Every year I tell myself that I should start my Christmas shopping earlier… but here I am again. If you are anything like me and are looking for a nearly last minute gift, and you happen to be shopping for a technically savvy 11-13 year old, I may be able to help! A few months ago I reviewed a 6 in 1 Educational Solar Kit (a great gift for younger kids) from OWI that I had a lot of fun building with my kids. OWI sent out their new 535 Robotic Arm Edge Kit ($53.95 retail but on great sale from OWI right now) for me to try. As the recommended age for this kit is 13+ , my 6 and 3 year olds were not going to be helping with the construction.

The Robotic Edge kit is an intermediate level, build it yourself robotic arm that has five gear boxes to drive the different parts of the arm. Each gear box has a small electric motor that runs on the batteries you install (4 D batteries total, not included). The finished arm has a vertical reach of 15 inches and a horizontal reach of 12.6 inches. The base of the arm rotates 270 degrees and can move the first section of the arm 180 degrees. The wired remote control uses 5 rocker switches to move the motors back and forth. The product information says the arm is capable of lifting up to 100g (about a quarter of a pound). The end of the arm is equipped with a light, which allows for great visibility when playing with the toy. One of the excellent details built into the design of the gear boxes is an audible clutch that protects the gears from overloading and becoming damaged.

I spent a couple of hours last night with my kitchen table scattered with robot parts. I must admit at this juncture that my first thought at opening the box was “wow that is a lot of parts!” There are 171, to be exact. I found the instruction book and got started. The kit was well thought out and made from quality components. The instructions were very well written, or more precisely, drawn- the entire instruction book has surprisingly few words, yet is easy to follow and understand. I must also confess to having a couple of stereotypical male moments at the beginning of my assembly. I had to partially disassemble and reassemble a couple of parts to swap components, as I had skimmed the directions for that step instead of read the directions for the step. The designers at OWI have clearly identified every screw and nut and bolt, even to the point of color coding the different gears (it was one of these details that I skimmed over). My error was corrected, I learned my lesson, and proceeded to follow the instructions meticulously.

Having successfully finished the assembly, I tried to pick up the screwdriver laying next to the robot. Using the wired remote control to move the different motors for the “shoulder”, “elbow”, “wrist”‘ and pincher, the robot picked up the screwdriver with no trouble. I spent nearly a half hour playing with the robot only to realize it was late and this write-up would have to wait until tomorrow. Once again the people at OWI have put out a toy that is a lot of fun to build and play with. I was pleased to spend a few hours building, and look forward to spending more time teaching my kids to operate the Robot Arm Edge (they are crazy about it and very quickly learned to use the controls to pick up toy lizards).

Golden Egg Rating

Overall, I’d give the OWI KIT Robotic Arm Edge 5 out of 5 Golden Eggs. It’s not a gift for just anybody, but for the right person it’s a great product! The directions are thorough, the components well made, and the company took precautions to make sure this is a toy that won’t break the first time you use it. Thanks for letting us test it out, OWI!