EVEREST TOYS Crazy Forts - 69 Piece Glow in The Dark Fort Building Kit for Kids 5, 6, 7, 8 - Buildable Indoor/Outdoor Kids DIY Stem Toys - 1 Box, 69Pcs

This is a cute idea, and it could have been a great toy but it's just too flimsy. First, the rods are the thinest, cheapest plastic. You cannot drape sheets or blankets over the structures as they are too heavy. A super thin painter's cloth might be okay. The box top shows a red and a yellow plastic sheet over the structure, but that is not included in the box. Secondly, the connections are so flimsy that if the child bumps it while climbing through his structure, it will fall apart. Kids love building forts! But alas, they'll have to continue using the kitchen table.

Very fun activity for a small group of five year olds. One understood it right away, two of them understand it but need more processing time, and couple of them don’t get it but enjoy it all the same. Wonderful opportunity for the children to figure out how to work together playing on each person’s strengths. This is followed by great creativity of dramatic play typically involving wolf cubs and bald eagles.UPDATE: I caved in and bought another set. Now that it was their third time working with these, a couple more children have figured it out. So four kindergarteners understand it and are clearly very intellectually satisfied while constructing with it. One is still determined to force it to work with brute strength and trying to bend the sticks to fit ( doesn’t work, but wow, they’re durable) and the remaining child has discovered the satisfaction of holding the sheet of instructions and dictating how the playing will ensue ( today it involved a den of wolf cubs and some humans with a vegetable garden).

Our original set which we got more than a year and a half ago (Christmas 2018) was fine. All individual pieces were fairly sturdy and durable, and fit together well. But after getting a puppy many of the pieces ended up chewed up. Anyhow, once the quarantine started in March 2020 we thought the kids would like to build forts and an extra set would help them make a larger one. It's generally sturdy enough to support a bed sheet thrown over the top. In our second set, however, several of the purple balls weren't formed properly and the green poles wouldn't fit into all of the holes. It's not a cheap set, and considering that we had no issues with the first set this was disappointing. We still feel the toy is great and with two partial sets there are plenty of pieces, but not sure if the production quality may have changed.

I bought two sets, one because I was buying this set for a 10 year old so I wanted the structure to be able to be big enough.tonfit a big kid in, but also because I had read so many reviews stating that you can do so much more with two sets. The poles DO bend, but especially when you're not a pro at building with these that's a good thing. If they were so rigid that they didn't bend, my first time building with them by myself, six sticks would have snapped. They are plastic, and not tough like hard PVC pipe plastic, but definitely not as weak as say a laundry basket. It's a good in between... If that makes sense. If you're wanting to build squares of varying sizes, by all means, take the $40 down to a hardware store and buy PVC pipes and joints. You'll have yourself a pretty decent fort frame. However, if you're wanting to upmyour fort building game having fun WITH your child, and spark the imagination better than ever before, then buy this kit because the majority of the worth in this kit is not the poles, but the endless possibilities you have with the joints. Yes, if your kid is under the age of 4ish they will need help building the forts, but it's never a bad thing to have to spend time with your children. We built a very basic square with as many pieces as possible (the wobbliest of structures since everyone knows triangles are the strongest) and covered it with whatever we had. The WEAKEST structure you can build with two full kits, with no support beam in the middle to keep the middle of the too sloping inward held two queen sheets, four blankets, and a winter quilt over night just fine. Though because of the thickness of the blankets the inside of the fort was a lot warmer than outside. As stated before in other reviews, forts are intended to be sat IN, not sat ON, but nobody told my 23lb dog the rules of forts and he plopped himself on one of the walls of the fort.... It remained standing.