HABA Discovery Balls

I ordered these for my 1 year old daughter who loves balls of all shapes and sizes. She was so thrilled with the balls that came with the rolling turtles from Haba that I thought these balls, while similar, would be even more exciting!

The red ball is simply a wooden ball with 3 silver dots not anything like the ball that is pictured. The blue one has a clear resin middle that is sort of transparent. The green one makes a faint rattling noise that is rather dull. Perhaps the most exciting one is the yellow which has a yellow-tinted looking glass. However, looking through it, it's difficult to discern anything you're looking at, and so it's not a very functional looking glass especially for a baby.

If I had it to do over, I would not order these again. My daughter likes them as well as she does the plain balls from the rolling turtles, but unlike the turtles, I don't feel there are things to be discovered as she matures, nor do they seem to have any lasting play value.

A shame. With a little more thought these could have been pretty cool. If they all made a pleasant little sound, perhaps? As they are, they just miss the mark.

This review applies to the green and yellow discovery ball as well:

I was actually able to purchase a set of four wooden HABA balls from Silly Goose (an Amazon store front)recently. The set includes: a red ball with 3 small mirrors, an orange ball with a looking glass, a blue and white one with a clear resin band around the center, and this green and yellow ball with a bell/chime inside . My son loves them! They are smaller than I expected--somewhere between a tennis ball and a ping pong ball--but he really, really enjoys them, particularly this one.

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We also were slightly disappointed with the painted silver decoration on these balls. Due to a safety issue the silver paint is a replacement for the mirrors that used to adorn the ball. We wished we could find a set with the mirrors because the silver paint has started to rub off when my 10 month old daughters puts them up to her mouth. I wonder if the silver paint is non-toxic and I am not certain it is, being a corrective substitution for the mirrors. Regardless my daughter enjoys rolling these across the wood floor and shaking the one ball with the rattle. I have to cringe when she drops them though because I am concerned about dents to the floor. Though bright and colorful I do think Haba could have made each of the balls with sounds for added interest.

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Maybe I didn't look closely enough at the description of these wooden balls, but they are very very tiny. I went back and re-read a review; one person says they are between a tennis ball and a ping pong ball. More the size of a ping pong ball. I have a 9 month old and will wait to give these to him because I just don't think he'll like them and I'm a little afraid to give them to him because they are so small (and the age rec is 12mo+). Maybe he will really like them, but for $18 I think I could find something else better that were more bang for the buck.

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My son loves the Haba balls. We gave them for christmas and he loves them. The child has to like balls to really use this toy. Each ball does something different and is a different color which a one year old enjoys. I wish I had gotten these for him when he was even younger. They are the size of a kiwi except round of course. Perfect for little guys or girls hands. Beware they like to throw them and they are solid wood so they can break just about anything that they hit. Great present and good buy. Not sure if they would be good for any child over 2 1/2.