Roundup: Modular Toys

LEGO: Brickolage on an industrial scale.

Anyone who has either been a child or has the experience of parenthood is painfully aware that young people like to de-construct things. Naturally, since their knowledge base is still in formation, there is little discrimination as to what things may be subject to this impulse; one day it’s a ratty old doll that you had wanted to toss out anyway, but the next day it will be that miniature Rietveld chair from Vitra that you paid a pretty penny for and failed to put at a sufficiently high altitude to escape prying hands.

What can a parent do? Move everything of value out of the home and live inside rubber walls? Acquire only objects made out of cast iron with no removable parts? No, that does not seem practical. But there is an answer, at least when it comes to toys and other belongings dedicated to children’s play.  As with so many of the challenges that beset mankind, the solution to the problem is – you guessed it – modular.

Now, you are probably thinking we have gone overboard in our faith in the salubrious effects of modularity. But think about it: when it comes to enabling a child to decompose material objects – which is, after all, a necessary phase in their mental development – wouldn’t it make more sense to start with the part and end with the whole, rather than the other way around? Eureka – of course it is! And get this: not only will we reduce incidents of mass destruction among the smaller set, we would also be encouraging in them the brain-building, life-affirming act of using their hands and minds to make form out of formlessness. It’s a win-win all around.

To aid in this quest, we are presenting here a roundup of some of the more appealing modular toys currently on the market, organized by type. Let the games begin!

Bricks and Blocks

The granddaddy of all modular products, LEGO is perhaps the most well-known toy in the entire modular universe. What’s less well-known is that it was largely invented by an Englishman who patented it in the 1930s, when modularity was gathering steam as a production method in industrial design. But it would be the Danish company whose name (an amalgam of ‘play well’ in Danish) would become synonymous with interlocking building blocks. What goes around, comes around, though; a Japanese company is marketing a product called Nanoblocks which to our eye are the spitting image of LEGO. Another variant is Bristle Blocks, whose connection architecture is formed from dense, short spikes; the same design appears under various brand names, including Stickle and Nopper Bricks.

Not far behind LEGO in historical longevity are Lincoln Logs, invented in the 1920s by the son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Given their pedigree, it’s not surprising that these blocks derive from an architectural theme and are largely used to construct buildings and objects of engineering, like fences and forts. Similarly architectural in character are Froebel blocks, devised by one Friedrich Fröbel in the 1840s. It just so happens that Herr Fröbel coined the term kindergarten and was among the first to codify its educational program, including – you guessed it again – the use of his blocks.

Turns out there is more of a connection between Lincoln Logs and Frobel blocks than meets the eye. There’s a legend that Daddy Wright was given a set of Froebel blocks when he was nine years old, a life-changing event which led him to become what he later became – an egomaniac in love with himself who happened to be a great architect. Okay, maybe just the architect part. One might also read some psychology into the fact that son of Wright invented a modular block system with a retrogressive perspective evoking the frontier days of early America, while the geometrically simplified Froebel blocks are now considered an icon of modernist design. Perhaps we’ll just leave this to the psycho-cultural crowd to sort out.

Of similarly modernist sensibilities are the numerous wood block systems currently offered by Naef, a Swiss company specializing in hand-crafted, high quality, non-motorized toys for infants and children. These handsomely designed ‘objects of art’, as their manufacturer prefers to call them, are among the few products here that would look equally at home in an adult environment as in a child’s.

Naef also happened to sponsor a design competition for a wooden toy which was won by a student at Virginia Tech; her modular design (above) uses magnetics to join together a single recurring shape in a variety of configurations.

Marble Blocks

Once assembled, building blocks tend to be pretty static affairs, which is understandable given that a principal goal in their composition is to not fall down. So what do you do if you want to inject an element of dynamism into the mix? Modify the blocks with a groove on one face sufficient to direct a marble down its path, that’s what. Once again the Swiss are on top of this game with their Cuboro wood blocks, launched in 1997. But the concept must have been around earlier, because in 2007 an American named Andrew Comfort designed a modular suite called Q-BA-MAZE made from plastic, apparently inspired by playing a marble maze game with his grandfather as a boy.

Vehicles

One of our favorites and a recent entry into the modular pantheon is Automoblox, a system of re-combinant cars and trucks made out of wood and brightly colored plastic. Beautifully designed and crafted, they are as much a delight to look at as they are to play with. The story of their creation and eventual success is nicely documented by their inventor in a series of web articles, which we recommend as reading for anyone crazy enough to want to bring something of quality to the market.

We might also put into this category all the electric train and car sets in which the tracks – and in the case of trains, the cars as well – come in interlocking segments that can be freely configured by their owner. Of the many such products Lionel trains stands in as similarly an exalted status within its category as LEGO does in its. Unlike the ongoing LEGO business, however, Lionel essentially ceased manufacturing in 1969 and was officially defunct by 1993. The divergent fortunes of these two icons of the toy industry make for an interesting comparative study as to why some products live on and others fade from view.

Electronics

For the mad scientist in your life, there is Snap Circuits, a modular system of interlocking parts which, when properly connected, perform all sorts of nifty electrically driven functions. Among them are a wind turbine, solar powered meters, an FM radio and motion detectors. We can attest from experience that boys go absolutely Lady Gaga for this kit of parts; in fact, they go so gaga they have a tendency to disassemble the handful of components within the system that are vulnerable to dismemberment. Thankfully there’s a brisk market for replacement parts, so science will continue to move forward despite their efforts to the contrary.

Dollhouses

Lest we suggest with our selection of categories that modular toys are predominantly oriented to boys, we include here some modular Dollhouses – not that we prescribe to outdated theories about gender of course (some of our best friends are girls). Still, as most of us are aware, dollhouses were traditionally oriented primarily to the lassies, who would presumably become acquainted with their future domestic duties by practicing them at a small scale. In most cases the dollhouse came already constructed or was first assembled by the Pater, since construction was as stereotypically a male skill set as interior furnishing and maintenance were female. Such neat gender divisions are nicely blurred when it comes to modular dollhouses, however, since the task of constructing the shell of the house out of the available parts becomes part of the user experience. Interestingly, many of the examples we show here were designed by architects, which might explain the prevailing mechanistic aesthetic, exemplified by a dollhouse in the form of modular shipping containers!

Sound Instruments

Music and modularity are closely intertwined, so its appearance among these categories should come as no surprise. Still, we were not entirely prepared for the charming device created by PKNTS called AMK (anagrams ‘r them). This is a modular sound toy designed for preschool children which, according to the designers, works in combination with a computer to transfer single sounds and sound sets to sound blocks, called Klangbausteine. Die Kinder can play independently with each module, or combine sounds by plugging blocks together.

Recyclable Toys

We conclude our survey with a neat and unexpected version of a modular toy. In 2007 Design21, a social design network, sponsored a design competition for a child’s toy with a requirement that it embody sustainability principles. Italian designer Barro de Gast came up with a terrific double whammy: he designed a packaging system for yogurt which, once the contents were consumed, could be transformed into a variety of children’s toys by means of interlocking tabs. Bravo Barro!

References:
Lincoln Logs
Froebel Blocks at Fallingwater
Naef
Ferra the Magnetic Module
Cuboro
Q-BA-MAZE
Automoblox
The Story of Launching Automoblox
Snap Circuits
Modularean Eco Dollhouse
Chalet Dollhouse
Playtower Ding 3
M112 Pod Dollhouses
AMK Sound Instrument
Yo’Play Yoghurt Packaging and Toy