Mark Rober's new CrunchLabs toys, ranked for a 7 to 10 year old this holiday season

For most kids in this age band, The Crunchinator at $34.99 is the one worth the money, because it is the only kit in the line whose play doesn't consume anything. If you're spending under $15, Turbo Trick Planes gets you five designs and a reusable launcher for the same price as a kit with one experiment in it. If the child is 7, your on-label choice is Slime Prank Lab, graded 6+ when almost everything else in the range is 8+. And Elephant Toothpaste Blast, the one your kid will name first, is the one I'd think hardest about at $24.99 for six ingredient sets.

What I weighed: the manufacturer's own published price and age grading from the Moose Toys launch release, what each kit uses up per play, and what independent reviewers have actually tested. That last point needs saying plainly: the hands-on reviews that exist cover the CrunchLabs subscription boxes, not these retail kits. Nobody has published drop tests or durability ratings on the Moose Toys line yet. Where I rank on durability below, I'm ranking on design and consumables, and I'll tell you where that's an inference rather than a finding.

The Crunchinator crushes things using what Moose Toys describes as 30 times multiplied strength, through three interchangeable crunch plates. The Toy Insider's listing, dated this month, confirms it at $34.99 for ages 8 and up, on shelf at Walmart, Target and Amazon, with soda cans, bananas and ping pong balls given as the intended victims. It also has a built-in phone holder so kids can film the crush.

It wins the top slot on one structural fact: nothing in the box gets used up. Feed it whatever's in the recycling and it runs again. Every other kit here either burns through an ingredient set or depends on a consumable you supply. That is the single best predictor of whether a toy is still in rotation in week three, and it's the reason I'd spend the extra twenty dollars here rather than on two cheaper kits.

The real drawback is that no one has published anything on how a 30X leverage mechanism holds up in a $34.99 plastic housing. Trustpilot reviewers of the subscription kits describe them as "well made with thoughtful details," but those are CrunchLabs' own boxes, not Moose Toys' licensed retail production, and I wouldn't transfer the finding. Skip it if your child is 7 and you take age grading seriously, and skip it if the idea of crushed banana on the kitchen table is a problem. The toy itself is dry; the mess is entirely whatever you put in it.

Turbo Trick Planes is $14.99, graded 8+, and includes five aerodynamic plane designs plus an adjustable launcher. Compare that with the other two kits at the same price: Egg Drop Challenge is one experiment, Stunt Bike Launcher is one vehicle and a ramp. Five designs and a launcher whose angle you can change is, on the published spec alone, more variables for a kid to play with per dollar than anything else in the range.

It is also the least messy thing in the line by some distance. There's no reagent, no slime, no egg.

The drawback is that Moose Toys hasn't published what the planes are made of, and in a launcher toy the planes are the part that bends. If they're foam or card, a hard year of use is optimistic, and there's no stated replacement path. Skip this one if you haven't got a hallway or a yard; an adjustable launcher in a small living room is a lamp problem.

At $14.99 and ages 8+, this is the parachute-equipped version of a Mark Rober video that Moose Toys says has passed 142 million views. That matters more than it sounds. A kid who has watched the original arrives with a hypothesis already formed, and the kit becomes a test of their idea rather than a set of instructions to follow. That's the best case for the whole line, and it's strongest here.

The honest gap: the published material doesn't say whether the kit uses real eggs, supplies a substitute, or expects you to raid the fridge. Until that's clear, budget for a carton and a tarp. Skip it if your child hasn't seen the video and isn't interested in the premise, because unlike the Crunchinator there's only one thing in the box to think about, and the second run is the same as the first.

This is the kit with the demand behind it. Moose Toys puts the source video past 300 million views, and the product promises 15-foot eruptions. It's $24.99, ages 8+, and it comes with six ingredient sets.

Six. That's the number to sit with. Six eruptions for $24.99 works out at roughly $4.17 a go, and when they're gone the box is a plastic vessel with no published refill. I've no doubt the first one is the best thirty seconds of the whole line. I also think a toy that is finished by the end of a Saturday afternoon is a fireworks purchase, not a toy purchase, and this site's test is whether something still gets played with after week one.

The fair counter-argument is that the moment is the product. Mark Rober says the toys are "engineered to deliver huge, blow-your-mind moments with dedicated videos explaining the science," and if you're buying one big shared experience with a visiting cousin, six sets is five more than you need. That's a legitimate way to spend $24.99. It just isn't what most people think they're buying at that price.

This is the genuinely messy one. A 15-foot eruption goes outside, on grass, with everyone in clothes you don't mind. Skip it if you have no outdoor space.

Almost everything in this range is graded 8+. Slime Prank Lab is one of only two products Moose Toys lists at 6+, alongside the $24.99 Squirrel Dash Game, which makes it the default pick if you're buying for the younger half of this blog's 7 to 10 band and you'd rather not overshoot the label. It's $14.99 and contains slime experiments plus a fart speaker and a snot pump.

That description tells you the trade-off. This is the least engineering-forward kit in the line, and the science content is thinner than the egg drop or the toothpaste reaction. It's also, by its own description, slime: mess is the feature, not a side effect, and it goes on a wipeable surface.

Skip it if you're buying for a 9 or 10-year-old who wants the mechanism, not the gag. Skip it outright if slime is already banned in your house, which for a lot of parents it is.

• The Crunchinator, $34.99, 8+. For the 8 to 10-year-old who repeats things. The only kit here with no consumable.
• Turbo Trick Planes, $14.99, 8+. For the smallest sensible spend, and for a house where mess is the deciding factor.
• Egg Drop Challenge, $14.99, 8+. For the child who has already watched the video and has a theory.
• Elephant Toothpaste Blast, $24.99, 8+. For one outdoor event, not for a month of play.
• Slime Prank Lab, $14.99, 6+. For a 7-year-old, on the label rather than over it.

If none of those fits, the two kits I've deliberately left out are worth a look on spec: the $44.99 Hover Ring Blaster, the line's flagship at 8+, and the $24.99 Squirrel Dash Game, a chain-reaction tabletop game graded 6+ and the only one of the eight that two children can play against each other. Both are too new for me to rank against anything. And if you want durability evidence rather than inference, the sensible move is to wait a season: this line reached shelves in summer 2026, and there's simply no published testing on it yet.