World Map Building Set (11065pcs). Wall Art for Map and Geography Enthusiasts. for Adults and Kids 14+ year old. ALTERNATIVE Product to The Main Brand

Good Christmas gift for my 8 year old

I bought this for my 20 year old son for Christmas. He loves puzzles and maps! The instructions were clear and easy to follow. He, along with is 17 year old sister, finished it in less than a week. The pieces are easy to use and the finished product looks great. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because it isn't the easiest to hang on the wall. The holes don't exactly line up with the studs on our walls and it doesn't lay flat enough against the wall to use dry wall hooks, but we'll figure something out.

Ordered for Christmas gift had problems with receiving my item. But granddaughter loves it

The product was sturdy and well designed. Loved the product. It was missing one hanging bracket. That is why I gave it 4 stars.

Christmas gift for the wife!

this is HUGE. The dots are round instead of square, so easier on the fingers. The background is stable.The bags are labeled with the numbers of the colors that are in the directions. Be sure to pay attention before dumping out into bowls or sorter.

The title says "for Map and Geography Enthusiasts", but they should also add "for those with slightly compulsive personalities who feel an innate need to set things in order and derive pleasure from following instructions exactly", since that's kind of what it takes to build this. For a typical person who doesn't exactly love that stuff, it might be a bit boring since it's just a bunch of counting and matching dots to diagrams and stuff. Fortunately, my brain can't get enough of that sweet sweet dopamine rush that comes from snapping little tiny tiles into exactly the right places, so I loved doing this map.I'm aware of the similar world map from the Danish brick company, but I think this one is better in a few ways (and lacking in others). First off, I think this looks better. The Lego one inexplicably has all of the land mass as white, with the only color in the oceans, which are full of reds and yellows for some reason. This map looks more like a realistic depiction of the earth, with greens and yellows in the land, and various shades of blue in the oceans. Secondly, this one's way cheaper.However, the Lego one more easily lends itself to being a family project, since you put the tiles on plates, then snap the plates together sideways using Technic pins. That lets people work on individual plates, then put them together whenever. Since these plates have to slide together before you put tiles on the edges, that's considerably harder. We still had the kids do a few plates, but I just did it knowing I'd have to pop off a side row or two to attach them later.The other little catch is that once it's done, it doesn't sit perfectly flat. My guess is that the tiles on the border are just ever so slightly smaller than they should be (or the plates underneath ever so slightly bigger) so that the border tiles pull the whole thing tighter. We wanted to hang ours, but you can see in our picture that the curve becomes apparent when you do this.

Packaging : the set comes in a nice box with clear artwork on the front and sides. Within it are the 11,065 parts to build the set including the 40 back plates, corner and edge frame parts, 13 different colors of tile (each in a numbered bag - more notes later), plates for the frame surface, hanging elements, and a brick separator.Parts Quality : The parts quality is on the whole very good, with the only noted variance being that some tiles had a lot more 'clutch power' than others. There were none that had too little clutch power, but some required a fair bit of effort to fully attach.Instructions / Set Design / Thoughts. Usually, I'd break these out, but frankly this set is well enough outside of 'normal' that these things kinda bleed into each other, so. The instructions are very different from the usual, and are presented as 40 16x16 grids of numbered (and colored) circles. The number references what bag a given tile should come out of, and there's way more of some colors than others. It's absolutely key to building this set that the parts be kept separated and well labeled ; I used quart-sized zipper-lock food bags with sharpie numbers on them for *most* of the colors, with a few having so few elements that they just kinda lived in the original packaging. I also set aside one of the frame pieces with one of each color put on it in order so that I would be able to ID any parts that decided to be swiped by cats.The individual plates of the set interlock using a very sturdy dovetail-like system. There is a downside, however - one of the plates has to have been not built on for them to be joined, as the tiles overlap with the joint location. As such, you will either need to leave one row / column on the edge of a tile blank and finish it after adding it to the map, or add tiles as you go and grow the map. This is actually really good for stability, but makes it so you can't easily build a full plate and add it in ... so think ahead for what method will work best for you. Also, keep in mind that this set is physically *VERY LARGE* - I had to set up a temporary folding table for final assembly ; it's safe to say that your dining room table might be in use for a few days while you build this.Finally, it is *heavy*, so hanging it will require some careful thought as to where and how ; screws in drywall anchors is probably going to be the required method of hanging.With that said, it's worthy of being hung on a wall, and I am looking forward to doing so after I move in a few months.