Very Disappointing

Reviewed by Kristen M., 2006-11-06

I picked this item up for my 6 year old nephew who loves science.
We put it together one night and I was surprised to find that the base and volcano are incredibly thin plastic that crack under any pressure at all. The plaster/sand mixture was impossible to work with, it just balled up into clumps and there was no real way of spreading it around smoothly. We both ended up with plaster all over us. Once it had dried, he was excited to get to paint it. As soon as he began to paint, parts of the plaster started breaking off in chunks.
Hooking the plastic tubing up was not a major problem but I had issues keeping it hooked together. The "pump" system was supposed to send vinegar into a baking soda chamber to push up into the volcano. Instead the "pump" (which was a squeeze bottle) pushed the vinegar weakly upwards and then once it hit the baking soda chamber it clogged up. When it finally made its way out through the volcano after me squeezing the bottle as hard as possible, it barely trickled out. Once it had trickled enough, the rest of the plaster fell off as it got wet. He and his sisters just looked at me and asked "Is that it?" After three tries we trashed the whole thing.
Also, the "rock samples" that they give you in the kit are the size of the tip of your fingernail. I'm a geologist and these are not rare, expensive rocks. There was no reason to not include larger samples.
He was very disappointed in the whole thing and so was I. I can't believe that the Smithsonian put their name on this product. We'll go back to our plaster volcano with vinegar and baking soda.