Features:

  • Nappa silver award winner
  • Design and build 10 amazing moving machines - teach your bricks new tricks
  • Comes with 80 page instructions, 33 LEGO pieces, Instructions for 10 modules, 6 plastic balls, string, paper ramps and other components
  • Includes a 80 page instructional book with Klutz Certified crystal-clear instructions
  • Includes more than 30 essential LEGO elements
  • Recommended for children ages 8+
Zip! Zing! Zoom!

I had a ton of fun digging through my bricks and trying to build as many of the things that I can. There is a plastic sleeve, which closes, at the back of the book to hold your paper items safely. The only thing I didn't like was that you had to take apart the book to get the paper items out. Thankfully it wasn't too hard to do nor did it take that much time. The paper is thick enough to last a bit but you could also easily trace them out on other paper if needed. Overall a great Lego/Klutz book to add to your collection.

Creative toy

I wasn't sure after the reviews but got it for my 4 1/2 year old Lego loving son for Christmas. We have a lot of Legos in the house so it sounded like we'd be fine on building along with this. Is it ever! After building one chain reaction with him, he has built and rebuilt every chain reaction and shows off his cool "mommy come see my new chain reaction, I used new colors and it still works!" Creating a budding engineer. We all love it. Would be great for age 4-8.

Great buy for creative types

Purchased this for our son, who has Autism. He tends to fidget, take things apart, build things, and loves Legos but ultimately will take apart whatever set he has masterfully built to make a new creation. This set was right up his alley. Important to note that this is a companion or compliment to an existing Lego collection or for someone who will be purchasing the required additional Lego pieces along with this set. We have thousands of Legos so we have no shortage of your basic 2x2s, 2x6s, etc. This set is great for kids and adults alike to both try something aside from building a set "something" from a traditional Lego set and for those looking to explore reactions, as the title states. In the two days we have had the set our son has spent about 3-4 hours playing with it (school nights) and hasn't even mentioned his iPad!

Fun and educational!

Wow! Not sure who is having more fun, my husband or the kids (5 and 7 years.) They love engineering, building, projects, etc. If you are like-minded this shouldn't disappoint.

Creative fun with LEGOs

I bought this kit for my 9-year-old son as a Christmas gift. He loves LEGOs and is very interested in how things work, so this activity kit seemed to fit the bill. There are 10 different activities in the book to make 10 different chain reaction machines. The first few are the easiest and then there are a few intermediate activities and a few more difficult activities. The first activity only requires using the pieces included with the kit. Other activities require pieces from your personal LEGO collection to complete. My son spent quite a few hours over Christmas break working on the activities and managed to successfully complete 9 of the 10. He has the whole rig set up in his room and has really enjoyed the process. He did encounter some difficulty with the final activity, but I'm sure he'll figure it out soon. He's also been swapping the order of some of the machines to make different chain reactions.

The next level of Legos!

If your child loves Legos, but has completed countless sets of them and you want to quit spending $50+ per set, this is for you! My 8-year-old child found this to be way more challenging than a Lego set and played with it for much longer. It includes several projects that build on each other to form a chain reaction. It does require some basic pieces, but most Legos enthusiasts would have them or you can buy a basic set of random pieces, I think. Highly recommend this product and we will be buying more.

Perfect bonding activity

I purchased the LEGO Reaction kit as a present for my 4 year old. My husband and son spend hours experimenting on different projects. Perfect bonding activity. Easy to use, directions are well written.

Fun way to introduce engineering concepts

So far so good. My five year old got one for Christmas and has enjoyed building some of the simple machines. He needs my help for things that require finer motor skills like tieing knots or setting up a machine "just right" so that the Rube Goldberg chain reactions will work. But he does get excited seeing videos on how they work via QR codes on each model and then seeing it work as designed. I've started recording video of him explaining and setting off the machines just to make it seem that much more special. It also gives me a good opportunity to explain basic engineering concepts like attention to detail, that it's okay if it doesn't work the first time, and to retrace steps. As others have pointed out, you have to use some other general Lego pieces to create these structures. And having basic "bricks" seems to be harder to come by since most Lego sets are so detailed and have smaller, more specialized pieces now. You will need to get some basic brick sets; I suggest getting cheaper, compatible, non-lego bricks.

YES you need some of your Lego as well.. but if you have some...FUN FUN FUN

If you have NO Lego then you should pass. But even a modest collection can finish up on many of these projects. 8 year olds in this house love it. I have to keep after one of the not so adult adults to let the kids play and leave them alone. PaPa. Some help is needed once in a while from an adult, mostly referee. For the most part this is a great addition and renews the interest in the boring old bricks that aren't an exciting Star Wars ship or other such project. The boring old bricks are getting out of the bin and having a chance to be exciting again. Lots of problem solving and fun changes to try out. I could see kids older making all kinds of Chain Reactions. This kit was the perfect winter day top of the fridge surprise. I plan to give it a bin of its own so they can go back, add to it or change it up and have another Chain Reaction afternoon. I was surprised at how long they played before they moved on to something else. The paper pieces for ramps pop out easy and are thick enough to survive 8 year olds folding and reshaping. We were very happy with it. For its price it is a bargain for a fun filled afternoon.

Well executed by the authors. Think about these things before purchase.

This was not an easy concept for the authors and product planners to execute. It's radically different than just assembling Legos from an instruction booklet. A lot of thought and effort went into the chain reaction concepts and resulting projects. The book layout, the security so that the parts actually arrive at the consumer, the durability of the non Lego paper components, the directions on how to fold the paper components etc, etc, etc. are thoughtfully done. I think they struck a very good balance so this would not cost an arm and a leg. Some might call it cheap (a few Lego pieces, a beautiful well laid out instruction book with nicely printed paper components) but I call it cost effective. A lot of what you're paying for here is in my opinion is the wow factor of the book and the well thought out concepts. I supported my 7 year old grandson's effort to build the first project. My 5 year old grandson looked at what was involved and walked away I think because it looks complicated and the projects contain very few pieces. Both of them are very skilled Lego builders who pride themselves on their ability to throw lots of pieces together quickly. Does that sound familiar to you? So... I think what motivates most young Lego builders is assembling lots of pieces quickly and having a relatively static object to play with when done. The chain reaction projects aren't that at all. They don't look like much -to an adult - when complete. They are challenging in my view mostly because of the need for precision alignment between the paper parts and the Lego motion actuators the kids assemble to create the Chain the Reaction. Once assembled and aligned, making it function can require trial and error, motivation to succeed, precision hand and eye coordination and patience. I think that doing the first project successfully might be a make or break point for this product. Failure would surely be a deterrent towards doing subsequent projects in the book so initial success seems very important at least for younger children. The greatest joy my grandson experienced (and it was great joy) was the moment the first project functioned properly for the first time after several complete and partial failures (just as his patience was wearing thin) and then joy again once the chain reaction was rehearsed and easily repeatable so as to show his parents without failure. Having achieved this first success he was excited about doing more projects. It remains to be seen what his long term interest level will be. Yes.. This is radically different than just sticking prices together and success is not easy considering that the projects are minimalist in the total number of pieces. However I think the lessons and skills this product teaches are very important, worthwhile and noteworthy. Aside from the skills mentioned above this is also elementary physics of motion, weight, angle, momentum, etc. In summary, it appears that, assuming success along the way, the complicated chain reactions are fun for children to assemble, challenging to make fully, reliably functional and thrilling once they work for that first time. It's all good stuff!

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