Haba Marble Ball track review for The Toadstool

I don't know about you, but we have always loved marble tracks in this house. Ever since J was small, he has had a fascination with setting up and watching marble tracks - tubes, boxes, toy railway tracks, in fact almost anything that could carry a small glass ball was seized upon to see how it could work with other items to make a track.

So when the Haba Ball Track (Medium construction set with looping track) from The Toadstool arrived, J was almost speechless! You can see a video with all their excitement here. He and D pounced on the boxes, pulled out the solid wooden pieces and started building. I was hugely impressed with the quality of the tracks - something we are becoming familiar with from Haba. Real wood, carefully crafted to create a range of different track pieces that balance and clip together. The kit includes rubbery plastic clips to hold the wooden blocks together, helping to stop them sliding apart, as well as marbles to kick start the fun!

And its not only incredible quality that Haba are renowned for, you can find out more about Haba's eco credentials and ethics here.

The packaging describes the product as a ball track. By that, it means marbles, as it makes the perfect marble run and marbles are also included.

We were sent a 31 piece set called the Haba Ball Track (Medium construction set with looping track) , an additional set called Haba ball track Clamps and Ramps, and a Haba ball track flexible ball track addition. With that we managed to cover the table, slide marbles down the flexible tube safely towards the floor, and then roll down more slopes.

There are various other kits available as add-ons to the ball track - you can see some of them here.  There is a large choice available and if you need any advice about what sets would be suitable and which add-ons would work best in combination with what you are purchasing, then our experience of The Toadstool is that you only need ask to get excellent product advice and assistance. 

One of the things we really loved about the ball track was that there is complete flexibility in the way you set it up as a marble run. There is no right or wrong way to do it and you can try out lots of different combinations to see what works best. That is brilliant for learning and developing imagination and problem solving skills.

This incredible flexibility means that this product has fantastic play value as it can be used creatively with additional cardboard tubes you have from packaging (eg empty giftwrap tubes, kitchen rolls etc). You could easily also combine it up with any other wooden blocks you have to make even more combinations of marble run.

When the boys aren't busy playing with the Haba ball track, we find that Miss T likes to sit quietly and 'experiment' with the pieces. She will pop marbles in different holes to see where they come out and she enjoys rolling the marbles down single pieces of the track even when they are not all put together.

I love watching her at play like this as you can see her totally absorbed in her 'investigations'. Of course, she also loves the excitement of seeing Daddy, J and D building the biggest marble runs they can with the set!

As an added bonus, this is a toy with real 'slow toy' appeal - no batteries required, ethically and sustainably made, extremely durable and high quality and of course hours of fun. It is aimed at children aged 3-10 but I can see this appealing to my children even longer than this because of their interest in marble runs.

We absolutely love the Haba ball track in this house and it is definitely a set that we could keep adding to with the additional add-on products available over many years for extra fun and excitement!

Disclosure: We won these Haba products in a blogging competition with The Toadstool. We wished to write this review of the products because we love them! All opinions are our own.