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Fantasia Gears Set

There is a Fantasia gears set, made in the USSR by the Spetsstanok factory.

This vintage building set is similar to the Quercetti Gears sets. It also includes baseplates, poles, and, of course, the gears. The baseplates connect like the pieces of a puzzle, they are heavy and sturdy enough to hold the whole construction in place. There are also many small colorful pins to decorate the pieces.

While there are no poles like in Quercetti sets, you can connect and interlock the baseplates in 3D, making some of them stand upright. They can also hold together at the angle, so you can build all kinds of shapes from them. Overall, these plates themselves form a good building set.

After making something from the baseplates, you can attach the gears to the finished crafts and make the gears spin. All gears are the same size, they are almost as big as the baseplates, and you can also use them just to decorate the crafts. All pieces come in many different colors. Sadly, there are few pieces overall.

This set has an educational purpose – some schools used it to teach children about the gear transmissions. The description says that the set is for children aged 4-8 years.

Fantasia Gears Set
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Zoob Dragon Dog

Another Zoob construction kit craft, this one is a dragon dog with six legs.

Back in 1997, inventor Michael Grey introduced Zoob, a toy inspired by the science of motion and organism development. Zoob represents an acronym for Zoology, Ontology, Ontogeny, and Botany. Each set has rod-like pieces with joint balls and sockets on their ends. Each of these balls has small bumps on its surface, so the joints can both move and stay in a certain position if you need them to.

This innovative toy features a ball and socket connection system, mimicking the natural movement and design found in people, animals, and machines. With just five basic shapes, Zoob offers 20 different ways to connect them together.

Zoob building sets have won awards because they’re different from regular building blocks. They use plastic pieces that snap together, like gears and joints, to build all kinds of objects, limited only by your imagination. After you build a Zoob construction kit craft, you can actually play with it – the pieces were designed to move after being assembled, so you can have fun with the toys you create.

Zoobs are great for helping children improve their fine motor skills. The pieces are small enough to easily manipulate and put them together, but they’re not too tiny like some other toys, so it’s easier for kids who find small objects tricky.

Zoob Dragon Dog
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Native American Village

A scene from the life of ordinary Native Americans. Wigwams and a totem, and in front of them is a hearth with fire. The leader stands on the grassy shore with a peace pipe, but there is a tomahawk on his belt just in case. He is watching his fellow tribe member fishing. This fisherman sits in a canoe with a harpoon over a school of fish – fishing should successful.

Native American Village
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Decoy Fish

The fish was made by Alesya specially for the otter. Last summer we vacationed on a lake that was home to otters, cute and plump creatures with webbed feet. One morning we found these webbed marks on a plate with the fish left for breakfast. Alesya was indignant and in the evening she made a fake fish so that the otters would pay attention to this decoy fish, and left our fish alone.

Decoy Fish