Review on STEM Building Kit For Kids Ages 5-12: Ultimate Forts Builder Gift Set For Boys & Girls! by Jason Hutchinson

My daughter recently got into fort building. This mostly involves stealing all our blankets and pillows and demanding help to make it all structurally sound. The thing is, we like our pillows, chairs, and other potential support beams for their original purpose, so my wife sent me a link to this building kit.The packaging advises 5+, and this makes sense, because my four year old seemed less interested in building a fort than in having a fort built for her, so the actually building part of the process fell to me, making me oddly well-suited for writing a review on this product.The main issue here is that the holes are not all created equal, and the typo-filled instruction manual even mentions this (though they suggest an X should mark the top of the ball joints, and there was no X) with a diagram that shows how to connect the pipes to the balls. Some of the holes are flat along the edge, these are your holes for right angles. Some holes don't, these are for 45 degree angles, for when you want steeples on your forts and similar bits of architectural flair.The main reason the "Obuby Kids Construction Fort Building Kit 85 Pieces Ultimate Forts Builder Gift Build Making Kits Toys" (Goodness SEO has made titles a nightmare) loses stars is because the holes don't all equally fit the pipes, and when pushing them in I occasionally felt like too much force might warp or snap the pipes. And this same irregularity also means that some joints in the fort don't always stay put.But a structure made with this kit will generally stand up to sheets and blankets, which was the whole goal, and my daughter like to point at patterns in the instruction manual (she calls it the menu, like a demanding customer) and insist I rebuild it accordingly.This product will do what it says it will do, and a sturdier version would probably cost more, so all in all it's fine.It's fine.