Technobot Pterosaurus. Figurines standing on their own. The warrior figurine is 1.7 in high, the pterosaur figurine is 3 in high.
Videoman 20
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.
KID K’NEX Oodles Of Pals Set – Tractor
Connecting rods of Kid K’Nex allow many interesting possibilities. You can use them to connect the basic pieces, to create outlines of the craft’s shape, or decorate your creature with them.
Welcome To The Ice Rink!
Another view of the Clics ice rink building. The people and the the decorations are from Playmobil sets. Here’s the whole construction.
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.
Warrior’s Weapon
It shoots toy bullets and is actually powerful. There are two shooting turrets, they are mounted on both sides of the warrior’s chair. But the set had only one spring, so we loaded one weapon and removed the second for now.
PLUS PLUS Butterfly Puzzle
Plus Plus has not just usual building kits, but also sets that offer to build a 2D picture, following a scheme. This is very similar to a jigsaw puzzle, except you can pick any piece of a certain color. The pieces in these sets are still the same Plus Plus pieces. So you can build from them the same 3D shape as from any other set. There are many sets with different pictures and numbers of pieces. This, for example, is the 800-piece butterfly puzzle.
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.
Zoob 125 Piece Set Box
Zoob 125 piece set is a classic Zoob set in all possible ways. It has those typical Zoob pieces with balls and sockets, but no extra pieces. The set comes in a simple plastic box, which, sadly, has no handles. The photo shows Zoob 125 Piece Set box.
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.
Igrushkin Building Set Pieces
The pieces of the Igrushkin building set. Big square pieces (top row) are 4.6 inch wide and 0.6 inch thick.
Waffle blocks are very popular type of plastic building blocks. In these sets, each piece have pegs and square holes, and you can connect pieces in multiple ways to build both 2D and 3D crafts. The bricks connect to each other seamlessly, almost like in a jigsaw puzzle, so you can make endless combinations in any order you want. There are many brands of waffle building blocks, Gakken and Plus Plus are the most popular and well-known ones. This, however, is rarer Igrushkin building set.
Blocks by different manufacturers may look different. In Plus Plus sets, for example, all blocks are exactly the same, the only difference is color. This old ex-USSR set, however, has pieces of differnet shapes, and some extras, like figurines or wheels. There are also a number of long, bar-like pieces that help connect waffle blocks together. You can stack many waffles on one bar, which helps to create thick and solid crafts.
The waffle blocks themselves are small, each side of a block has only one or two pegs. Some blocks has H-shape and no pegs at all on some sides. This is a downside, because you can’t connect anything on these sides. Sometimes, however, these pieces are very handy, because you can stuck them in small openings to support the craft around it. It all other regards, it is a typical waffle block building kit with small pieces.
Tiko Sports Cups
It was not possible to restore the tower itself, and I dismantled the it into pieces. These are the Tiko sports cups we got.
Tiko is a vintage building set, just like Tako. But, unlike Tako, Tiko pieces are solid panels of different shapes. They also connect by the edges – each edge has some sockets and some balls at regular intervals. Together, the balls and sockets form joints, so you can connect the pieces at different angles. The pieces themselves have different sizes – some are palm-sized, and others are smaller. But it’s possible to connect the pieces of different sizes, as long as the sockets match. Some big pieces have open centers – and these openings also have sockets, so you can add something there.
Since some Tiko pieces are so big, you can easily make crafts that are as tall as a 10-year-old child, and parts will actually hold together. Or you can make flat mosaics if you want to, and then roll them to make a 3D figure. There are no people figurines or decorations, but the building possibilities are endless. With Tiko, can create abstract shapes, buildings, toy furniture, and even something they can wear themselves. It’s a pity this set isn’t available to buy anymore, but there are some similar toys with the same basic concepts.
Taikon Suspension Bridge
This is a building option with plates from Quercetti gears, proposed by Natalie. THANK her for this! Children’s favorite version is the one with 2 towers and a bridge. The suspension bridge is made from Taikon. We fixed it in place pretty well. We also made a field from these plates, planted flowers and stretched wires, ropes, and webs in different directions – an interesting activity for children 3-4 years old.
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.
K’NEX-Lego Kangaroo
The last time we bought Knex in bulk, on E-Bay. And the generous seller, having learned the age of my children, also added a set of Knex mosaics and Knex Lego. My daughter always likes Knex-Lego – she doesn’t like regular Lego, but this one has softer parts and rounded corners and the pieces connections are a little stronger.
