As a mother of a big family, I was genuinely captivated by children’s toys when our little ones came into our lives. What initially seemed like mere sources of entertainment turned out to be a vast world of opportunities for our children’s development. Among all the toys, we discovered that children’s building blocks were the most productive in nurturing their creative abilities. Watching my own kids play and use their imagination has been really great.
Motivated by this realization, we embarked on a journey of exploration with our kids, purchasing various construction sets and building kits. As our children constructed their imaginative creations, we started capturing these moments through photography. It soon dawned on me that this experience might be of interest to others as well. Thus, I made the decision to create a website that would unite all those who share our passion for children’s building blocks.
Later, parents from all around the world joined us. They sent us their ideas and pictures of buildings. People from different parts of the world shared what they had found.
People from the countries that used to be part of the USSR were very active. The Encyclopedia of Building Sets has a lot of Building Sets and Blocks from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, like Germany and the Czech Republic. We started making the website 20 years ago, but it wasn’t on its own platform. It was on a page of a very good toy store’s website.
Sadly, things don’t last forever. The store closed, and we got all our files. These files were lying on the home computer for many years without any movement. Only during the time of COVID, I finally organized this database.
I know that the pictures taken 15-20 years ago with old cameras aren’t of high resolution. Also, the platform that hosted our site made the pictures smaller because the internet was very slow back then. You might remember a time when you had to make phone calls to connect to the internet.
Even so, I felt really bad that this stuff might just get thrown away. So I decided to bring it back. I mixed these older pictures with ones of new, colorful building sets from Amazon. Most of these manufacturers are still around and working. For the ones that are really old, from the time of the Soviets, or if the manufacturers don’t exist anymore, I tried to find similar ones on Amazon.
It was important to me that the website could support itself. Referral links help with this. “As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.” Sometimes, I had to do a lot of research on Amazon to tell apart real building sets from fake ones. There are a lot of fake ones out there.
To me, pseudo-building kits are sets of pieces where kids are told to build just one thing, following the instructions. A real building set should let kids use their imagination and create lots of different buildings, figures, and models from the same pieces.
I invite you to add your memories, thoughts, links, and pictures to this encyclopedia. I am also open to suggestions for improving our catalog, as we strive to create a resource that meets the needs and interests of all engaged participants.
