Thames & Kosmos Ultra Bionic Blaster STEM Experiment Kit | Construct a Robotic Foam Dart Blasting Glove | Challenging Build, Learn About Mechanical Technology & Engineering

The Thames & Kosmos Ultimate Bionic Blaster, aka the Robotic Hand, is the closest thing my nephew has to becoming a superhero without the need for radioactive spider bites. He put it together faster than I can untangle Christmas lights – a true Christmas miracle!Now, he struts around like he's part cyborg, high-fiving and grabbing things with the precision of a bionic ninja. If only I could convince him to use his newfound powers for household chores. Who knew a robotic hand could turn a regular kid into the superhero of the family? Thames & Kosmos, you've given my nephew a bionic boost and turned Christmas into a high-tech adventure!

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.

My son had a lot of fun building this and playing with it

Was a fun project for 9yo and I. When we went to test fire, it stopped after one shot.What we found during troubleshooting was the flat face of A17 was getting stuck in the reset cycle on the A13 cup. For anyone else experiencing this problem, file down A17 (specifically where the part number points to in the attached pic) to create a ramp so it won’t get stuck on the return trip. We just used a nail file.Gave it a 4 because it shouldn’t require that much effort to figure out… so minus 2… but the engineering aspect was definitely worth the extra effort and gave us a minute to talk the mechanics of how it works and let 9yo use his brain ans critically explore the problem. So plus 1.

Very fun idea. Bought for 12 year old grandson who LOVES to put together things. Even though he is very adept at reading instructions and building things, he struggled to put together and when it was finished, they nerf bullet shooting part didn’t function.

The media could not be loaded. Got it for the kid to spend times in the raining day. Not difficult to assembly

It took a long time to assemble, we broke it up over several days, but the end result is very cool and my son was proud that “he built it”. I would recommend, with patience.

Every. Single. Piece. Is. Plastic. It’s all from a plastic mold. So you or your kid will need to cut off and FILE DOWN the remaining excess plastic bits, per the instructions! That is NOT STEM. There is nothing STEM about cutting bits of plastic all day. There are dozens of pieces. Look elsewhere for real STEM projects.