Playmobil has a series of portable, travel sets. They have very few pieces or items, but they come in travel cases or boxes. These sets can be a good option for a long travel or an outdoors playtime.
Playmobil Dino Explorer Carry Case
Plastwood – Piccoli Mondi – Castle And Dragon
I’ll tell you right away, we inherited Plastwood castle, so I know some things only from the words of the former owners. The castle itself consists of three parts, two sides and the front. There is no and never was a back part. So, if ypu want to close the gap, you need to either lean the castle against the wall, or buy another set, or make a wall from another constructor. Like from Magformers, for example, as we did in the photo below. Or you can simply bend the side walls towards each other and ignore to the gap between them (or patch it up with some tape).
Let’s Add Some Triangles…
The assembling of the giant owl sculpture.
Bendits
Bendits is an old American building set. It has tubes with pins at the ends and geometric details with holes. We purchase it for junior experiments; I relied specifically on the presence of the plate when purchasing it. Baseplates are rare in the sets like this one, so I decided to give it a try.
Building straws, also known as building tubes, are a popular type of construction set with unique possibilities. They allow you to create silhouettes and contours of different objects and animals. All crafts from these sets can bend and move, so kids can actually play with their creations.
Instead of blocks, these sets have flexible plastic tubes, that look and act like soft cocktail straws. They can bend in any way and hold any position you want. The tubes usually attach to each other with special plastic connectors. The connectors can look and work differently in the different sets, but there are always many ways the straws can connect. The most common version is hard pins that go inside the straw’s hollow end, fixing it in place. Some connectors of this type have only one or two pins, some may have eight or ten. They also can have different forms, like sharp corners or straight rods. However, this connection type usually means that you can connect the straws only with their ends, and never with their middles.
These straws have great building potential, but, sadly, they can’t hold their shape under pressure (unlike, say, block towers that can hold something on their top). The straws’ building possibilities also depend on how long they are.
Gears! Gears! Gears! Deluxe Set
Deluxe set by Gears!Gears!Gears! brand has 100 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.
The pieces of the Gears!Gears!Gears Deluxe 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 the Deluxe set with any other Gear!Gears!Gears! set, enhancing it with extra pieces. This set comes in two color schemes, assorted colors and pink. This photo shows the assorted color version.
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.
Unika Building Set Motorbike
Building set “Unlimited Fantasy” (Unika-Ukraine) – diameter 1.7 inch. I really liked the quality, I didn’t even expect it. Easy to attach, easy to detach, holds well. The children really liked the gears because the parts can roll while interlocked over each other (as gears should be). Here you can connect several of them in a row, take them by one end, shake them, and at the other end the gear rolls. For now they are just having fun. Even dad, who is generally difficult to please, liked the set, and he built a carousel. I inserted a pencil into the central hole and turned it and had fun for a long time :)))
These gears are a version of a popular type of building set. The gears in this one are not rotating on top of some structure – they are the basic building blocks of the set. The gears connect if you interlock the pins, or if you stack them. With these simple connections, you can build different shapes and mosaics.
All the gears have the same shape and size, the only difference is the color. However, there are still many possibilities to build, especially if you have many pieces. The gears can also interlock if you connect them at an angle. Sadly, the possibilities to build a moving toy are very limited, because the gears can’t really move once they connect. There are also no extra pieces or decorations, so the gears are the only things you have to work with.
The gears themselves are rather big, they are safe for the small children to play with. They also can hold together even in a very big craft without falling apart.
What Shall I Do With This Tower?
Turn it into the giant owl statue, of course!
Tank
Made from a Chinese magnetic construction set.
By Mary B and 6,6-years-old Willy.
Zoob 125 Piece Set
Zoob 125 piece set is a classic Zoob set in all possible ways. It has those typical Zoob pieces with balls and sockets, but no extra pieces. Still, the possibilities are endless, and if you want to try out Zoob, this is a good starting set.
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 Zoob, 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.
Stag Beetle – Spring Awakening
Big and beautiful insect. Made from EDTOY Da Vinci series.
