Once again, it is time for me to review another STEM toy. I’m not even going to bother defining that term once again, but needless to say, this one from Matatalab (have no idea how they came up with that name) teaches coding.

I am not certain how much you can see from the image, but I will attempt to make some sense of what is shown there. This will make a whole lot more sense in the video that I will establish soon below, assuming it is not there when you are reading this (you are reading this, aren’t you?)

You see the rectangular white thing, the one with the orange and white arrow? That comes on top of the box, and you have to put this thing that I can only describe as a lighthouse on top. I have no idea how to describe this other part that plugs in opposite the orange and white arrow (which is actually a huge play button).

I found that there wasn’t much instruction for the Matatalab Coding Kit, and my first instinct was to just find the right app. I did find one on my smartphone, and I’m going to have to remind myself to play on this later.

I found some quick instructions right out of the box. It said to arrange the tiles on the board, and then hit the huge play button. Yes, I should probably talk about these tiles, because I’m getting some serious “Blocky” vibes from them. You know, some serious block-based coding. In my case, I arranged some arrows on the board, and hit the play button.

From there, I believe that some camera in the lighthouse interpreted them as moves, and then the smaller lighthouse car (it just what I’m calling it) followed the directions.

So yes, you put down these tiles that do things like movement, music, and…I really don’t see how these work together, honestly. I should really learn more about this, but I would have to recommend this to parents who want their kids to grow up and be programmers. It is available on the Matatalab site for about $169.99.