The first thing you notice when you open the box and tip the contents out on the floor is how many separate packets of parts there are. While the packets are supposed to keep the various parts of the robot separate, before you know what is going on you’ve got a number of the packets open to inspect their contents, the bits are all over the place, and all mixed up!
The really good news is that, even though you’ve spilt the contents of the major parcels, the very tiny nuts and bolts are all contained in separately sealed compartments, allowing immediate inspection without having to actually burst open every single packet before work commences. Life would have been a helluva more complicated if someone hadn’t thought this through beforehand. The other good news is that all the parts are referred to in instructions by physical descriptions — no ‘‘Insert peg A into slot B’’ nonesense. This means that even if everything is mixed up you can still find appropriate bits at appropriate times and the assembly will proceed smoothly.
You will, however, need to supply some engineering initiative. There are some nuts and bolts which are extremely difficult to locate (big hint: be sure to have a pair of long-nosed pliers to hand), you will be needing two pairs of hands sometimes (but with perserverance you will manage with one!), and in a couple of instances at least you will have to forget the instructions and work it out yourself.
By the time you have finished building, you will be grateful for the fact that it is, in fact, a surprisingly robust piece of kit, and you are just keeping your fingers crossed that nothing has been damaged during the shenanigans involved in getting it together. Indeed, you will by now be feeling a close relationship with your robot beginning to emerge…