One of my twins (2y9m) was in speech therapy for a while and her therapist had a small peg board that my daughter loved to play with. We wanted to get something similar for Christmas when we happened upon this one on Amazon. It's way bigger than we had in mind, but it looked pretty neat. The girls really like it and their older brother (7) even likes to play with it with them. The pegs are very sturdy and a good size for little hands. The bottom mat is nice and thick. The other mats are thinner but yes it is because otherwise you couldn't fit the pegs through them as you stacked up. It's a design feature, not a money saving tactic. We'll see how well they hold up over time but so far they seem sturdy enough. This is a great toy to let your kids play with on their own, or a great way to go over shapes, colors, numbers, concepts such as big or small (shapes), short or tall (stacks)... For older kids it's a nice way to set out some grids and visually show multiplication - ie when the grid is full it's 10X10 or 100 - my son likes to help my hunt all the pegs and fill the grid to make sure we have them all. You could also show 2X10, 3X5, etc etc etc to show how multiplication works. (I don't know that I'd buy it FOR an older child but if you have bigs and littles it's nice to find toys that can be used across the span, or ways to make more use of what you have with all the kids!) So much to do with this one little set!