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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Snapz Building Set – Crafts

There are many building sets that mimic Clics. This Snapz building set by the Play Build is one of the better-quality Clics clones. Its pieces are nearly identical to the original Clics, sturdy and easy to connect. The only set available in Play Build store right now has 400 pieces and a storage box. The main problem with Snapz is it unimpressive wheels and the lack of decorative pieces the original Clics have. This photo by the manufacturer shows some of the Snapz crafts. They look very similar to original Clics, but have smaller wheels.

ClicsToys, a Belgian company established in 2001, operates its very own factory located in Kempen, where they craft the popular Clics building blocks. These building sets mostly have square pieces, all sharing identical form and shape. What sets Clics apart is their ability to connect smoothly at the edges, allowing flexible joint movements.

Using these plastic squares, the creative possibilities are endless, even though Clics sets usually offer relatively few extra pieces and accessories. Some sets may include wheels and decorative panels, but few extra items. The true strength of Clics lies in the generous number of pieces in their sets, allowing you to make even biggest creations with ease. The pieces of Clics are too big to swallow and easy to hold, so they are safe, but some connections can be too tricky to younger kids. So the most sets are recommended for children who are 3 years old or older. However, these sets will be interesting even for the 10-years-olds.

The fundamental building blocks in Clics are square, which naturally leads to the cubic or brick-like structures. However, the great advantage of these blocks is the ability to connect them at various angles, making diverse shapes. Careful assembly can even give you triangular or sloping figures. Nevertheless, the most robust and tough structures in Clics are cube-shaped. Additionally, you can create flat mosaics by combining pieces of different colors.

Snapz Building Set - Crafts
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Tako Pieces

This construction kit’s name is “TAKO”. It consists of multi-colored square frames in 4 sizes and 6 colors.

Tako is another vintage building set. Its pieces are thin, open frames of different colors and sizes. All these frames have square shapes, and they connect to each other by the edges, forming all kinds of shapes. The manufacturer mostly proposed abstract geometric shapes as possible crafts, but these shapes look pretty, and you can use them to play along with some other toys.

Tako frames connect by the edges – they have tiny rails and empty spaces along the edges to put those rails in. As you can see, the edges are slightly asymmetrical, because the two sides of the square have the rails, and the other two have empty spaces. Sadly, the number of ways you can connect the pieces is limited. Many modern building sets offer more options. Of course, the pieces of the same size hold together the best. The pieces are beautiful but delicate and fragile – they can bend slightly, but they are also relatively easy to break accidentally.

Since all pieces are squares, the basic figure you can assemble is a cube, but it’s also possible to make prisms and other figures. They, however, are more tricky to assemble. The set has pieces of 4 different sizes and 6 colors.

Tako Pieces
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Gears!Gears!Gears! Mega Builds

Mega Builds set is one of the largest in Gears!Gears!Gears! series. It has 235 pieces – interlocking baseplates, poles, and, of course, gears. With this set, you can build an upright construction, add the axis pieces, and decorate your craft with the gears. Then you can turn a crank on any of these gears, and watch all the connected gears rotate. This set also has a thick plastic chain, so you can connect the gears in more ways than one.

The pieces of this set are big and sturdy, so they can survive many years of use. This set is not very complicated in its concept, so you can give it to the children you are 3 years old or older. You can also mix this set with any other Gear!Gears!Gears! set, enhancing it with extra pieces.

Learning Resources is a popular and well-known toy brand from the USA that specializes in STEM toys. Gears!Gears!Gears! is a series of building sets with moving and rotating gears in them. These gears may have different functions in different sets, but you can mix them and use them together. Gears! Gears! Gears! sets show exactly how the gear transmission works, and you can use them as a colorful and simple explanation of the gear physics.

Gears!Gears!Gears! Mega Builds
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Mycologist Beetle

According to another version, this is a laboratory assistant beetle. The purpose of the grilles with cap-shaped structures is not entirely clear. The children’s opinions divided – according to one version, these are mushrooms, and the beetle is a scientist who collects and studies mushrooms. According to another version, these are test tubes with poison, and the beetle is a laboratory assistant experimenting with different chemical compounds. Made from Gakken New Blocks.

Unlike Plus Plus waffle blocks, Gakken blocks have pieces of many different shapes. They have round and curved pieces, long beams and H-like pieces. The empty spaces inside the blocks also can have different sizes and shapes, so you can stack inside different pieces in different positions. All this allows even more building possibilities than the waffle blocks sets with similar pieces. However, some pieces have less connection opgtions, because they don’t have pegs on the sides, or have only one hole.

