Marble run toys typically rely on just gravity to send a marble careening through a complex maze of obstacles, but the creator of Marblelous thinks they can be improved through technology. These new marble run building sets feature powered Wi-Fi-connected components that can keep balls rolling continuously and a marble-detecting sensor that can incorporate your smart home devices into your elaborate Rube Goldberg-inspired courses.
Marblelous is being made available through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that has already surpassed its $10,952 funding goal. The most basic starter set, which is available at a discounted price of about $87, comes with 10 meters of track and an assortment of obstacles. If you’d rather jump in with both feet, you can spend around $547 on a heavily-discounted Mega Geek Pack that includes two starter sets and six electronic components. Shipping is expected to start as early as June 2025 since all of the expensive tooling needed for manufacturing has already been created.
Each set comes with enough paper straws to build an elaborate course, but the Marblelous system is also compatible with any straws or tubes with a diameter of six millimeters. The included supports use suction cups or reusable putty so you can build marble runs on flat vertical surfaces like windows, mirrors, walls, and cabinets, and there’s even a universal mount that’s Lego compatible so you can build support structures with plastic bricks.
Marblelous includes a collection of gravity-powered obstacles that balls traverse as they transition from one track to the next, but it distinguishes itself from other marble run toys, including Ravensburger’s popular GraviTrax, with more advanced components it calls Smart-Tricks devices.
The Smart-Tricks feature a mix of powered and Wi-Fi-connected features and include motorized lifts that can raise a ball back to its starting position, lane switchers that divert balls onto alternate tracks, and even a teleporter that simulates a ball disappearing and reappearing at another part of the course, or even a marble run on the other side of the world.
A sensor that can detect the presence of a marble at any point during a run connects to the Marblelous mobile app to trigger a response through your smart home gear. That can include playing a specific song on a Google smart speaker or activating a Philips Hue lighting scene. The sensor can even be used to remotely trigger a marble launcher, allowing a marble run to be spread across multiple rooms, or even multiple locations, as long as Wi-Fi is available.
