Xyloba Mezzo – Musical Marble Run Construction Kit (40 Pieces)

Xyloba is a creative marble run for building and composing music, made to be enjoyed by young and old alike. Discover the Xyloba modular system across its three progressively more comprehensive models — Piccolino, Mezzo, and Orchestra — each built around the same core idea: creativity through tune sequences generated by varying tower design.

With Xyloba Mezzo, children can create a rich variety of melodic marble runs using 8 interchangeable sound modules to produce genuinely complex melodies. The set invites children to compose their own tunes by building tracks where rolling marbles strike musical chime bars on their way down. Interchangeable Chime Bars, Roll Tracks of varying lengths for setting rhythm, and Building Bricks that determine height and direction all come together so that simply assembling the pieces automatically creates music — the perfect blend of logic and creativity, and an ideal way to introduce children to the world of music composition.

Set Includes:

• 6 x Building Bricks
• 7 x Sound Bricks
• 2 x Passage Bricks
• 1 x Base Plate
• 6 x Marbles
• 8 x Chime Bars (C3, D3, E3, C4, H3, A3, G3, F3)
• 6 x Short Roll Tracks
• 2 x Long Roll Track
• 1 x Xylophone Mallet
• 1 x Eighth Note

Product Details:

• Recommended Age: 5 years and up. Not suitable for children under 36 months — contains small parts that pose a choking hazard.
• Includes: 40 pieces total
• Material: Beechwood, metal
• Made In: Switzerland

Note: Xyloba sets are available in three sizes — Piccolino (25 pieces), Mezzo (40 pieces), and Orchestra (96 pieces) — offering a range of complexity to suit different ages and levels of musical ambition.

The Story Behind Xyloba

The idea for a musical marble run first took shape in 1969, when Samuel Langweiler set out to design a track where a rolling marble could strike a series of chimes to create a melody. Samuel envisioned something truly interactive: a system where the chimes themselves could be rearranged, letting children build not just marble runs, but their own original tunes, simply by changing the order of the chimes and the spacing between them. The design process brought plenty of challenges, but after many experiments, Samuel arrived at his first working melody.

As a cellist with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Samuel spent long stretches of time on tour and had little opportunity to seek out a manufacturer for his invention. It wasn't until years later that the Weizenkorn Foundation began producing and distributing his design under the name Xyloba Musical Marble Runs.

Today, Xyloba remains a wonderfully creative wooden toy — one that builds fine motor skills and spatial reasoning while nurturing a genuinely musical way of thinking. As the marble descends the track, it strikes each chime in sequence, and the interlocking system of ramps and sound blocks allows for an enormous range of possible setups.

About the Weizenkorn Foundation

Based in Basel, Switzerland, the Weizenkorn Foundation is a social enterprise that supports and employs over 200 young men and women living with psychological impairments who might otherwise struggle to find work. Within the Foundation's sheltered workshops, these skilled craftspeople handcraft every component of the Xyloba Musical Marble Runs, alongside many other beautifully made wooden toys.