Rhode Island Novelty Inflatable Globe Replica 16-inch

Very fun learning tool. I bought this after I returned from Spain, to show my nieces and nephews just how far we went. Essentially a globe beach ball - great price.

This globe is not very useful as a map. First, it is not 16" wide as described, it has a diameter of 10-12 inches. It's about 16" when deflated and stretched out in one direction. Second, the map has many defects. I'll give a lot of examples (I could give more), just to assure you that I'm not exaggerating. * out of date: It shows Yugoslavia, Chechoslovakia, Zaire, Upper Volta, Burma, Kampuchea, names that are 20 to 30 years out of date. * spelling errors: Ireiand, Grenda, Mauritalia, Egipt, Buruni, Eqguinea, Cybrus, Ukrainaia, Geopgian, Azerbrajan, Brune, Indoneisa * distortion at seams: an extra 400 to 500 miles is inserted around each of the six seams, giving the U.S. for example a very unfamiliar shape due to the seam running up the middle of it. * coloring: adjacent countries frequently have the same color with no clear boundary between, like Mexico-Belize, Guatemala-Nicaragua, Moldova-Romania-Yugoslavia, Syria-Lebanon-Israel-Jordan, Burma-Laos-Vietnam, Zaire-Rwanda-Burundi and many others. * coloring: a country may change color at a seam: Bangladesh is green and orange, Tanzania is pink and blue. * letters missing near seams: (C)ybrus (L)ebanon, (E)gipt!, (U)ganda, Rwand(a), (T)anzania, (M)alawi, (S)waziland * countries missing, like Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Eritrea, Cape Verde, Sao Tome & Principe. * The border and coastline of the U.S. is so inaccurate it's almost cartoonish. Natives of other countries would probably say the same about their borders. Central America, according to this map, is Northern Mexico and South Texas. If you want an accurate map, try the Jet Creations Political Globe (true 16" diameter), $9.23 at Amazon.

This is an inflatable globe for less than $5. It's a great product for its price. It is much better than a flat paper for teaching about world geography. Which is better: no globe, or this affordable globe? This affordable globe. Honestly, I have no nits to pick with this product. For what it is: 5 stars.

Cute but not accurate. If you just want a simple globe to get an idea of the world it’s fine. If you want to find any particular location it’s not exactly accurate. But as a portable easy to use globe, I would recommend it!

I dont know why I thought it would be a bit bigger. Who knows. Anyhow, the graphics on the actual ball are not that accurate nor valid. There are a lot of places missing. Some are too tiny to even include when trying to teach my 5 year old about earth. There are words and other things added to this that dont make sense. Idk if maybe they were trying to include other languages...idk??? It doesn't hold air all the way long, it just doesn't stay full. We use it to play ball in the house because its not hard and won't break anything. Its Definitely not an accurate educational toy. Its simply a ball. Pretty much.

I bought this globe for a church VBS lesson for preschoolers, and it was the perfect size. It easily fit in their hands and was comparable to the size of a beach ball. It was easy to blow up just by using my mouth, but you could easily blow it up with a hand pump too. My dog got ahold of it and punctured the globe several places, but I was able to put just clear tape over the puncture and fix the problem myself and it has held up even with lots of preschoolers playing with it.

Very good for the price.

Real globes are expensive. And little kids can't be trusted to treat them with the care they deserve. But I figured I had hit on a fun and inexpensive way around that problem for my daughter, a K5 teacher. A way she could use a simple little beach ball globe to help her students visualize our planet, and gain a beginning perspective on this BIG ball we all inhabit. I actually bought two of these inflatable balls, so the teacher would have a spare, in case the first ball "bit the dust" prematurely, before the lesson was quite completed. So my girl made up a lesson plan, imagining a few things she could do with the kids to help teach them all a few fun facts. She blew the first one up on her planning time, only to find that the United States was missing. Apparently the entire country had fallen into the sea. And where it once proudly floated? Nothing but a lot of water...and an ocean alive with floating city and country place names belonging to places far, far away. Undaunted, she blew the other globe up, but it was the same thing. Neither one was accurate. Not representative, not even close. Well, okay. You get what you pay for I suppose. But sometimes? A lot less. And though I knew that these were a cheap novelty? I still expected they would be similar to what the photo showed! Accurate enough for a class full of barely reading little kindergarteners anyway! But that wasn't the end of the story. I couldn't really return these products. This child of mine lives far away, not right down the road...and therefore it's way too much time, trouble, and expense to retrieve and send these "globes" back for a refund. So this becomes my only redress: to let other customers know about this sorry manufacturer, it's inferior products, and my complete dissatisfaction. This is all I can do. I suppose there was a bit of a happy ending though. A little bit or redemption. This same daughter of mine has two beautiful little K5 and 1st graders of her own, so she let them have the balls for play. And it turns out that they DO hold air. Small win, right? The moral of the story here though? The old quote: "You spins the wheel, you takes your chances!

Be fun on the beach !

Very high price for the quality