KiwiCo Eureka Crate: Monthly Science Kit Subscription | Hacker News Reader

KiwiCo Eureka Crate: Monthly Science Kit Subscription

kiwico.com

52 pointspaulchap32 comments

Hmm, apparently I'm the only one who had a not-great experience with these. Our child received the Kiwi level as a gift and thought one of the months was cool (the arcade claw, pictured on the site) but the others were pretty lame. We would have considered continuing the subscription if we could have seen what was coming, but given our mediocre experience during the first stint, we didn't spring for a renewal ($20/mo for Kiwi level, and more for some of the higher levels).

Exactly same experience here, for 2 of their age brackets. Not impressed, like a lot of these "crates".

Would you (or the parent post) care to explain what's boring about them? Not everything can appeal to everyone, after all - that would seem to be an inherent flaw of the crate model. I had a look at their catalogue... A lot of the Eureka crates seem to be sports-related (a table tennis robot and a golf putter for instance), and some of them haven't got any moving parts (the golf putter), which would've certainly made it more attractive to some - but personally, I don't _really_ have a problem with that. From what I could gather, they also explain the design choices behind each kit, which makes it all the more interesting. I'm a bit concerned about the durability, since neither their tiny printing press nor their pendulum clock look like they'll make it for longer than a week, but overall, it seems like a fun thing to do on a rainy afternoon.

The claw was great. The kaleidoscope was meh and the tree was not fun to build or play with. And given that they start you out with the great kit and then get progressively worse, we assumed the trend would continue. For 20 bucks a month you can buy lots of legos or other interactive toys. The kit items were also not especially durable. Legos last decades, Kiwi projects lasted 1-3 months before breaking.

I looked into these when we went into lockdown, but a lot of the reviews were like yours, the first few are great but a lot of them are really lame. Combined with really opaque pricing for oversees shipping and it just didn't seem worth it. Got my son a load of Lego power functions stuff and he's had many hours of fun from that.

MEL Science kits deserves a mention here

https://melscience.com/

Currently has a 3 month special. No affiliation other than the relevant young person seems to derive at least some benefit.

It's available in many languages too.

My daughter get the Kiwi Crate (gifted subscription from Grandpa), for about a year now, and it's an absolute highlight of our month. We make a day of it each time one arrives and put together a little video of completing it to send back to Grandpa. It has become very special to all of us.

They've created something really amazing with this. Other crates/boxes/etc exist, but they consistently nail the balance of challenge vs fun and overall quality. My 5 year old can follow the instructions herself with only minor prompting from me, and you always get some form of lasting & inspiring object afterwards rather than just stuff that ends up in the bin like many other similar programs. Her room and our house are littered with things she's built herself and that still get use many months later, and they've taught her heaps about how things work.

This++ ... except for the bit about long-lasting. Maybe I need another set of shelves just for Kiwi kits.

This is my experience, the kids love them. My one wish though is that the finished projects could fit back into the box for storage. Then they could take them out an ‘use’ them and put them away. I realize that would greatly limit them scope of projects. The assembled planetarium necessarily is larger than the box.

Fun stuff.

Gifted this to my young nephews... parents report they love it and look forward each month as a family project. COVID made this unexpectedly awesome...

p.s. no connection to the co, found them from a Google search...

We renew my son’s subscription every year. He loves the kits and there’s something new every time. Nicest folks in customer service too.

Why the kiwi name? I'm in NZ and thought there may be some connection.

I thought NZXT computer cases was an NZ company lol. Same with KiwiCo

There's no direct connection to New Zealand. The founders visited New Zealand at some point, and brought back a stuffed kiwi toy for their child. When naming the company, it crossed their mind and so they went with it[1].

Their offices are in Mountain View. I used to live around the corner from them.

[1]: https://www.kiwico.com/blog/2011/06/09/why-the-name-kiwi-cra...

Yes, I think they’re right along Dana Street.

Coincidentally, the crate/box color is brown-yellow, almost like the kiwi fruit skin. Quite sturdy boxes, handy as toys organizer when on road trip with kids. Feeling bad throwing these boxes to trash, but they will add up.

As an idea, maybe they could make use of the surface and print some cut out details which could be eventually assembled into something (a model of some kind). Or the very least put some templates on the website to facilitate the reuse.

Kids would learn that the box should be considered a resource too, not just the juicy sweet content inside, so to speak, extending the kiwi-fruit metaphor.

Sadly there's a long history of American companies taking our NZ identity, after they renamed Chinese Gooseberries as "kiwifruit" many people stopped recognising "kiwi" as a nationality.

Nowdays if you claim to be a kiwi in the US people look at you blankly trying to figure out why you might be a small fuzzy fruit

So-called Chinese gooseberries have nothing to do with gooseberries. The Chinese name is something like “monkey peaches”. “Kiwifruit” is certainly no more misleading than either of those names.

They were called "Chinese Gooseberries" in NZ before they were called "kiwifruit"

Kinda related: Aussies are trying to pull of a similar scam, renaming a Bolivian fruit called achachairu. Check it.. this is supposedly a "news" website calling the fruit by a name made up by Aussie marketers: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-06-19/gallery-achacha...

Is the ordinary Bolivian name achachairú and the Australian grower is marketing it as achacha?

I dunno if I'd get my titties in a tangle over that. It's not like they're renaming it to Burdekin Fruit.

You might want to set aside the anti-American prejudice, as you've got your facts completely wrong.

T&G, the New Zealand kiwi company (founded in 1897 by an England-born immigrant to New Zealand) started marketing their fruit as the kiwi in the US in 1959. This was presumably to get a leg up on their Chinese competitors and to associate the fruit with New Zealand instead of with China.

I lived in the US for 20 years, it's home as much as NZ is.

It was their American marketing manager who changed the name

My kid brother has received a few boxes through a Summer program at his school. They’re form the Atlas line and are pretty fun. We did one just this morning and it’s a good bonding experience.

My kids have done the Kiwi crates and the Atlas crates and they've really liked all of them. I would bet they'd like the Eureka ones when they're older.

We got a three crate subscription. The first crate was disappointing but subsequent ones were better.

We were surprised when the subscription renewed on us, since we thought we paid one time for three crates.

I love how these encourage learning science while playing but they leave out low income kids. I wonder if there’s a way for things like these to be available for low-income kids also?

I think I read about something about a subscription bankrolled by the US government in an early edition of Make Magazine (2006-ish). Every month you'd get an item + a booklet of some sort which suggested an experiment. Apparently you got things like small fossils, and if I remember correctly, a small chunk of some radioactive material. It got cancelled in the 70s... I'll see if I can find it again.

Oh cool, I wonder if a similar program like this could work now. I’ll try to find it also.

Found it! Things of Science: http://ecg.mit.edu/george/tos/ for the price of 5$/year.

[edit: looks like I misremembered though, neither the Make article nor the website mention radioactivity... must have got it mixed up with something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_La...]

Nice! Thanks for digging into that

Reply on news.ycombinator.com