Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this product a few weeks ago. I have no affiliation with the company whatsoever, but after seeing how unfairly they are being maligned after the founder was on Shark Tank, I feel compelled to write a review. This is a very well made product. The pieces are sturdy, the sizes and curved pieces are well thought through and they have done the work of figuring out a lot of very elaborate fort plans that produce forts that children are excited to play in. The fabric clips are easy to use and take the forts to a whole new level. The pieces come with a very high quality storage bag, which really holds everything in a very compact way (though it is heavy, but that's inevitable with its weight and size). My one caution would be that you should probably heed their advice that this is for 5 ½ and up. I have two boys - one almost 5 and one 2 ½. My older son has been able to help me build and both do enjoy playing in the forts, but they are not quite ready to be gentle enough with the forts. The forts are fairly sturdy, but they do not hold up to my two year old exiting through the windows. I don't really fault the product for this though - I bought it for too young of children. They do really love the forts and are using them for lots of pretend play and nothing has collapsed on them, but we do have to do regular repairs on the forts given my boys' roughness. I would like to address a few of the one star comments from people who have not seen or interacted with the product. Price - I admit, I too balked about the price at first. It is much more expensive than other fort building sets. But it is also much larger scale and includes a lot that the others do not. The most important difference is that Fort Magic includes curved pieces. This makes all the difference in being able to build cool things (spaceships, submarines, cars, etc.) vs. boxes of all shapes and sizes. Second, it includes fabric clips so that you can actually wrap your fort instead of just throwing a blanket over the top. Ease of Reproduction - Some people have said that they could re-create this kit at a hardware store. That's really not true. Yes, you could cut PVC pieces down to size, but you would not find curved pieces or the six way connectors that are really key to building anything interesting. In fact, I tried to create my own similar type of set last year and found that six way connectors sell only from furniture retailers and are around eight dollars a piece! Fort Magic includes 35 of them. Overall, I found that there was no way I could create as cool of a product for anywhere near the cost I paid for this (especially if I had to find a way to custom fabricate the curved pieces). Margins - Some are complaining that the company's margins are too high. Again, when I watched Shark Tank, this was my reaction at first too. But keep in mind, that as the founder described it they are nowhere near profitable yet. Undoubtedly a lot of money has been poured into figuring out how to create some of their unique pieces, developing designs, marketing, etc. They really need these sort of margins at this point to have any hope of staying afloat. Fabric - There are a number of complaints about the fabric not being included. Here's what you have to understand: in order to make your forts look exactly like theirs you would need custom cut fabric for each fort. They do provide directions for how to create custom covers for the forts on their website, but providing all this fabric would be cost prohibitive and would result in less creativity because you'd be limited to the pre-set designs. We have used bedsheets, scarves and pillow cases and it actually adds to the home-made feel and fun. Are our forts as perfect and beautiful as their pictures? No. But they are still awesome and there is room for our kids to add on their own creative designs. I don't usually write reviews, but this is a high quality, open-ended, creative, award winning product and the bad reviews from people who have never seen or interacted with the product are in my view very unfair, so I had to add my two cents.