flat out returned it and bought a Marbulous at Lakeshore Learning in town and my son says he likes it even better (go figure). I was so sad because I really loved this concept! it has won awards so maybe others don't have this issue. But, if you don't pull 100% straight out I would wage that you will have cracked pieces and eventually could break.
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Maybe for older kids
by Joyce (4 out of 5 stars)
February 18, 2018

I purchased this set of Q-Ba-Maze cubes to have when our grandkids come to play. I ordered a set of cubes, the set of four trays and the set with the wheel and spinner. Grandkids are 8 yr, 6 yr, and 4 yr. The day they arrived, I was excited. I decided I would build a tower so the kids would know what they are suppose to do with them. It took me a long time to make anything fun out of the sets! I have a huge collection of glass marbles that the kids love, but they are always scattered all over the house and we argue about picking them up all the time. I thought the glass marbles would work with this set, but they DO NOT. Luckily, the sets came with a good amount of marbles that fit. The 8 yr old came first. He is very 'teckie', so he was bored with it quickly. Then the younger two kids came another day. They were all excited and immediately tore apart what I had labored over, tried to make something of their own and got frustrated. Our little guy ended up making a very clever looking rifle out of some of the blocks and a tray. That is the way it has been played with since! Hopefully, they will grow to like it and be able to make something fun out of them. I still believe the sets are very good for creative minds and good for imaginations. Really, our adult kids have played with them more than the little ones.
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Great for adults to play with kids
by dhoped123 (5 out of 5 stars)
October 3, 2016

My family has had a lot of fun playing this with this together. My four year old and seven year old both like it a lot. It can be a little hard for them to assemble the pieces into a cool shape or maze, but once we put something together, it is a blast. That's why we've typically played it together. My two year old enjoys it as well, but I have to keep a close eye on him. It comes with lots of pieces, and you can build a lot of great mazes. Overall, it's a great toy, and I'll probably buy another one as a gift at some point.

I want to point out a couple of things for folks thinking about purchasing this:
- It is not great for kids under 3, as they say on the package. It's a little too hard to use, and probably a choking hazard.
- The pieces require some coordination to put together. It's not a problem for adults or older kids (maybe 6 and up), but for young kids it can be challenging or frustrating without adult help.
- The marbles can get lost easily, as they roll out of the bottom of the maze and onto the floor.
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Needs base pieces for marble collection
by Josie Christopherson (3 out of 5 stars)
January 1, 2013

I bought this set for my 5-year-old son for Christmas, and he loves it! The pieces are simple enough for him to figure out on his own, and he likes creating new configurations.

I have one suggestion that would bump this product up to 5 stars in my opinion, and that's to create bases to collect the marbles once they go through a maze. This set would benefit GREATLY if the marbles had somewhere to go once they're done with their runs. As it is, they just go through the run at lightening speed, and then they scatter. Part of the fun is to see which run collects the most marbles, but that's almost impossible. We tried rigging up little bowls under some of the endings but it's awkward.

The towers topple pretty easily, and are uneven if you're not symmetrical in your maze, so they often lean and then the marbles will only go one direction. This problem would also be solved with the addition of sturdy base pieces.

For these reasons, you'll want to make sure you assemble towers in a tray of some kind, or you'll be searching for the marbles in the rugs, vents, or under furniture constantly. They're the perfect size for swallowing or causing people to slip (or ruining vacuums) so we count the marbles after every playtime (there are 20 in this set) and the kids know they have to find them if they lose one. This is also a bit of a downer.

Nevertheless, my son likes it, so it was worth the purchase price!
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Fun toy
by Jocelyn (4 out of 5 stars)
January 1, 2014

My son (almost 4), asked for this for Christmas. He loves it and was very excited to receive it. I myself have a few complaints.

My main complaint is that it isn't very stable. It's likes to fall over when the ball bearings are running through, especially when they all randomly go to one side. They are heavy and overbalance many of my designs that are stable without them bouncing around in the structure.

My other complaint is that it's just more confusing to build than it needs to be. Even for me. There are only 3 types of pieces in the whole set, yet due to the odd ways they attach it can be difficult to actually put together the things I think up. And even though my son is quite capable of building marble runs with the wooden Quadrilla sets which are actually much more complex as far as physics go, he is not able to build very well with this set just due to the difficulty of attaching the pieces and the less clear purpose (the other set has a different color assigned for the different functions, the colors are random in this set and he has to look and feel which way the ball with go in each piece).

All that said, he still loves the toy. We build the marble run while he attaches 3 or 4 pieces of his own that we pop on the top of ours and he has a good time watching the little ball bearing run through while I hold the thing so it doesn't tip. Not the best toy for kids who are not yet independent with it, but I see us expanding the set anyway because I'm sure he will ask for more for his birthday next month!

