Thames & Kosmos Ultra Bionic Blaster, Kids Science Kit, Learning Resources for Pneumatics, STEM Toys for Science Experiments, Age 10+ with Help & Age 12+ Alone

Not recommended. Made of flimsy ill-fitting plastic and extremely difficult to build unless maybe you hold an MSc in Mechanical Engineering. My 8 year old grad son and I have given up trying.

Everything is assembled correctly, however, the pump doesn't release back and binds to create too much pressure on the gears on the handle assembly. Whoever designed this should have spent a lot more time in quality control. If I could give it 0 stars I would probably do that. We've spent hours and hours on this trying to adjust different aspects of the handle and release mechanism to no avail. Unfortunately this was purchased as a gift by someone else so we can't get their money back. Maybe if a completely new blaster was built from scratch it might work, but the kit we received has too many imperfections for it to work properly.

great product

it took time to make the assembly, i did all steps one by one properly, and at the end, nothing.Parts are difficult to get out of their rack, and it never worked. i was pressing to get the ball to going out fast, nothing, nothing. not a little bit, nothing.My boy was very disappointed. Don't buy this, you will loose your money.

Item comes packed nicely with original box. no damage to the box. Did not open and check as it's an early purchase gift for Christmas .

I've built several Thames and Kosmos kits with my kids - including the really complicated hydraulic hand. The other kits were great, so I bought this one cause it looks really fun.... But, it's horrible.First, you need a very small screwdriver and a pair of wire cutters that are not included. No big deal there.The problem is the build is EXTREMELY frustrating and it's VERY FLIMSY. The whole top part of this that hold the bullets doesn't secure on in any meaningful way and it comes off easily. The little sights fall off easily. The spring that is supposed to help raise and lower the launcher part is not only difficult to put on, it unhooks constantly.I took this thing apart and reassembled it several times. I must have spent a minimum of 3 hours just trying to "fix" this.I'm the end, I can't get it to work as intended. The handle jams up and won't compress, gets stuck in place, or does not generate enough force to compress the springs in the back because the gears get caught up. One half of the handle slides up more than the other and then it gets stuck. I poured oil I had on this over liberally over every single gear, contact surface, and spring trying to get this to function.It'll launch a bullet if I manually pull the air generator apparatus back, which is tricky to do, but I know that part works.It's the handle and gears of this thing... Which is also really annoying because the handles have multiple tiny screws in them add its a total pain to have to deconstruct them again and again.I did not enjoy this. The fragile construction and unfuncrional results are disappointing and just frustrating. Frustrating.... And I feel Iike I should type that about 5 more times.

The toy sadly never worked. We did all the troubleshooting as well but no luck. Disappointed.