Category: Plastic Building Kits

Plastic building kits are construction sets designed for children that primarily utilize plastic components. These kits consist of various interlocking pieces, connectors, panels, and accessories that allow children to build and create a wide range of structures, vehicles, and other imaginative designs.

Plastic building kits are known for their versatility, durability, and ease of use. The pieces are often designed to fit together securely, enabling children to construct stable and sturdy creations. These kits usually come with a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, allowing for endless possibilities and encouraging children to think creatively and problem-solve while constructing their designs.

Many plastic building kits also incorporate specialized parts such as wheels, hinges, and gears, adding an extra level of functionality and enabling children to create movable and interactive models. Some kits may even include motorized components that bring the creations to life with spinning gears or moving parts.

These kits are popular among children of various age groups and provide numerous educational benefits. They promote fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and logical thinking. Additionally, plastic building kits foster creativity, imagination, and cognitive development as children design and build their own unique structures and scenarios.

Overall, plastic building kits offer a stimulating and engaging way for children to explore construction, design, and engineering concepts while having fun and unleashing their creativity.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

K’NEX 35 Model Building Set

This is a classic 480 piece K’NEX set with pieces like rods of different length and flake-like disks. Its package proposes 35 different models, but the actual number if things you can build, of course, is almost infinite.

This K’Nex 35 model set contains 480 pieces, including both large and small flake-like parts. It also comes with thick and thin rods that match these pieces, along with some rods meant to connect the larger and smaller flakes. These special pieces aren’t found in all K’Nex sets.

One great feature of this kit is that it includes a spacious storage box. You can use this box to store partially built toys and continue working on them later.

Just like with other K’Nex sets, the pieces in this one fit together securely. You can easily take apart your creations and use the pieces to build something new. The regular K’Nex pieces are sturdy and can withstand active play, while the mini K’Nex pieces are a bit more delicate. This 480 piece K’NEX set includes pieces of both sizes.

It’s important to note that although the crafts you can make with K’Nex can be quite large, some of the pieces, especially the mini ones, are very small. This can be risky for very young children who might accidentally swallow them. Also, these pieces may be a bit tricky for smaller kids to assemble correctly. That’s why K’Nex sets are recommended for kids aged 7 and older.

K’NEX 35 Model Building Set
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Zoob Fishing Spear

Fishing with a spear made from small Zoob pieces.

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 something with Zoob, 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 Fishing Spear
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — Leave a comment

PLUS PLUS GO! Racing Cart Car

Plus Plus Go! are sets with moving parts most Plus Plus sets don’t have. They offer racing cars and other vehicles. This one is Plus Plus Racing Cart set. As always, you can build anything from the 240 pieces this set include.

Danish Plus Plus sets are among the most popular and well-known “waffle” building sets. Almost all pieces in these sets are exactly the same – except for the wheels and the baseplates. However, even with only the basic pieces, you can build almost anything.

All basic pieces have exactly the same shape and size – they look like two pluses joined together, hence the brand name. Each piece has two pegs on the long sides one peg on the short sides, and the matching empty spaces. The pieces are thick, so the pegs are as thick as they are long. Because of this, you can connect the pieces in any direction, they will hold well all the same. So you can build both 2D mosaics and all kinds of 3D shapes, connecting the pieces vertically, horizontally, or even with an angle. The Danish schools use Plus Plus kits as an educational tool. They help teach kids basic STEAM skills and help them develop fine motorics and creativity.

To add some difference and more variety to the crafts, the Plus Plus brand offers countless sets with different numbers and colors of the pieces. There are pieces of different colors and hues, glowing pieces, pieces with glitter, and so on. The sets also may include any number of the Plus Plus pieces. There are also both small traveling kits and big gift sets.

PLUS PLUS GO! Racing Cart Car
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Taikon Container

We store Taikon in a container with removable partitions, we found it in the screws-and-grooves store department. Natalie once wrote in one of her reviews that you can find containers like this in the fishermen store. You can put an instruction book on the hinged lid, like on a music stand.

Building straws, also known as building tubes, are a popular type of construction set with unique possibilities. They allow you to create silhouettes and contours of different objects and animals. All crafts from these sets can bend and move, so kids can actually play with their creations.

