Marble runs are fun. The best part is, you can build them using a whole host of stuff, from cardboard rolls and pipe insulation to Hot Wheels tracks and more. There are also plenty of pre-made marble run structures that you can get as a kit. The MagnetCubes do them one better by allowing you to build marble runs in the form of complex roller coasters
A construction toy for building roller coaster marble runs, it lets you build any type of coaster track you want, with twists, slopes, and tight turns of all sorts to fill your wildest amusement park dreams. You can start with a small one today, expand it to ten times the size by the weekend, and take it all apart to build something else after that – this thing lets you fashion the craziest elevated railway your imagination can concoct.
The MagnetCubes consist of cubes, tracks, panels, and clips. The skeletal cubes are designed to snap together from the top, sides, and bottom, allowing you to assemble them as high, long, and wide as you want, while the panels serve as ground-level skeletal units that you can use in place of cubes in sections you don’t need to stack for extra height. The clips serve as support fasteners in sections where the magnetic connection between the cubes may not stay completely stable as the marble passes through (such as tight corners), while the tracks snap on to the cubes and panels, essentially using them as the support structure.
There are 10 different kinds of tracks, each of which is meant to serve its own purpose on the coaster. You get straight tracks, quarter turn tracks, and U-turn tracks for building basic railways at the same height, with down tracks, down-turn tracks, top-hill tracks, down-extender tracks, and bottom-hill tracks allowing you to create slopes of changing heights through the length of the course. They also have loop tracks for those crazy looping sections and magnetic launcher tracks for more powerful marble run starts.
Once assembled, the MagnetCubes work just like any marble run – you drop a marble on the tracks and let gravity do the work, with the initial force causing the ball to run through every section of the railway. As you can tell with the wide variety of modules, though, you can use this to build any kind of elevated rail structure you fancy. Want to make it look like the Terminator roller coaster you rode when you went on vacation a few years back? This can definitely work. How about a massive coaster with the biggest loops you can cobble together? Just make sure you have enough loop tracks to get a proper one done. How about one that covers you entire desk at work, so you can have marbles rolling through a course while write code all day? Provided you can still get work done with a giant toy on your desk, that’s definitely an option.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the MagnetCubes. You can reserve a kit for pledges starting at $35.