Sunday, March 2, 2008

Techno Gears Marble Mania Extreme

Sean came home from school sick on Thursday and Friday, and I promised him that when he was feeling better, we could put together his marble game. He and Ashton have been begging since Christmas to put it together, but we haven't had the time to spend snapping all 325 pieces into place. Well, yesterday, Abbie-Juice came over to spend some time with the boys, and the 4 of us worked really hard for I won't tell you how many hours, creating this work of art. Or more realistically, they watched asking every minute or so, "Is it ready yet?" Here are the stages of completion of this motorized gear-turning, marble power-lifting, milled, channeled, spinning, shafted, funneled, pendulum-ed Marble Mania-ed entertaining merriment! Here are the three goof-balls watching me from the couch at their leisure.
I got a picture of the manual here- you can see how I have all the pieces pre-counted for each page before I begin construction. Not a lot of details in the instructions, so there was a lot of squinting and counting on my part.
Finally, completion! And the crowd goes wild! I must admit, it was pretty cool watching the marbles go through each of the contraptions, and then up the power lifter to repeat the cycle over and over. Of course, I barely got finished making dinner with Jessica by the time this was back in as many pieces as when I took it out of the box.
And one final photo for you- Kevin decided to grow out his beard, and cut his hair short for an entirely new look. I like it! Different style for him, but it fits. :) And the peacefully sleeping Giada Frittata, the Duchess of Rory on his lap.

4 comments:

Turi Becker said...

I love marble games! I actually read a review of that one a few months ago, and it sounded about how you described it. Pretty cool, but fairly hard to put together. Congrats on finally assembling it...

SnowLeopard said...

You know, I haven't put anything together like this since I was a kid. It was kinda fun, but I did spend a whole lot more time on it that I wanted to. And now the box is sitting in my office so the boys don't scatter the pieces all around the house, like they tend to do with everything else. If you ever want to borrow it to use with Julien, you're welcome to! I bet he would love it. :)

Corinne said...

That's quite the contraption! I hope they had fun!

forever m@mmy said...

Hello,

Any chance that you could scan and share the instructions?
My hubby gets rid of everything, so now, for the summer time, this toy is useless :(