My 5 year old son absolutely loves this. When it arrived, I took one look and thought I'd be working my way through the extensive instructions for ages to figure out how everything fitted together, but he did it the boy way - lots of trial and error fiddling. He is constantly putting bits on and taking them off and making up games with it, and it is definitely his favourite toy at the moment. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but I expect its appeal to last longer than most lumps of plastic.