4M Kidz Labs Solar System Planetarium Model

Thought it would be a lot bigger

As this has been bought as a Christmas present and now in oz I can't make a comment. Sorry

I must say I really didn't expect much from this item. When I bought it, I thought it'd be a bit of quick fun, a two minutes and throw away kind of job. But it turns out it's much more than that!How good it is for child use, I unfortunately cannot say. I myself am somewhat of a big kid, and love science and space. And I loved it. It's easy to do, and you end up with a nice display piece afterwards. Also it comes with awesome glow in the dark paint, which actually illuminates the planets at night time.The paint provided gives you the freedom to paint the planets how you like.Make sure you look carefully at the instructions, to make sure you've put the right planets in the right place!Also be careful what poles you use to stick the planets in, as if you use the wrong ones you won't be able to spin them past each other.Some of the plastic pieces are difficult to extract and put together, probably because this isn't the highest quality item out there. For the price you pay, you really can't go wrong though. A great way to spend an afternoon!Pros: so much fun, glow in the dark and a quality ornament afterCons: Some of the plastic is difficult to separate. Also quite difficult to put the planets together.Overall, highly recommended.

Doing this right now with my daughter. Was going well until we started to paint and realised there was no where to hold the spheres. The instructions didn’t mention what to do with the little steel bars. Plus there’s 9 bars and 8 planets. All the bars are different lengths, which don’t tally with the lengths in one image or the box images. This has thoroughly tripped us up. There is no mention of which bar to put with which planet so runs the risk of having the planets bang into each other. Very annoying and making a lovely afternoon rather stressful. We had to ignore the instructions and wing it. There is no clear way to identify the planets once they are out of the packaging and clipped together either. Apart from trying to match up markings on the little pictures, which did work but was time consuming and a little difficult. My daughter is generally enjoying it, and I like that there is data about the planets in the book and on the arms of the solar system. Looks good once it’s together and painted - small but good. Haven’t seen the effectiveness of the glow paint yet - hopefully later. Good priced set but unless you’re happy to do it with minimal guidance I’d maybe invest a little more in one, in the hope to get more comprehensive instructions.

I absolutely love this, each child painted a couple of planets, and then we used the glow in the dark paint over the top. We made a backdrop from card painted black and used some of the glow in the dark paint to make tiny dots to look like stars. It’s so nice we’ve put it in the lounge and they all really enjoyed it. Really great

Gift for my nephew who wasn’t overly impressed

It is a blast to build and learn with this product but do be careful as 'small parts' are included with the planets etc. It went together easily and my kid enjoyed clipping the planets and sun into solid balls, a few didn't seat quite perfect and it did take some effort to remove the plastic 'nubbins' left over from the frame the planets were attached too. The OH helped with the painting side (as I am no picasso!), the instructions did say the paint will stick better if you sand everything slightly (sand paper was included BTW) but we didn't bother and everything went on fine and isn't coming off any time soon.One thing I would say is that it is incredibly easy to disassemble so unless you decide to glue it together or something it can be taken apart (or explode apart if dropped off a shelf) and then put back together, can't say it isn't robust though ;)

Nice gift and project for my son. The paints that come with it are not very good. But we had acrylic paint in, which was much better than the paints supplied. The ring that comes with Saturn is just paper and it keeps hitting the planets around it, so not sure how long the ring will last.