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Comment by phantasmish | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm that Magnatiles, specifically, were maybe the best value for the dollar we ever got out of toys for our kids. Idk if the quality has held up but our kids abused the hell out of the things and it took them years to finally break just a couple of them (the largest ones are the most vulnerable). They have incredible range, good for babies but still seeing use as a supporting toy up to their tweens. Kinda pricey but if the quality is still as good as it was years ago (can’t say, the ~3 sets we bought over a couple years held up so well we never bought any more) they’re easily worth it.

We have tons of Lego too but these were far better play-value for the dollar. Not even close. Can’t say if the knockoff brands are as good.

(Can’t vouch for any of the rest of these but those giant magnetic tiles look potentially like a much better investment than dedicated e.g. kitchen playsets, way more versatile)

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We just aged out of this as our youngest child is now 11, but I can affirm that magnatiles are fantastic and fun - and that is coming from someone who lionizes legos and considers them the ne plus ultra of toys for children.

That being said ...

We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":

https://elenco.com/

A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.

My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".

I can confirm as someone that had these or a very similar kit as a kid that they were enjoyable and the knowledge proved useful when I started working with real circuits in high school and college.

They blocked Japan IPs on product pages...

Hungary too.. not really optimizing for conversion rates

Even Germany. Simply stupid.

Snap Circuits are just standard electronic components that combine with each other using standard snap buttons [1] from the textile industry. The real “genius” of them is that the grid spacing and the width/thickness of each component is well-balanced such that they are held together securely while being easy to separate using the lever action that a child naturally produces when grabbing something (ie don’t pull straight up). It should be easily replicable and I’d be surprised that there aren’t knockoffs in all the countries that they block from their website.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_fastener

What age did you start introducing snap circuits to your child?

> Idk if the quality has held up

I can vouch for the quality of modern magnatiles

The problem now is that there are a zillion knock-offs sold everywhere, both retail shops and online. We don’t buy them, but the kids get them as gifts. They all have something different, from the magnet positioning to the outer dimensions, presumably to try to dodge some patents. These become the weak point in bigger builds or throw off the dimensions in ways that add up and cause early collapse.

I’ve been quietly removing the gifted knock offs and replacing them with real ones because it makes the experience less frustrating.

We’re starting to have the same problem with LEGO now

So uh, as hackers...

Anyone got any good reverse engineering docs / write-ups? On where the right attachment points are? For those of us interested in, oh, perhaps, 3d printing our own?

(Hack the planet)

Magnatiles are great for adults who want to play with their kids too.

The most fun my kid had was playing make believe games with me. Like I'd say "you're lost in a forest and you see a cabin up ahead and a trail that goes past it. What do you do"? And we'd go from there. Zero dollar cost and unlimited hours of fun until they grow up enough and don't want to play anymore.

This was the first toy I expected to see on the list. Can agree that, though they are somewhat expensive, our kids played with them frequently for the better part of a decade and then we passed them along to cousins who completed the decade of play and then some.

We got some fabric bins to store them in, which made cleanup a 2 minute affair if adults helped or 5 minutes if the kids did it alone.

Highly recommend.

I never thought of playing make believe as just being the dm for kids but that’s really fun.

I would be worried that they break, the magnets fall out and the kids stick it in some orifice

The brand-name ones are surprisingly durable. Can’t speak to the cheaper knockoffs.

The EU's safety rules for children's toys are impressive -- I read them out of curiosity when I was 3D printing a toy.

e.g. dropping a 1kg steel block onto the toy, and checking it doesn't break in an unsafe way (section 8.7 in the link).

https://law.resource.org/pub/eu/toys/en.71.1.2014.html#s8.7

Section A.51 is about magnetic construction toys.

Had to look up the rules on bows and arrows in the European Union when I got to [4.17.4] Bows and arrows. "bows offered for sale with arrows are to be considered as toys" Wait. What? Like, all bows and arrows?

[4.17.4] https://law.resource.org/pub/eu/toys/en.71.1.2014.html#s4.17...

Took a bit to find, yet eventually [Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] "List of products that, in particular, are not considered as toys"

9. "bows for archery over 120 cm long"

[Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

Pfew. Not, quite that crazy.

I think this is worth worrying about, especially with knockoff magnatiles. The magnets are small enough to swallow. If a child swallows two they could die, for the same reason that "buckyball" magnet toys were banned: the magnets can snap together with intestinal tissue in between and perforate the intestinal wall.

Can I suggest putting a strand of Christmas lights inside the completed structure? They get a little diffused and look really cool.

For bonus points, get pics of your kids' faces lit by only that light.

Boom: next year's card.

I recently bought a XXL set for my almost 2yr old daughter... I don't get the hype. I think that the magnets are just not strong enough, so the structures that I was able to build are always super weak and would collapse if you just look at them from a funny angle...

Yup our kids still play with MagnaTiles.

We actually mainly bought the knock offs cuz they were 1/3 the price. Can’t quite tell much of a difference but maybe we just got lucky.

We have bought a bunch of them secondhand. They arrive already scratched up, but who cares.

I prefer to think of it as 'battle tested'.

FWIW I bought some 2 years ago and the quality is still very high.

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