Edit: Years later now and I would probably drop the rating to three at this point. I won't, but if I was reviewing today I would. We did buy an expansion set and it turns out the bigger you make these things, the less they hold up. Plus it seems that the longer we have the set, the looser the connections between pieces become. Every little adjustment or tightening to the lower portion of a structure risks the top falling off and completely shattering into pieces. I still find myself annoyed that I have to dig through the bin for the pieces that I want by feel while using my other hand to support what I'm building. Overall I would not buy this toy again. In the end it's just an overpriced plastic toy. I recommend the quadrilla set I mentioned before. We got so much more use out of it and it's all wood and so much fun to build. We also like K'nex roller coasters and quercetti skyrail for marble fun type fun. These things are pretty and they seem really cool... until you actually spend some quality time with them and start to see their flaws.

And another edit: Son is now age 8 and decided to donate this toy after barely using it. The last time we played with it the pieces fit even worse than ever. When you push a piece on top of another piece, you can actually watch the top piece slowly be pushed up. This causes all of the pieces to be loose from the bottom up and drastically increases the (already high) likelihood that the whole thing will fall to pieces.

I noticed they now sell ball catchers, so at least there is an option available now to prevent balls from rolling everywhere. OTOH, for something so overpriced to begin with it should include all of the necessary parts in this basic set.

There are so many better options out there for building/marble runs I regret having bought this one.
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Worth the price!
by Melissa Nielsen (5 out of 5 stars)
January 13, 2016

These were recommended to us for a Christmas present. I was really excited when we watched the video- I thought my kids would go crazy for them Christmas morning. Then that night, it took my husband and I over an hour to put the butterfly together, and I was very disappointed, thinking we had just spent a lot of money for a big bust. However, morning came, and the kids loved them. They played with them all morning and then the next several days. Then my 9 year old started making his own designs and using pre-written designs from the website. These are a favorite with our kids ages 3-9.
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It's a great game, I just had trouble making it work!
by Katie P (4 out of 5 stars)
February 18, 2016

I know that this was considered to be a pretty popular game, but I honestly found it to be more difficult and therefore more frustrating than the good old Marble Run. It's the figuring out which piece you need to attach in order to get the marble to make its way down. You have some pieces that have holes through the middle, some have one exit, some have two, etc. And if you're not careful, then you'll end up trapping the marble with no exit, or you won't create the downward trend needed for the marble to make its way down. Now, I know that while physics was not my forte in high school, I get the general gist of gravity and though I'm not an engineer, it wasn't like I was trying to build a rocket. But for some reason, I really struggled with this. My poor 4 year old was having to bail me out on many occasions, I'm sure he found it more amusing than I did. We played with this thing once, immediately upon receiving it, and it hasn't come out since. But for someone who has more determination than I do, it's a fantastic game w/ a great concept. That's why I gave it 4 stars.
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Frustrating!
by noel32 (1 out of 5 stars)
December 30, 2017

I wanted to love this marble toy, but our entire family found the pieces did not fit well and the towers kept falling apart. We all got very frustrated with trying to build with the pieces and ended up returning it for a full refund.
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Awesome building toy.
by dreamweaver (5 out of 5 stars)
December 31, 2014

I can see why this toy won awards. It's awesome! I'm 35 years old and had a lot of fun playing with this when my 5 year old son got it for Christmas! It's easy to figure out how to put the pieces together and how it works. It didn't take him that long to figure out how to build with it, but he does need a bit of help. The marbles are a good weight and size and it comes with enough to make some good noise when it's going down. The noise it makes is kind of cool.

Unfortunately this box doesn't contain enough blocks to be able to build any of the images on the box or in the paper it comes with and you can't build most of the plans from the website, either. It's okay, though. You can come up with lots of things to build on your own even if they don't actually look like anything. We built some cool towers and a castle and they were both big enough.

The plans on the website aren't that hard to figure out, but sometimes it's hard to know where some of the pieces go.

If you don't know if the kids will like it then this is a good set to start with before adding on.
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Boring for kids, good for little guys for colors, unstable building
by L. Grant (2 out of 5 stars)
March 2, 2017

I have ages 3 to 9 with a home day care and tried these with all the ages. Very frustrating and none of them prefer to use them. The little ones use them for sequencing on the floor and patterning. Hard to keep together. The older ones got bored with it quickly and it's now just sitting on a shelf. I can't get them interested in playing with it any more. The blocks won't stay together and there is nothing to hold it down so they can keep adding to it. Needs improving. For $40 I don't feel it's worth it. More like around $20 maybe.Won't be buying any more.

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