I had never played this game as a child, so I have nothing to compare to as far as quality.  My children are 6 and 5 and they caught on to this "build a mousetrap" game straightaway.  In fact, we had so much fun putting together the mousetrap, that the ending to the game was a bit of a let down.  First off... what do  you do with your cheese?  Second, since there is only one Crank space, it's a luck of the draw when the mousetrap will ever "Go".  In our case, we played the ending for nearly 15 minutes and the crank was only used once.  So much for climax at the end.  I finally ended the game, because we were all sick of going around in circles with our pieces.