Colossal Paper Machines is a big, fun, book older kids will love

Colossal Paper Machines is a massive book. It’s two bananas tall, a banana and a half wide, is one of the heaviest books we’ve received and is one that your kids will use, have fun with and spend hours putting together. The book has 10 models that older kids (or you!) can build out of thick quality, almost cardboard paper.  It’s an amazing feat of engineering, reverse engineering, creativity and precise glue placement that will boggle your mind.

How difficult can it be?, that’s what I thought to myself. It’s just cardboard, has all of the dotted lines for you to fold and color coded areas to glue, this is simple. The book is recommended for kids 9 and up, our 5 year old is years away from being able to do these, but he certainly enjoyed daddy doing a couple of them.

“When are you going to finish daddy?” was a phrase I heard for a while. The models in Colossal Paper Machines are rated by time and difficulty.  For example the first model that you’ll see in the book is for the steamboat. It’s rated easy and should take between 45 minutes to an hour to finish.  It took us about an hour and a half, but I blame that on not concentrating and trying to multitask while doing it.

Once it was done though the model was remarkably sturdy and allowed for active play with our five year old. He keeps it in his bedroom now, sometimes playing with it on his bed with some action figures. He’s aware that it’s not a plastic ship, but has enough faith in it to put Wolverine and some of his dinosaurs on it to cruise down the Mississippi River.

The directions to each model are very specific and tell you exactly how to best put the model together.  At the beginning of the book there is an overview of tools that you’ll need, different folds you’ll encounter and how to assemble some of the parts.  This is not origami, but you’ll encounter a couple different tricky folds that make the vehicles host their wheels, cabs or other features.

The book recommends using tweezers to hold together some of the folds while you’re gluing them in place. We had better success using needle nose pliers. However, whatever you’re more comfortable with will do the job just fine. You’ll need some long tool like that so you don’t accidentally pull the paper apart after the glue sticks to your fingers. It happened to us several times, go ahead and use the pliers or tweezers.

Popping out the pieces to each vehicle was simple. There were no rips, hanging chads (there’s a term I haven’t heard since the 2000 election) or dings that prevent your model from being put together perfectly. Follow the directions, punch out each area according to the directions, pack your patience and you’ll have a big, paper creation in the near future. Also, the pages that once houses the model pieces that you popped out rip cleanly out of the book so that you’re not looking at old templates.

During the process of putting one together your mind will try to wrap around how they were created. It’s akin to a fire truck that is broken down into 263 little pieces, but put back together using those same pieces becomes a fire truck again. If your old child likes LEGO and are 9 or older; then Colossal Paper Machines is something that they will really enjoy.

Hint: take your time, get the tools that you need at the ready and get started. They aren’t as simple as you think. However, they are time consuming, just be patient and you’ll have perfect vehicles in no time at all.