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Knexomania – Balloon

For six months now, my son and I are Knexomaniacs 🙂 This construction set is very convenient because the crafts made from it don’t break even after the most barbaric handling. We made the balloon, the rocket, the airplane and the antelope according to instructions. My son built them from his 3.5 to 4 years all on his own. We made large carousels together from Knex 100 model kit. I did part of the motor, the children did the racks and wheels. The rest is free creativity.

K’Nex exists in two sizes – regular and mini KNex. There are also mathing thick and thin rods, as well as some rods that can connect big and small flakes together. Not all K’Nex sets have mini parts, Knex 100 model kit, for example, have only regular ones.

Just like with any other K’Nex sets, this one has pieces that hold together securely. However, you can easily dismatle your crafts and create something else using the pieces. The regular K’Nex pieces have more robust connections, and crafts can survive even the most active play. Mini K’Nex crafts are slightly more fragile.

While the crafts themselves can be very big, the pieces, especially mini pieces, are very small. Because of this, K’Nex can be dangerous for small babies who can accidentaly swallow the pieces. These pieces can also be too tricky for smaller kids to assemble properly. Because of this, the recommended age for K’Nex sets is 7+ years.

It’s also important to remember that most K’Nex sets don’t have many detailed crafting instructions. Some crafting ideas packages depict may be only shown as completed toys. However, with versatility and possibilities K’Nex offers, this usually is not a big problem.

Knexomania - Balloon
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Genii Creation – Transportation

Genii Creation – Transportation. This set ran away from me for a long time, I could not found it on the Internet. Small sets did not suit us, and the large ones – Playground or Architecture – were nowhere to be found. But suddenly I came across a Transportation set in a real store. We decided to buy and test the constructor, and then, maybe, a large set will also come across somewhere. The set made a very good impression, the quality is good, wooden blocks of different shapes and sizes, strong magnets, interesting topics for creativity. Cons are usual – there are not enough parts, although there are 110 of them in the Transportation set.

Genii Creation - Transportation
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Guidecraft IO Blocks Center – Figurines 3

Guidecraft IO blocks center has people figurines. You can make them stand, or you can remove their legs and put them inside the sockets in the pieces.

This set is more than a building kit, this is, as the manufacturer puts it, an education system. This Guidecraft IO Blocks Center set includes building blocks and a real child-sized wooden table with storage bins!

The table in this set is very similar to the common adult tables, with the storage shelves in usual places – except these deep plastic boxes hold building toys and not papers. The table surface itself is a construction baseplate – it has holes to fix the pieces. This allows the gears to rotate in their positions, and your kids can build bigger crafts without them falling apart.

The building set itself has big, chunky pieces of different shapes. They have thick square pegs and crevices that can snap together and can connect the pieces in different positions. The set also includes bent slide pieces, axis parts, and figurines. The figures look like cubic Lego people, except they have no moving legs.

Overall, this is an ambitious and unusual set. It has great potential, but buying the whole table for just one building set brand can easily be an overkill for many families. The table itself has very specific holds, so you can’t use many sets with it – pieces from lots of building toys simply won’t match these square holes.

Guidecraft IO Blocks Center - Figurines 3
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The Owlet Castle

While we had a small set of Tegu cubes and planks, there was no building and construction as such. All actions with this constructor could be called simple block manipulation. Alesya manly played with them on the way to her classes. But when the children got another large set, the construction process captivated all the children, crafts began to appear more often and became recognizable.

The Owlet Castle
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Guidecraft IO Blocks Center – Figurines 2

Guidecraft blocks center has people figurines. You can make them stand, or you can remove their legs and put them inside the sockets in the pieces.

This set is more than a building kit, this is, as the manufacturer puts it, an education system. This Guidecraft IO Blocks Center set includes building blocks and a real child-sized wooden table with storage bins!

The table in this set is very similar to the common adult tables, with the storage shelves in usual places – except these deep plastic boxes hold building toys and not papers. The table surface itself is a construction baseplate – it has holes to fix the pieces. This allows the gears to rotate in their positions, and your kids can build bigger crafts without them falling apart.

The building set itself has big, chunky pieces of different shapes. They have thick square pegs and crevices that can snap together and can connect the pieces in different positions. The set also includes bent slide pieces, axis parts, and figurines. The figures look like cubic Lego people, except they have no moving legs.

Overall, this is an ambitious and unusual set. It has great potential, but buying the whole table for just one building set brand can easily be an overkill for many families. The table itself has very specific holds, so you can’t use many sets with it – pieces from lots of building toys simply won’t match these square holes.

Guidecraft IO Blocks Center - Figurines 2
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PLUS PLUS 240 Piece Basic Mix Contents

This is a basic type of the Plus Plus sets – with 240 pieces in a plastic tube. There are many different colors and themes of Plus Plus Tube sets. This is a basic color set – the most basic introduction to Plus Plus possible.

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.

PLUS PLUS 240 Piece Basic Mix Contents
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Waffle Block Scorpion

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 vintage 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 vintage building blocks kit, 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 Block Scorpion
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