42 Piece Tegu Magnetic Wooden Block Set, Tints, 1-99 years old

We love Tegu! We purchased this set (after owning a small set prior) during a special discount before Christmas and couldn't be happier. The blocks themselves are beautifully made and high quality, hence the pricing. My husband and I are always on the hunt for toys that are not only educational, but well-made and can serve multiple purposes or can grow with the child. These are exactly that! These are great for imaginative play, fine motor skills, color recognition, polarity, and best of all they really can be used from age 1-99! My husband and I have a blast helping our 4 year old create new structures. I'm excited to see what she will create on her own as she gets older and hope to add to our collection!We had already had a 14 block set, but wish we would have bought a larger set from the beginning since the more the merrier! These are a great gift since they are unique and everyone we have gifted these to or recommended them to have loved them.

These are awesome!They are beautiful, and fun for the whole family; our one year old, our 3 year old, my husband, and me.They are a bit challenging, and my son often still asks for help with how to position them. (because of the magnet polarity and the fact that not all sides have magnets.)Overall they are great though! I like the STEM appeal of the fact that not all sides stick together. It teaches about magnets at a young age.Only down sides I have found are that the paint does chip over a long period of time, and you need quite a few of them to build big things. We don't complain though, especially for our kids ages they are perfect!

These are pretty pricey but so worth it. We love these better than the magnetic building blocks that are made of plastic. They are durable. The colors are fun and the kids get so creative with these!

These blocks are fabulous! Although they are pricey, they are well worth the money. Purchased them as a Christmas gift for my kids and they really enjoy them. The set includes a nice amount of various sizes, shapes, and colors so lots of different things can be created. Having magnetic blocks has helped my three-year-old become less frustrated when building since her creations are less likely to collapse!

These are nice magnetic blocks; I originally purchased the travel pouch back at Christmas time & my 1 year old loved them.. so I bought this 42 pc set, but not realizing the magnets only work in certain spots (the long square blocks only have magnets at the ends). Still fun to play with but much more difficult for my 1.5 year old to figure out than just the smaller pieces in the travel pouch. I could see her getting frustrated when certain ones wouldn’t connect. If you find a good deal on them it’s worth the purchase, but I think anyone under 3 should stick to the travel kits that Tegu offers until they’re able to really understand how to connect to build something with the larger ones.

I chose to buy these over the magnetic building pieces because I had seen a lot of people complaining that the magnets were coming out of them when they were thrown so this was a way safer alternative for my child. my 2 1/2 year-old is a huge thrower when it comes to toys so most toys don’t last more than a week in our house without being broken or dying but these have held up wonderfully with a magnet inside I don’t have to worry about a choking hazard

When I got my nephew one of the smaller sets for his third birthday, he really enjoyed the way these crazy blocks would stick together or repel eachother as if by magic. Since the smaller set was such a success, I thought I'd go big this Christmas (especially when Amazon had their gold box sale, offering the 42 block set for around $60). When I opened the set to repack the blocks since they're traveling this Christmas, I was dusappointed to discover that Tegu has basically sabotaged their own product's potential as a building toy.Let me explain. The best blocks in any tegu set are the small 1x1x1 cubes. These cubes have a magnet in every surface, which makes it possible to stick them (and other pieces) together in interesting ways. The next best are the flat 1x2 planks, which have only two magnets, but since these pieces are so thin, you have four potential sticking points, two on the front two on the back.Had Tegu continued this pattern for all of their pieces, I would have no complaints. Unfortunately, the larger the pieces grow, the fewer magnetic sticking points you will find in each one.The large, flat 1x7 planks have only three magnetic points, one at each end and one in the middle. If you planned on adding plank walls, a second story floor, or a roof to your structure, think again. The blocks' design makes it impossible to build anything with consecutively laid out planks.The trapezoidal blocks that seem to promose the potential for peaked roofs or angles for your structure have only two magnets, and both of those are in the angles surfaces. Because the block has no magnets in the top or bottom, it's impossible to brace, and the magnets arenxt strong enough to hold together any sort of peak on their own. Worse, because those magnets are of opposing polarity, instead of both being negative or positive, angled structures that connect back to the main body usually end up refusing to attach on one side. The only interesting thing you can build with them is the four-part square shown on the box.The absolute worst pieces in the box, however, are the tall 1x1x8 pieces that tegu uses to mock up skeleton houses on the cover illustration. These pieces have a total of two magnets which gives you only two sticking points, one on either end of the block. This, combined with their great weight, means that they can, practically speaking, *only* be used as vertical pillars; but thanks to their great height and lack of any magnetic sticking points on the sides, these pilars are impossible to brace or build out from, so you can only build extremely flimsy empty box frames as shown on the cover. It's not what I'd call a design full of possibilities.I don't mean to rag on Tegu. Sets using mostly smaller blocks can be very compelling and fun to play with. However, any set with blocks and planks larger than 3" ends up feeling cheap and difficult to work with. I understand that the magnets are probably the most expensive component in each block, and that Tegu runs a very worthy work program; but if they want to bill these magnetic blocks as a constructor toy, they should offer large block designs that don't actively hinder construction (i.e. that have a few more sticking points), or else stick to making smaller blocks. It would be a simple fix, and not an expensive one for the plank pieces (since each magnet provides two sticking points, meaning that a 1x6 plank would have the same number of magnets as the little cubes that they have not trouble manufacturong profitably).They could also increase the blocks' potential as a stem toy simply and inexpensively by marking each magnet with either a + or a -- sign depending on its polarity. This would give kids a simple visual marker to show that positive and negative sides stick together, rather than using trial and error, flipping each block until it fits. Tegu already prints its name on each of the blocks, so printing or burning a small polarity sign won't add much, if anything to the cost of the bricks.TL;DR: The small Tegu blocks are great, but the larger pieces are practically useless due to their small number of magnets (some of the largest pieces have 1/3 the magnets found in their smallest cubes). This makes Tegu a poor construction toy, especially compared to something as versitile as Legos. If you buy Tegu, buy a smaller set. Big pieces are more frustrating than fun, and more irritating to incorporate into your structure than useful.

I encourage parents to think about this toy (and any toy) in a different way.. it isn’t meant to do the work for you, so don’t worry about how strong the magnets are. Also, don’t tell your kids how to use it and see what they can do.I simply loaded a basket with the new blocks, unceremoniously set them down, and sat quietly while they explored! It is very rewarding to see what they can come up with on their own and they have been playing quietly for nearly two hours. Trust the process!