Oh I love these! We have a set - we got them for our son a couple years ago for his 2nd birthday. He's 5 now and they still get played with almost daily. I don't know who has more fun, my son or my husband. Great for spatial skills and creative play! And he recently started having a lot of fun making the sticks spin around by holding another stick with the opposite pole up to the end, which initiated an awesome discussion of magnets and how they work. Great toy, highly recommend.

product website for 144 piece has video: their price $240
http://www.guidecraft.com/product/0/G8102/_/Magneatos_Jumbo_-_144_Pcs.

good night

We received the smaller set for our son on his 3rd birthday. They're a decent toy and this is a decent price for what these go for.
He's just not that into them. Maybe as he gets older. Our 18 month old has more fun with them just throwing the balls around.

This would be a better toy at $30.

Does anyone know if the big set comes with the curved pieces too? In the photo on the guidecraft website it shows kids with curved pieces playing with the 144 piece set

This Amazon page shows two recommended ages for the 144-piece set, 2 years and 3 years:

http://www.amazon.com/GuideCraft-G8102-Magneatos-144-Piece/dp/B000BC7TTC

2 years from the manufacturer, 3 years from (I guess) Guidecraft.

I'm a preschool teacher, and these are a huge hit in my classroom. I would highly recommend them to any parent. Use them as a stepping stone to learn about magnets and architecture. The magnets are strong enough that you can pick up a smaller structure if you are careful.

Since this is a building toy, I wanted to point out an observation made years ago when I had a temp job demonstrating a different building toy. Little girls under age 5 are absolutely amazing! As long as you can keep the parents away from them, little girls are way better at building toys than boys the same age IMHO. But you must keep the parents from interfereing! For some reason parents think that if they can't do something then their little girl can't either (parents don't do this to little. boys IMHO). The thing is that girls seem to listen to their parents. I saw this over and over again. We had a play area set up and we sold the toy by getting the kids to build something, their parents would see them having fun and buy the toy. Except with little girls, the girls would jump in start building and doing amazingly well but instead of noticing, the parent would try the toy, have trouble and announce (without looking at what their girl had already built) "this is hard, you can't do this." "The little girl would look at her house (or whatever) and say "I can't?" and immediately stop building. I could never get the parents to look at what their girl had built, so I learned that if Ii wanted to sell to parents of little girls, it was absolutely necessary to keep the parents away from the girl until she was finished building and had something completed to show. The sadest thing is that this only applies to girls under age 5. Girls under age 5 were fantastic at building, age 5 and above, they were terrible or just didn't try. This led me to conclude that by age 5 little girls have properly socialized ( or as I put it--ruined) by their parents and perhaps society. So my pled for parents, esp parents of little girls--please stay out of your kids way. Please don't tell them something is hard--let them learn and discover for themselves. Most important open your eyes and look at what your kids can do! I am telling you, little girls between the ages of 2 and 5 are amazing at building things--let them do it. There is no rational reason for a two year old girl to be better at building than a five year old girl--yet I observed it over and over again. I have no comment on this particular toy, I am just saying that little girls are fantastic builders in general.

We bought a small set a few years ago for our two grandkids. These are like Duplo bricks on steroids. Our youngest grandkid always had trouble putting Duplo bricks together whereas these, to his delight, magically come together on their own due to the magnetism. They are curiously light given the strong magnetism - I've been tempted to break one open just to see what kind of magnets are used. However, they are very durable and seemingly indestructable especially since the grandson loves to toss anything he gets his little hands on - not one has broken yet. Can't say the same for the random targets that were eventual victims of said tossing.

Don't waste your money.... Magnets are very weak. Things have to be perfectly aligned or they fall down. Frustrating for younger kids.

GUISE, GUISE, THESE ARE MAGNETS AND AREN'T FOR KIDS. THEY MIGHT EAT THEM YOU KNOW.

... Seriously? They can market brightly colored magnets to kids, but can't market appropriately stronger ones to adults.

What is this. I don't even.

These are way too big to eat. The magnetic hold is a bit weak, but a child can build various simple connected structures.