Gakken brand appeared in Tokyo back in 1946 when it became an important component of Japan’s post-war efforts to rebuild the nation. Back then, it became incredible important to properly raise a new generation that will be able to create a better future.

The founder and educator, Hideto Furuoka, created first Gakken New Blocks. He later told that his inspiration was traditional Japanese wooden houses. There he saw an idea of flat blocks people can took apart and rebuild again when they need to. So he decided to create a toy which repeats this principle. Children can connect these Japanese waffle building blocks, stack them, lay them, plug, or tuck blocks in different orientations, for example, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

Mycologist Beetle
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Snapz Building Set

There are many building sets that mimic Clics. This Snapz building set by the Play Build is one of the better-quality Clics clones. Its pieces are nearly identical to the original Clics, sturdy and easy to connect. The only set available in Play Build store right now has 400 pieces and a storage box. The main problem with Snapz is it unimpressive wheels and the lack of decorative pieces the original Clics have.

ClicsToys, a Belgian company established in 2001, operates its very own factory located in Kempen, where they craft the popular Clics building blocks. These building sets mostly have square pieces, all sharing identical form and shape. What sets Clics apart is their ability to connect smoothly at the edges, allowing flexible joint movements.

Using these plastic squares, the creative possibilities are endless, even though Clics sets usually offer relatively few extra pieces and accessories. Some sets may include wheels and decorative panels, but few extra items. The true strength of Clics lies in the generous number of pieces in their sets, allowing you to make even biggest creations with ease. The pieces of Clics are too big to swallow and easy to hold, so they are safe, but some connections can be too tricky to younger kids. So the most sets are recommended for children who are 3 years old or older. However, these sets will be interesting even for the 10-years-olds.

The fundamental building blocks in Clics are square, which naturally leads to the cubic or brick-like structures. However, the great advantage of these blocks is the ability to connect them at various angles, making diverse shapes. Careful assembly can even give you triangular or sloping figures. Nevertheless, the most robust and tough structures in Clics are cube-shaped. Additionally, you can create flat mosaics by combining pieces of different colors.

Snapz Building Set
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Zoob Piece Variety

In the summer, my son and I sorted through Zoob construction set, looked for broken parts for exchange, and at the same time decided to create our own catalog of parts. Zoob is an old building sets brand, it has been around for more than 20 years, and we play with it for 6 years now. So our family has collected both parts from older and newer sets, both the common ones and with sparkles. Children call the parts by their forms: ball, claws, center, notch. Here’s Zoob piece variety got:

GREEN (LIME)

First of all, it is, of course, more lime than real green. 99% of the green pieces are 2-claw pieces, like in the top row. The glitter set also has a 2-claw piece. In the middle row is a piece from a Chinese Zoob clone set, in emerald color. In the bottom row on the left are 2 parts with balls. This shape rarely comes in green, and on the right are parts of a rich emerald color from a vintage set of the late 90s.

BLUE (PURPLE)

In the top row, on the left there is a purple part with sparkles. In the center is a blue part with sparkles. And the right is the most common form of part in blue – with 2 claws and a notch in the center. In the middle row on the right is a blue piece from the Chinese Zoob. On the left are parts of a rare color, found mostly in the old sets of 1997-2001 – purple. In the bottom row – on the left – there are 2 dark blue pieces, they are common in the older sets.

GRAY

Parts of this color come in all kinds of shapes, usually with a metallic tint. In the top row there are the most common pieces of gray color. In the middle row on the left is a part from the Chinese Zoob clone set.

BLACK

Black is rare now, which is a pity – it was common in Zoob sets in 1997-2001.

YELLOW

99% of the yellow parts are the parts with 2 balls and a notch in the center, so all the cute crosses are yellow. In the middle row is a part from the Chinese – big thanks to them, because we constantly need these pieces. In the bottom row are rarer parts.

ORANGE

We have only one type of pieces – with glitter.

RED

In the top row there are 2 version, the most common one, on the right – a pieces with glitter. In the middle row we have a scarlet-colored piece from the Chinese Zoob clone. And on the right there is a burgundy piece from Zoob clone by ZZToys. In the bottom row are rare versions in red. Our most fragile parts are red, they break most often, and green with glitter, breakability is almost 100%.

This “catalogue” does not contain another wonderful type of ZOOB – glow-in-the-dark parts. We remembered the luminous set after we had laid out the parts; we couldn’t repeat the layout a second time. So I plan to show the glowing set in another post.

Zoob Piece Variety
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