"I completely ditto Miesterdad!! This carousel set is a HUGE disappointment. My 2 1/2 yr granddaughter who will play with Duplos for 30+ mins was done with this set in 5 mins, very frustrated and knocking the pieces on the ground. She could not operate the gears without them falling off.
The company says they left the gears like this on purpose?? To introduce a concept? Um what concept? Failure and frustration? That gears don't work? 5 mins of a non working concept doesn't teach much.
Is it possible to get friction gears? If so, where? And regardless of whether this was an intentional feature or not, the concept was clearly not field tested on the age range indicated on the box because it's a huge fail.
Sorry for the snarkiness, I'm just so disappointed."