Connetix 40 Piece Pastel Square Expansion Pack Review
DISCLOSURE – THIS ITEM WAS GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW. ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE THE REVIEWER’S OWN.
Reviewed by David Connor
This toy is of Australian design, and the box claims that it encourages cognitive development, spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination, and motor skills whilst helping to build knowledge around scientific and mathematical concepts, through play. This toy is aimed at children who are over 3 years old.
The kit comes in a strong cardboard box with a colourful sleeve and the tiles are tightly packed inside. The parts are well made, durable, safe, non-toxic, and very colourful, with extremely strong magnets to hold them together when building models etc. Also included in the box is an ‘Inspiration Book’ which has pages of ideas for building all sorts of shapes and models. However, this proved to be very disappointing to the children as very few of the examples shown can actually be built with just this kit.
The book just consists of pages full of colourful pictures with no construction instructions, so it is very difficult to work out how to build any of the models shown. A young child would certainly need a lot of adult help in trying to build one of the suggested shapes, even if they had all the pieces. However they can, of course, just put them together in basic patterns.
As stated in the name of the kit, this is an expansion kit to use with other kits in the range. Therefore, the models or shapes that can be made with 8 large and 32 small squares is very limited.
As this is advertised as an ‘expansion kit’, it should clearly be seen as purely an ‘add-on’ kit to the larger sets, rather than a toy in its own right. I would not consider purchasing this as a stand-alone present for my children or grandchildren as they would get very little play or learning value from it on its own and I would undoubtedly need to consider spending additional money on buying one or more of the other kits to go with it. There are, in fact, a further 9 packs available covering different shapes and colours and base plates as well as a road and ramps pack and a car pack. The cheapest of these is £19 for the car pack with the other packs ranging in price from just under £39 up to almost £115 for the 120 piece Creative Pack, so to get the full experience could be very expensive.
I did, in fact, take the opportunity to use this as an expansion set with the 106-piece Connetix Pastel Ball Run Pack which did then allow us to build some of the larger models in the Inspiration Book. However, to get the maximum benefit from this toy you really need to purchase kits with different shapes (particularly triangles) and I would consider the base plates as essential, otherwise you are still limited to the basic designs and the stability of any construction can be an issue if there is nothing to support the base.
My rating acknowledges the quality of the toy, but it is let down by the need to buy additional packs when trying to build something and the lack of an instruction book.
The recommended price for this kit is £58.95
The product can be purchased from Connetix here.
The Connetix 106 Piece Pastel Ball Run Pack can be purchased from Connetix here.
Rating: 2/5