Tinker Crate Subscription Box Review & Coupon – October 2015

Tinker Crate is a subscription for kids ages 9-14 from the makers of Kiwi Crate. Like Kiwi Crate, it comes with everything you need to complete multiple projects based around a central theme. Unlike Kiwi Crate, however, these projects are less craftsy and more based on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning and enrichment.

Tinker Crate kindly sent us this box for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).

The Subscription Box: Tinker Crate

The Cost: $19.95 per month (free shipping)

COUPON: Get 50% off your 1st month! No coupon needed - just use this link.

The Products: STEM-based crafts and DIY projects for kids, with supplemental learning kits, booklets, and activities. Projects are designed to enhance children’s critical thinking and problem solving skills through activities that are exciting and fun!

Ships to: Anywhere in the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and APO addresses

Check out all of our Tinker Crate reviews!

Usually, every box comes with a copy of TinkerZine magazine, which includes articles about that month’s theme, as well as smaller projects and experiments. This month, however, our package came with a copy of Family Fun magazine. It is a special edition, filled with awesome ideas for how to decorate the home for Halloween!

This month’s big project is a motion sensing spider! I have to hand it to Tinker Crate, they always know how to pick a project that will make my nine-year-old super excited!

These are the instructions for this month’s project. They are pretty detailed, but they are very clear, complete, and easy-to-follow. I have to mention, though, this month’s project came with two extra (but small) pages of instructions. It was a doozy.

These were the materials Tinker Crate supplied for the project. We had to supply our own scissors and some tape.

This is our completed motion-sensing spider! It doesn’t look like much yet, but you can clearly see that my son made a very creepy looking spider!

This is the spider in action! It was awesome! Any time someone walked under the doorway here, the creepy spider would drop down and land on his shoulder, then spring back up!

Unfortunately, the fun only lasted about 15 minutes. The picture above might give you some idea of why – everything got tangled up inside and all the pieces kind of imploded.

The verdict: My son and I both still LOVE Tinker Crate, but I have to admit that this month’s project was kind of a bummer. This was a seriously involved project, so we spent a long time (on Halloween, no less), putting this together and then we only got to enjoy it for about 15 minutes. It was partially our fault for using lame tape that didn’t hold everything together very well, but I guess you could also say that Tinker Crate could have included a little tape. They also gave clear instruction on how to tell if the rubber band was not wound tightly enough, but they didn’t mention anything about winding the rubber band too tightly, which I think we may have also done. Nonetheless, this was a really fun project and the results were amazing while they lasted! Here’s hoping we have better luck with our engineering next month!

What did you think of October’s Tinker Crate?