The NeoCube

I stumbled upon a promotional video for The Neocube a while ago, and thought that it looked like a pretty cool thing to play around with. It is a creativity toy/puzzle that consists of 216 small magnetic spheres. You can use these spheres to make all sorts of shapes, including a 6x6x6 cube.

I think that the Neocube could be classified as a puzzle, because it is fairly challenging to figure out how to make it into a cube and other objects if you don't read how to do it. Unfortunately, I had seen a video on how to do it when I was eagerly anticipating its arrival, so I don't know how challenging it actually would be.

There are a number of base shapes that you can make, such as triangles, pentagons, and hexagons. These shapes can be combined to create interesting 3D shapes.  While triangles and hexagons lay flat, if you make a pentagon it ends up being concave, which is kind of neat when you combine them. Check out their website for more pictures of things you can make.

The best way to get a sense of how cool this is is just to watch this video:



Pretty awesome, eh? It seems a bit steep at $25, considering it is just a bunch of magnets, but I guess that is what magnets cost. I looked at websites that just sold spherical magnets, and the price ends up about the same.

I had a lot of fun playing around with these things. I would sit for hours on end just making different things. My girlfriend also had a good time with them, though she enjoys just mushing them around more. I definitely recommend them if you're into fiddly little creativity toys such as this. You might just surprise yourself, pretty much anybody I've handed these to has had a good time with them. Just keep them away from hard drives and credit cards!

Tomorrow I'll write about my first experience using a laser cutting machine to make a puzzle box.