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.

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Clics Ice Rink

An ice rink we made from Clics. It has a yellow locker room, a green cafe, a purple garage for cars that make and polish the ice.

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 Ice Rink
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Qubits Connections

This is a very small Qubits craft that shows some possible connections of the different pieces. The bigger crafts just repeat these principles on a bigger scale.

Qubits is a small toy brand making very interesting and unusual building sets. Qubits sets have only two types of pieces – rectangular planks and multi-triangular pieces.

The multi-triangular pieces look like they are made from many connected triangles. They can connect to each other with the matching holes and pegs in the triangles’ centers. Each of these pieces has the same shape, but, connecting and overlapping, they create strong, flexible openwork structures. They can create any shapes and forms, flat or 3D. However, triangular shapes are the most sturdy and resilient ones.

There are also rectangular pieces, that can connect with multi-triangular ones both with the edges and with the openings on their surfaces. These pieces can also connect to each other. Both shapes come in multiple colors, often random, colors. Together, these two shapes can create many surprising and fascinating crafts. Sadly, Qubits have no extra pieces like wheels, so the number of moving crafts and toys is somewhat limited.

Qubits are big enough to be safe even for toddlers. However, these sets can be confusing for the smaller children, so the recommended age is 6+.

Qubits Connections
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Tiko Tower Falling

One movement of the baby’s hand and… the great Tiko tower fell. And during the fall, one connecting ball broke off on three different parts.

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.

Tiko Tower Falling
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Tiko Tower 5 Seconds Before The Fall

As we expected, the great Tiko tower did not stand for long. It caused no less delight in my youngest, who resolutely headed towards the structure to study it.

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.

Tiko Tower 5 Seconds Before The Fall
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Igrushkin Building Set

The window sill support (on the left) is from the another constructor. We wanted to do with something new, but it didn’t work out. 🙁 Maybe it’s because there are very few parts (58), maybe it’s because we’re already used to Gakken and automatically assume to use details that Igrushkin doesn’t have. For example, arcs or straight sticks. Or maybe it’s just that this set is “not ours” and is waiting for its master :)) In addition, the wheels in Igrushkin set do not hold on at all, and this making a whole bunch of crafts impossible. But the fact that the details are large is a clear advantage.

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 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.

Igrushkin Building Set
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Zoob Tiny Robot

A very tiny robot, but he’s Alesya big friend. A very small Zoob construction set craft.

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 construction set, 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 Tiny Robot
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