I bought my son the hamster as a first pet. I also bought the ball. This crappy ball comes apart at the drop of a dime. I FINALLY today super glued the ball together so he can play with it. The rodent flips over all the time and before today the ball fell apart. I will see how the glue holds up!!!!!

The concept is great; however, the ball is very difficult to take apart & put together, which has to be done every time the kids want to put a new hamster in. There is also a tiny plastic piece that is not attached to the ball but is necessary for the pet to use the ball. This little plastic piece will be easily lost. Buy something else for you zhu zhu pets to play with.

First let me say that I’m more frustrated with the REVIEWERS on here than I am the ball!! I came on here trying to find out if the ball is worth buying only to find complaints about the prices of 3rd party sellers! I bought the ball w/o having any answers b/c 90% of the reviews had nothing to do with the ball! It affects the rating of the product, which ALSO hurts the manufacturer! This is a place to REVIEW THE PRODUCT, people!

That being said, this ball is frustrating. The hamster itself is adorable. We’ve had no problems with the ACTUAL hamster or other accessories.
To use the ball, a parent must attach a plastic piece that comes with the ball to the hamster to keep it weighted down so it doesn’t flip over while it’s being used. The problem is that the hamster still flips over whether wearing the piece or not. Also, the piece falls off all the time as it is not held on my anything, just “fitted” where you are supposed to put it. My other complaint is that when you are ready to put the hamster in the ball, you have to press the button on it’s back and quickly fit the ball’s lid on the ball. This is difficult to do b/c if you are tilting the ball at all while doing this, the hamster flips over immediately and you have to do it all over again. It would be good of the hamster had a delay so you could get the lid on and set the ball on the ground before it starts going. Lastly, all of these issues make it difficult for a child to play with this by themselves. I have a baby, so stopping to fix the ball 20 times is not feasible.
I gave the toy 3 stars because it is still cute and my kids still like it even though they get frustrated by it. I also wanted to balance out the reviews of other people who aren’t writing anything about the toy!