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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Butterfly On A Basket

Yet another thing from a building tube set.

Building straws are a popular and unusual type of building set. These sets include long, hollow flexible tubes that connect to each other at their ends. Since the tubes themselves have no special connecting devices, the set also includes special connecting parts. These parts are very small hard and rigid, and they have long pins that you can insert into the straws. The number and the positions of these pins can vary, so different connectors hold the straws’ ends at different angles. Because each tube is flexible, this simple principle allows you to assemble countless shapes and crafts from just one building set.

These sets are very unusual because they allow you to create any geometrical form you want and use the bent lines. The final craft will always be hollow, lightweight, and almost symbolic. However, you will still recognize these shapes, and they look more detailed and solid if they have more straws. Also, the straws are soft, so you can shorten them with a pair of common scissors if you need to. Sadly, there is no way to fix the straw after it was cut. Since the long straws bend more smoothly than the short straws connected in a row, the long ones are very valuable in these sets. So you have to be careful if you want to cut something.

Butterfly On A Basket
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K’NEX Education STEM EXPLORATIONS: Gears – Car Window

This moving model mimics a car window, with a “glass” (smaller frame) risind and fallind when the crank rotates. Many K’Nex Education sets offer moving models, and can have gears and motors. K’NEX Education Gears set, however, doesn’t have a motor. The gears you rotate yourself are the only source of movement.

This set has relatively small pieces, so it will not be a good choice for the small children. Sometimes connecting pieces may also be though, so the best age for K’NEX Education Gears set is 8-10 years old. Even if this set has no mini K’Nex pieces, you should be very careful about giving it to any child under the age of 7. You should also be careful around the moving gears – they are not metal, but having hair stuck in it is still very unpleasant.

Moving crafts can be a great add-on to any K’Nex collection. However, this set has a relatively small number of gears for so many regular pieces, so you have to be precise while using them. The set also offers a very limited number of the possible models. This, however, is not a big problem, since K’Nex crafts are easy to invent, and this set is more than enough to create many different things.

K'NEX Education STEM EXPLORATIONS: Gears - Car Window
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K’NEX Moon Orbit Completed Creation

The final version of our moon orbit station. Made mostly from 100 model K’Nex kit, but the decorative pieces are from other sets. Some are not even K’Nex.

K’Nex comes in two sizes: regular and mini K’Nex. It also includes both thick and thin rods, and some rods can connect the larger and smaller pieces together. Not all K’Nex sets include mini parts.

Like other K’Nex sets, this one features pieces that securely lock together. You can easily take apart your creations and use the pieces to build something new. Regular K’Nex pieces, like ones in 100 model K’Nex kit, have stronger connections, making crafts sturdy even during active play. Mini K’Nex creations are a bit more delicate.

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 make K’Nex sets risky for small babies who might accidentally swallow the pieces. These small parts can also be a bit challenging for younger kids to assemble correctly. That’s why it’s recommended for children aged 7 and older to use K’Nex sets.

It’s also worth noting that most K’Nex sets don’t provide detailed crafting instructions. Some packages may only show completed toys as examples. However, thanks to the versatility and creative possibilities K’Nex offers, this usually isn’t a significant issue.

K'NEX Moon Orbit Completed Creation
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Bridges Top View

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 Malysh building blocks 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 Malysh building blocks 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.

Bridges Top View
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Zoob Samurai

Made by 5-years old Anny from a big Zoob building kit.

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 a big Zoob building kit, 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 Samurai
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Quercetti Kaleido Gears Pieces

All the pieces Kaleido Gears set by Quercetti includes.

This Kaleido Gears set by Quercetti has all the essential things you’d desire in a gear system. Firstly, their construction quality is top-notch, and the pieces have a robust and solid design. The set also has a seamless gear interface, so they interlock securely. With these reliable connections and sturdy pieces, the set allows you to build machines that can perform real work.

The set includes several base plates that fit together like puzzle pieces. Sadly, this set has no poles or pillars, you make a basic construction from the puzzle pieces only. You can also build 3D structures with these pieces, like boxes or buildings. There are also no bands or chains, so this set has fewer building options than the other Quercetti gear sets.

The gears, however, are great – they have different sizes, colors, and ornaments, and they move! Together, they create very bright and flashy crafts, hence the set’s name. It also includes the axis pieces and a crank to move the gears. This set is great for explaining basic physics to the children – they will learn the basics of gear connections without any trouble. Since the kit mostly has big, colorful parts, the recommended age is 3-12 years.

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Waffle Blocks Ruines

A kitty exploring castle ruines we made from Malysh building blocks kit.

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 Malysh building blocks kit.

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.

Waffle Blocks Ruines
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