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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Tiko Star

We made this star with identical Tiko pieces – long and thing triangles. The only pity is that it’s hard to hang somewhere, you have to just let it lay around.

Pythagoras, Tiko, and Tako are vintage building sets. They have big panels of different colors and shapes, that connect by the edges. Each piece has sockets and balls that can snap together, connecting the pieces. You can also connect the pieces of different shapes, as long as their sides match. This connection is strong enough to hold even the biggest structures together.

Because of the sockets’ form, Pythagoras and Tiko panels can form both flat surfaces and 3D shapes. The flexible joint connection means that you can connect the pieces at different angles. The bigger panels are huge – they are a few inches long, so kids can create toy hats or items to hold, and not just toys. They are sturdy enough to wear and to play with. There also are smaller pieces that can help connect the bigger pannels together or make smaller crafts. The pieces of this set have all kinds of shapes – there are different triangles, rectangles, squares, pentagons, and so on, all in different colors.

Sadly, Amazon seemingly has no sets exactly like Tiko and Pythagoras, but some very similar concepts also are interesting enough.

Tiko Star
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Tiko Tent City

A Tiko camp or a tent city we made while camped ourselves. The thing in the centre is a campfire.

Pythagoras, Tiko, and Tako are vintage building sets. They have big panels of different colors and shapes, that connect by the edges. Each piece has sockets and balls that can snap together, connecting the pieces. You can also connect the pieces of different shapes, as long as their sides match. This connection is strong enough to hold even the biggest structures together.

Because of the sockets’ form, Pythagoras and Tiko panels can form both flat surfaces and 3D shapes. The flexible joint connection means that you can connect the pieces at different angles. The bigger panels are huge – they are a few inches long, so kids can create toy hats or items to hold, and not just toys. They are sturdy enough to wear and to play with. There also are smaller pieces that can help connect the bigger pannels together or make smaller crafts. The pieces of this set have all kinds of shapes – there are different triangles, rectangles, squares, pentagons, and so on, all in different colors.

Sadly, Amazon seemingly has no sets exactly like Tiko and Pythagoras, but some very similar concepts also are interesting enough.

Tiko Tent City
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Arishka’s Zoob Clown

Since the spring of 2009, Zoob releases kit with variety of brightly colored soft polymer parts. They perfectly complemented the game with this wonderful constructor. It’s a wonder that our Zoob kit survived in for some years now – these soft pieces are relatively fragile.

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 Zoob 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.

Arishka's Zoob Clown
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Waffle Block Antlers

A house we rented for the summer stood at the brink of the woods. Each evening, deers came to our house. Kids built a deer’s head after a real one. It’s a pity we didn’t have enough waffle buidling blocks for the whole body.

I don’t remember for how long we had this Malysh building set. It’s an interesting one, it’s more like a Gakken than Plus Plus, but also it’s unique in its own ways. It’s hard to buy right now, which is a pity.

Antlers

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 waffle buidling 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 waffle blocks, stack them, lay them, plug, or tuck blocks in different orientations, for example, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

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Lucky Doug Solar Robot

With this solar building set by Lucky Doug, you can build 12 different robot types. These toys operate solely on solar power, without the need for batteries. When placed under direct sunlight, the robots can crawl, roll, and even “sail” in a paddle boat.
At first, assembly may seem a bit challenging, but the manual instructions make it easy to follow. The manufacturer suggests that parents and children work together to build the first solar robot. It makes sense, because the pieces are sometimes hard to connect, and the set may be confusing for the younger children. The recommended ages are 8-14 years.
The set has 190 pieces, offering many possibilities beyond what the manual suggests. It includes many different pieces to build a fully functional robot from scratch, including pistons, shafts, gears, tires, and more. The main piece with a motor is somewhat bulky, and you often have to build your robot around it. The solar panels are relatively small, so you can place them around your robot in many different ways. This set is a good educational option, but it will be too small for many children to build at once.
Of course, there are not enough pieces to make many different working robots at once, so you will have to dismantle one robot to build another.

Lucky Doug Solar Robot
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Big Tiko Ball

We do this Tiko ball often. It’s big, but it’s difficult to play with – it’s fragile. It looks like a bathyscaphe and consists of large pentagons and large triangles.

Pythagoras, Tiko, and Tako are vintage building sets. They have big panels of different colors and shapes, that connect by the edges. Each piece has sockets and balls that can snap together, connecting the pieces. You can also connect the pieces of different shapes, as long as their sides match. This connection is strong enough to hold even the biggest structures together.

Because of the sockets’ form, Pythagoras and Tiko panels can form both flat surfaces and 3D shapes. The flexible joint connection means that you can connect the pieces at different angles. The bigger panels are huge – they are a few inches long, so kids can create toy hats or items to hold, and not just toys. They are sturdy enough to wear and to play with. There also are smaller pieces that can help connect the bigger pannels together or make smaller crafts. The pieces of this set have all kinds of shapes – there are different triangles, rectangles, squares, pentagons, and so on, all in different colors.

Sadly, Amazon seemingly has no sets exactly like Tiko and Pythagoras, but some very similar concepts also are interesting enough.

Big Tiko Ball
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Tiko 30 Diamonds Ball

The children were hooked by the description of a ball made of 30 Tiko diamonds and we made it! The ball endured serious tests – it was kicked, it was used to play football and a hand ball. It was tested in water – children let it down a mountain stream. I must say that the ball fills well with water and sinks safely. But the mountain stream is fast, so the ball still floated several meters. The ball lived for a long time.

Pythagoras, Tiko, and Tako are vintage building sets. They have big panels of different colors and shapes, that connect by the edges. Each piece has sockets and balls that can snap together, connecting the pieces. You can also connect the pieces of different shapes, as long as their sides match. This connection is strong enough to hold even the biggest structures together.

Because of the sockets’ form, Pythagoras and Tiko panels can form both flat surfaces and 3D shapes. The flexible joint connection means that you can connect the pieces at different angles. The bigger panels are huge – they are a few inches long, so kids can create toy hats or items to hold, and not just toys. They are sturdy enough to wear and to play with. There also are smaller pieces that can help connect the bigger pannels together or make smaller crafts. The pieces of this set have all kinds of shapes – there are different triangles, rectangles, squares, pentagons, and so on, all in different colors.

Sadly, Amazon seemingly has no sets exactly like Tiko and Pythagoras, but some very similar concepts also are interesting enough.

Tiko 30 Diamonds Ball
Buy on Amazon
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Chuntian Interlocking Building Blocks

Waffle blocks like this Chuntian Interlocking building blocks set are popular building toys. They are flat and have matching pegs on their sides. You can assemble these pieces in 2D and 3D shapes, and in different positions.
Pieces of this set have an unusually big number of pegs on them – far more than pieces of Gakken and Plus Plus. The pieces have wall patterns, windows, round openings, and other similar decorations. Some panels have the same shape, but no decoration at all. The basic models the set offers are houses and castles. However, you can build anything else from these interlocking squares and triangles. These triangular pieces are in fact less common in waffle block sets. Gakken sets, for example, severely lack them. On the other hand, this set doesn’t have arches and other similar pieces, which somewhat limits the building possibilities. The houses are the things these waffle blocks make best, and, sadly, there are no options for, say, cars with moving wheels.
This particular set has pieces that are 2 inches wide, so they are safe for small children to play with. These pieces are easy to hold and too big to swallow, so the manufacturer recommends them for kids who are 3 years or older.

Chuntian Interlocking Building Blocks
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