Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to like this thing, because it was an affordable piece of striking equipment. I'll review it for its merits as such first: You fill the base with bags of gravel or sand. Do not fill it with water. It advertises that you're free to do this, but you're also free to pour wet cement down your sink drain. Not a good idea. Once you do so, and manage to get the bag to stand at any height - not terribly easy owing to the laddered construction of the spine - that is, the notched plastic pillar the "bag" sits around - it'll be too low. I'm just over 64 inches tall, superfly weight, and this thing is too short for me. I have it at the second highest position. The highest position will not hold given the molding of the ladder. It's just not built to fit into that slot. Being made a sort of polystyrene or something similar, it doesn't give too much, not even after two months of continuous use. This can be a good thing, as it encourages you to pop your strikes back, rather than try to dig through it. If you're trying for more a style of punching through a target, that's still feasible, it just demands better hand and wrist posture to avoid injury. In that sense, this would be a simple and effective training tool, and a good addition to a home gym. Although I'd wager it's too short be of any use to anyone but a child. And you probably don't want your child to use this. I think it's a polystyrene core, as I said, sheathed in a PVC shell with the Everlast logo on it. Somehow, this managed to necessitate a Prop 65 warning. I know PVC can be made poorly and off-gas some nasty chemicals, but I also know that that's less and less true as we have gotten better at making PVC. My guess is they've added phthalates or lead to the compound, earning them the warning. Want some cancer with your exercise? Of course, that's just a Prop 65 warning, everything is toxic, enjoy life, you'll be fine, etc... The plastic core, however, whether it's entire nontoxic or not, is absolutely shredded. To reiterate, I am very small. I do not have a lot of striking power. And yet after two months of use that was not continuous (this thing is not a joy, after all), maybe clocking in a very liberal estimate of 5 hours of total use, the core sheds a cloud of microplastic dust every time I hit it. Every time I tap it. This is stored indoors in proper conditions, not exposed to sunlight, nothing. It's just made terribly in every regard. Other reviews talk about the base, which is made with the attention to detail that you might expect from a walrus. I should hope I don't need to expound on that. Please, please don't buy this. I bought this is December, and so I'd love to return this for a refund, but if I can't, maybe I can at least dissuade some other potential buyers from wasting their time, money, and energy.