There are jellyfish, angelfish, sunfish… And Arisha made a fortress fish.
Fortress Fish
Edxeducation Fun Blocks Set
Edxeducation Fun Blocks are very similar to Gakken New Blocks and its clones. They have pieces of similar, sometimes exactly the same, shapes. However, it is not a “Gakken clone”, because some pieces are unique, and you can’t find them in the actual Gakken sets. Even if this set was, in fact, inspired by Gakken, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Many countries released their own waffle blocks over the years, often with their own unique tweaks, and this only added variety to the market.
Gakken is probably one of the most popular “waffle” blocks. The Gakken Blocks sets have many different forms and shapes of the blocks. There are arched blocks, blocks with different numbers of pegs on different sides, and figurines. There are also some pieces that can work like the rails for the Gakken trains. Those same pieces are just as thick as any other Gakken block, and you can use them in many ways, not just for building rails.
Gakken are Japanese sets, and Japanese Amazon has a bigger choice of them. But the shipping may be long and expensive. In countries that are far from Japan, finding these sets can be more tricky, but there are plenty of sets that have pieces of the same shapes.
Original Gakken Blocks sets were invented in Japan in the 1960s. Their original purpose was education and helping children develop imagination and fine motor skills. Gakken quickly became popular in Japan, and they are one of the oldest “waffle” blocks that are still around. There are many sets that try to repeat the Gakken concept, but not all of them have this high quality. Another similar set brand is Danish Plus Plus, but in Plus Plus all the pieces have the same shape.
Christmas Story
On Christmas holidays kids play Christmas-themed games. Heroes and characters from the Christmas Playmobil and Lego sets were the main characters of our games during the last holidays. We built a town, and the New Year’s scenario was wrote itself.
Malysh Basic Pieces
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.
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 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 these Japanese waffle building blocks, stack them, lay them, plug, or tuck blocks in different orientations, for example, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
PIXIO Mini Safari
This set isn’t the smallest one by PIXIO. It has 137 pieces, and you can build many crafts from this set alone at the same time.
Edtoy Gears – Davinci Block Gear
The set contains 21 pieces. 11 of them are gears of 4 colors, both large and small.
The first thing the kids did when they opened the kit was to build a chain and try twisting and turning it. Everything connects and spins perfectly. Sometimes small gears fly out of the chain on high speed, but we put them back immediately.
At first, I was biased towards this set. I thought that it would be uninteresting, a one-time set for a couple of crafts. But the set turned out to be very entertaining and always in demand.
With 2 Edtoy Davinci Block Gear sets, we also added cubes, cones, halves of cylinders, pyramids and tubular parts in our Edtoy arsenal.
Another craft from this set.
SmartMax Power Vehicles – Excavator
You can use all accessories in this set on any Smartmax rod to create these small toy cars exactly like you want.
Boat For The Favorite Bear
The older brother helped 5-years-old Arisha to build it.
PIXIO-1600 Magnetic Blocks
PIXIO building sets have pieces of identical shape and size. All these pices are cubes about 1/3 inch big. The only different between the sets is number and color of pieces, so you can mix them together seamlessly. This is one of the biggest sets – with whopping 1600 “pixels”.
Gakken Basic Pieces
All the basic Gakken waffle pieces we have.
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 basic Gakken waffle pieces. 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.
