Make Magnificent Marble Mechanisms

You may have seen those videos on the internets of crazy Japanese style rube goldberg contraptions that run for 10 minutes and include everything from dominoes to toasters. Now thanks to ThinkGeek you can bring all that wacky fun home with you. The Cological Marble Run Construction Set is imported from Japan and allows you to create challenging custom courses for your marbles. Everything from zig-zag tracks, to a mini rolling car to whacking mallets until your reach the end and pop up the flag with a little song. You get 23 different types of mechanisms for moving marbles with 97 parts total. Rather than explaining exactly how to build a certain configuration, the included manual teaches you to use each mechanism and lets you figure out how to join them together in fantastic ways. A lot of tweaking is required, but the parts allow for some pretty precision adjustments. When your monstrous marble contraption works perfectly it's pretty satisfying.

Important Note
This product is imported from Japan and the manual is all in Japanese. But the detailed assembly illustrations are straightforward enough in an "Ikea like" manner so you should be fine. No real reading is needed.