Wild Science Hyperlauncher Rocket Ball Factory

This is not the first Wild Science set I have reviewed on my blog. Previously, I have enjoyed having a 'Lava Laugh' (amongst other things!) with the Wild Science Beauty Salon and made lip balm with the Wild Science Lip Balm Laboratory. Both these sets had a decidedly 'girlie' flavour. Not so with the latest of the Wild Science sets I was sent to review. The Hyperlauncher Rocket Ball Factory has much more boy appeal and contains everything you need to make your own Mass Accelerating Launch Ball.

As with all the Wild Science sets, the instruction booklet gives very clear, step by step diagrammatic instructions with lots of science to support the school curriculum. The importance of safety is emphasised and the kit comes with a set of protective goggles - guaranteed to make you feel like a 'real' scientist!

The kit is aimed at boys (and girls with a preference for such things) in the 8+ years age category. I set my ever willing teenagers the challenge of trying out the kit, including videoing their efforts. This is how they got on.

I was impressed with how well the bouncy balls turned out, although they do need to be stored in a plastic bag to stop them drying out and becoming too hard. We had to limit the experimenting part to what we could do inside as the weather was not good enough to take the experiments outside. 

There are plenty of the 'hypergranules' left to make more bouncy balls with the potential for much more experimentation.

I really love the Wild Science range. I think they are great fun and if they can capture the interest of our children and inspire a passion for science - that can only be a good thing.

RRP £12.99

Wild Science - Lip Balm Laboratory

My children have already experienced the Wild Science Beauty Salon - the older ones supervising little Addy to get her experimenting and thinking in a scientific way. It was lovely to have the opportunity to do the same with the Lip Balm Laboratory from Interplay that I was sent to review.

Once again, I was impressed with the quality of the set, the instruction booklet that contained plenty of information in a very digestible format and I particularly loved the workbench that kept everything neat and to hand with a 'laboratory' feel to it.

Although the ingredients are all non toxic, the kit is intended for use by children 8+ with adult supervision so it isn't something that you should let them loose with while you try and grab a bit of 'me' time. We did enjoy our afternoon as scientists and it definitely made a change from a board game or jigsaw.

The video shows how we got on.

Wild Science Beauty Salon Set - Review

Wild Science Beauty Salon Set

£19.99

"Experiment using this cool Beauty Salon and make lots of bath bombs, scented crystals, scented note paper and much more!"

The trouble with asking anyone brought up on old school Blue Peter (John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves) to review a toy on camera, is that they instantly adopt "TV presenter" persona and give you a full half hour program complete with "here's one I made earlier". Well my sister does, anyway!

I have had to edit her video to within an inch of its life to get it down to my target of under 2 minutes, but I had such a lot of fun doing it.

The toy we were reviewing, the Wild Science Beauty Salon Set, was quite surprisingly - REAL SCIENCE but with a girly twist.

I loved science at school and went on to do my University degree in Chemistry. This kit ticked the boxes for me in terms of the quality of the apparatus and chemicals. The safety goggles took me right back to my days in the lab!

The well illustrated instruction booklet gave clear, step by step instructions for a variety of projects along with the science behind them and information about safety.

The experiment that my sister demonstrates in the video didn't work quite as well  as it could have (I think her soap solution was too dilute and I would have used more of the red colouring) but it does (I hope) give a sense of what the kit is all about. Enjoy!