Geomag GREEN LINE Color Magnetic Building Set review

A few days ago the PR folks for Geomag sent us over a sample of a Geomag GREEN LINE Color Magnetic Building Set as well as another set I’ll be reviewing with the kiddos later in the week.

If you’re already familiar with Geomag, the difference with the GREEN LINE is it’s made using 100% recycled plastic, can be found at Target, but there doesn’t appear to be anything noticeably different between it and the more-pieces-but-potentially-worse-for-the-environment versions you can get on Amazon. Except the price.

So I’ll give you the parent’s review from watching a 5yo & and 7yo play with these for about an hour and a half straight.

First off, if your kid loses marbles and the like, welcome to moving couches. Due to the stacking challenges that my kids kept throwing at each other we moved some furniture for those little balls. They stack well, connect strongly, and both my kids said that 42 pieces was not enough, although each was playing with a few pieces and sharing is not their strong suit at the moment.

The 42 piece Geomag GREEN LINE building set comes with two containers to hold your stems and balls. It also comes with two bases. The bases do not really have anywhere to hang out, they don’t attach to each other, nor do they attach to the cases which would be kind of useful to keep everything together. I mean if you’re going to make a storage solution add a clip or something? You’ll want a zip lock to keep things together.

You also might want a zip lock because the age range for this. My 5yo was having great difficulty attempting to get magnets that were fighting her into the case. I mean, magnets are going to do what magnets are going to do but after showing her a couple of times I think we’re just going to have me or the 7yo picking these up for the time being.

42 pieces, once again is not enough. You’re going to want more. 2 bases, 20 stems, 20 balls.

As near as I can tell, the balls are not magnetic themselves, so I don’t think there’s any fear of a neodymium stomach magnet nightmare if a kid swallowed a ball, however don’t swallow ’em. Magnets are in the little sticks, and seem more than strong enough.

While this did spark the imagination of my children, and it did get them interested in collaborating, the small number of pieces was brought up many many times that they could not build something quite big enough. That said, they did, and continue to have fun with the toy.

After a couple of days because of these we’ve had discussions on magnets and structural architecture, and I’ve realized I need to brush up on magnets a little more as I evidently forgot how to explain how they work.

While I’m all for saving the environment, the cost per piece of the GREEN LINE is about 52% higher than similar non-GREEN in their Amazon store.