Instead of blocks, these sets have flexible plastic tubes, that look and act like soft cocktail straws. They can bend in any way and hold any position you want. The tubes usually attach to each other with special plastic connectors. The connectors can look and work differently in the different sets, but there are always many ways the straws can connect. The most common version is hard pins that go inside the straw’s hollow end, fixing it in place. Some connectors of this type have only one or two pins, some may have eight or ten. They also can have different forms, like sharp corners or straight rods. However, this connection type usually means that you can connect the straws only with their ends, and never with their middles.

These straws have great building potential, but, sadly, they can’t hold their shape under pressure (unlike, say, block towers that can hold something on their top). The straws’ building possibilities also depend on how long they are.

Taikon Container
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — 2 Comments

Gakken Carousel

A carousel we made from the Gakken New Blocks.

Gakken are probably one of the most popular “waffle” building kits. The Gakken sets have many different forms and shapes of the blocks. There are arched blocks, blocks with different numbers of pegs on different sides, and figurines. There are also some pieces that can work like the rails for the Gakken trains. That same pieces are just as thick as any other Gakken blosk, and you can use them in many ways, not just for building rails.

Gakken are Japanese sets, and Japanese Amazon have bigger choise of them. But the shipping may be long and expensive. In countries that are far from Japan, finding these sets can be more tricky, but there are plenty of sets that have pieces of the same shapes.

Original Gakken New Blocks were invented in Japan in 1960s. They original purpose was education and helping children develop imagination and fine motorics. Gakken quickly became popelar in Japan, and they are one of the oldest “waffle” sets that are still around. There are many sets that try to repeat Gakken concept, but not all of them have this high quality. Another similar set brand is Danish Plus Plus, but in Plus Plus all the pieces have the same shape.

Gakken Carousel
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Clics Pirate Base

A Clics pirate base on a tropical island. The yellow thing on the right is a pirate boat, on the left, the island has some palm trees.

ClicsToys is a Belgian company that was founded in 2001. They operate their own factory located in Kempen, where they manufacture the well-known Clics building blocks. These building sets consist of square pieces, all of which share the same form and shape. They easily connect at their edges, forming joints that can be moved.
Since the fundamental components of Clics are square, the basic forms you can build are typically cubic or brick-like. Nevertheless, thanks to the movable joints, you can connect them at various angles, resulting in diverse shapes. With careful assembly, it’s even possible to create triangular or sloping figures. However, the cubes remain the most robust and dependable structures this set can offer. Additionally, you can explore the option of crafting flat mosaics by combining pieces of different colors.
Using these plastic squares, you can construct flat surfaces and transform them into 3D shapes. Despite having relatively few extra pieces and accessories, Clics offer limitless creative possibilities. Some sets may include wheels and decorative panels, but these are the primary add-ons. On the plus side, Clics sets generally contain numerous pieces, enabling you to create complex structures with a single set.

Clics Pirate Base
Buy on Amazon
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Spaghetteez Building Set – Animals

Some animals from a Spaghetteez building set. These sets have small, short straws you can use for connection or decoration.

Spaghetteez is a unique brand of building sets with flexible tubes. Basic Spaghetteez pieces are plastic straws of different lengths, and they not only bend very well but also keep whatever shape you twist them into. They can bend again and again to form a flat surface, they can wrap around each other, form knots, and so on.

All the straws have special connectors on their ends, so you can connect any straws together, or loop a straw by connecting its own ends. The sets also have special connectors that will hold the straws together at certain angles or side by side. Or, if you need to connect two straws by their middles, you can just tie them together.

Just like any other straw, the Spagheettez set allows you to create lightweight and hollow shapes. However, these straws can hold together upright if your craft’s shape allows it. For example, you can create an animal, and it will actually stand on its legs. The Spaghetteez sets also include wheels, so you can create a vehicle and actually roll it around.

Unlike with many other sets with straws, you can’t cut Spaghetteez straws and continue to connect them. Spaghetteez straws have special connecting pieces on their ends, so they won’t be able to connect if you cut the end off. Because of this, the sets have many straws of different lengths.

Spaghetteez Building Set - Animals
Buy on Amazon