Ello Aquaria People Places & Things Set - 168 Pieces Review

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(More customer reviews)When our daughter (the Lego-maniac) first asked for "Ello" for her birthday, we had no idea what she was talking about, but she was adamant that as a soon-to-be eight year old she NEEDED to own "Ello".
What is "Ello"? Well, it's part building system, part craft kit and almost all fun. My daughter was drawn to these boxes as soon as she saw them in our local store! These colorful geometric plastic shapes can be combined to make buildings, people, cars, critters, gardens, spaceships - almost anything your child can think of - using cubes and spheres with slots to connect them all. There are two themes available - Ello Aquaria, with a primarily blue and green and clear undersea color scheme and the Ello-opolis city set, which is mostly pink, dusty blue and green. We ended up buying all the available sets (both the Aquaria and the Ello-opolis), as many of the parts are unique to a theme or Character set. Our daughter has had a lot of fun this week mixing and matching the Aquaria set with the Ello-opolis set to make the most of all the pieces. Our kitchen island is now it's own "Ello" Island as I write this review, complete with townhouse, apartment building, garden, tons of people and vehicles.
Our daughter has really had a lot of fun building and rebuilding charcters, buildings and more with her Ello. She's created apartments with elevators, cable lines between buildings and undersea gardens with paths of flowers for characters to stroll along. "Mom" has also spent more than a little time late at night "testing" Ello to see how much fun it can be for "kids" outside of the recommended "5 to 10" age range. (Age range note: I think it would be difficult for children at the younger end of this range to successfully build with many of these parts. For younger girls, this will definitely be a toy that requires parental assistance.)
The colors of the Ello parts are bright and pleasing and it comes with a good variety of shapes to build with. There are a lot of teeny tiny parts, so clean up takes a keen eye but the boxes are made to be storage containers for the parts, which is helpful. Most of the parts seem durable, although some of the "stems" have bent (but not yet broken) while being inserted into some of the beads.
The "people, places and things" sets do have sufficient pieces to build a decent building and more, but we have found that the character sets (sold seperately) have many unique pieces that really add to your building options. Although each "people, places and things" set does come with some vinyl cling stickers, the Sticker packs (sold separately) do add a lot.
We'd definitely buy more if they were available. In future sets, we'd love to see bigger feet for characters, the addition of spheres and cubes with holes for the "stems" going in both directions, holes drilled into more of the unique shapes/circles so you can build more and cubes that have slots in perpendicular directions to allow for more building options.
All in all, the whole family is happy having Ello around.

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