Thames & Kosmos Candy Claw Engineering STEM Experiment Maker Lab | Build Your Own Claw Machine | Learn Hydraulics & Engineering | Includes Lollipops | Toy of The Year Finalist | Difficulty: Advanced

This product would be great for high schoolers or college students who are studying engineering and how to improve on children's toy designs.This is not easy to assemble. The age listed is 6-14, but really 6-10 year olds will need a LOT of help to put this together.More important, this really doesn't work. I would not consider this product as a functioning candy claw machine. It is instead a hydraulics building lesson, where the main point is how a poor design won't end up working. The hydraulics leak, to the point where you have to refill them after each use.And even when full they still don't work. The weight of the liquid (which is part of the claw assembly) makes it difficult for the claw to be raised high enough to drop the candy in the chute. I'm sure the design could be changed to function better, but as is you will likely be unable to get this to function at all, much less consistently, and much less well enough to where a child in the age range can use this and have fun.This review is not even considering the myriad other issues such as the wonky controls used to move the claw around before it drops.Ultimately this isn't a good present for anyone unless you really don't like the children or the parents.

Got the Thanes and Kosmos Candy Claw Machine for my grandchildren, and they were so excited about it that they opened it and started to put it together without any help. Well, it is pretty complicated and they really needed an adult, so they just skipped steps they didn't understand and scattered parts all over the place. Ultimately, I got involved and discovered a couple of key parts were nowhere to be found. The Customer Service department at Thames and Kosmos cheerfully sent replacements, and insisted on paying for the parts and the shipping (in spite of my offer to pay).I'm a customer for life for any company that actually believes in customer service and has good products to sell!

This was a fun toy to build with my kids. It took about 4 hours but we went slow in order to learn about the science and mechanics of the toy. The ribbon was the most difficult part to install. It was a challenging build but the instructions were clear and there was a QR code to a video for the trickier parts. We were very excited but when it came time to use it, it was a big let down. The claw simply will not close, and once it has been opened there's no way to close it to grab the candy. The lollipops provided were too big to fit through the door and got stuck or jammed the door. The ribbon kept unspooling and would not hold tension. Overall we enjoyed building it but it is not a functional toy.

UPDATE AS OF 8-23-23 - Despite the issues noted below, I wanted to share the fact that this company is excellent to deal with. As noted below, they were responsive in providing replacement parts in the hopes that the original toy would finally work as advertised. However, when this was not the case, they immediately replied to my follow-up email message about the situation with an offer to replace the toy with a different STEM project. The new toy arrived yesterday and, we hope, will be one that can be enjoyed by our granddaughter. In a time when many companies are hard to reach out to and, then, even harder to get service from, Thames & Kosmos is a stand-out in excellent customer service.I purchased this as a gift for our 9-year old granddaughter who is in love with claw machines at the arcade. Needless to say, she was very excited to see the gift - the image was great and the idea of a candy machine inviting - and, as well, for the opportunity to build it with me. Soon thereafter we got together to build the toy. Although the instructions indicate that it would have been age-appropriate for her, and that it would take 2-3 hours, it took longer and was much more complicated than presented. That, however, was the good part.After assembling the machine, we tried to prime the hydraulics with water. One of the two filled nearly completely - the second one barely so. Despite this, the hydraulics seemed to work - that is until one of the cylinders inside the unit started to drain the water. So, being a good sport, my granddaughter agreed that I should contact the company to get help and/or replacement parts.The company was very helpful: promptly replying to my email and subsequently sending replacement parts for the hydraulic sections of the toy. So, a week or so later we met again to make a second attempt to get the toy working.This time I was meticulously careful in executing the instructions. And, after charging the system with water, proceeded to have her run a test. First issue - the hydraulics did not have enough force on the claws to pick up any of the candy items. The second problem - after the 2nd or 3rd attempt at using the toy, the cylinder that opens/closes the claw began to leak. Slower this time than after our first attempt, but still was not watertight.Bottom line: It is a very attractive and well-designed STEM toy. However, since we could not get it to come even close to the stated operation after two attempts, it surely is not a toy for an 8-9 year-old and, as I was involved, not even for a handy adult.

This was a Christmas gift for my 7 (soon to be 8) year old. He was excited to get it but disappointed on how complicated it was. His dad was the main assembler for the toy. The pieces aren't the best quality and it has some steps which are tricky to assemble. It took approximately 6 hours to complete (spread out in days to take breaks from it) and when it was FINALLY assembled it broke. We were very disappointed. We were only able to get 1 play from it before it broke and the claw didn't do a good job at grabbing. If production ups the quality of the parts this could be a great toy. Overall, we do not recommend... unless you want to teach about patience and disappointment.