Eco Bricks, LEGO Compatible wooden blocks

Eco Bricks

https://www.eco-bricks.toys/

From a sales link:
"Made entirely from precision-carved Cherry Wood, an environment-friendly alternative to other types of wood that may have been harvested from old-growth forests, these interlocking bricks aren't just fun - They're friendly to the planet, too!"

Nice wooden bricks that fit 100% with Lego Bricks

There aren't as many brick configurations, but they are a nice addition to the standard Lego sets that children have played with for years

The set pictured here has the following brick configurations:
    Wheels mounted on bricks with 8x2 pegs
    8x2 bricks
    4x2 bricks
    4x2 flat top bricks
    2x2 flat top bricks

Not a lot of variation, but a lot of fun

The test is when stepped on with bare feet, they feel EXACTLY like the Lego bricks.    :)

Krazy Ikes

 Krazy Ikes

Buiding toys or just an amusment ?

My though is that it falls squarely into the realm of building toys, as you have several "body" parts and you assemble them into Krazy different animals and people.  They remind me of Tinker Toys, as you connect various pieces together to form a larger model.

I played with these toys when I was growing up in the 1960's.  My older siblings had a set of them, but never played with them.  I sort of "inherited" them.  Those toys are long gone now, but I remember having hours of fun snapping different pieces into one another to build different creatures, structures, etc, . . . whatever tickled my fancy.

Krazy Ikes were registered and created in 1930 by the Main Toy Company and made in later years by Whitman, Inc.  The original toy was wood, then in the 1950's, they were made from plastic when Whitman

The toys themselves consisted of a body, shoulder joint pieces, hip joint pieces, longer arm and leg pieces, feet and heads in the basic set.  Other sets had wheels, axles flat pieces for cart/vehicle base and other weird misellaneous pieces.

The shoulder and hip pieces slid into appropriate sockets on the body and all the other pieces fit together using a ball and socket type of connector

The heads came in different varieties.  Light bulb shaped human and animal heads.

Some of the later sets, in the '60s thru the '70s, were licensed by Warner Brothers and others by Disney

The sets were packaged in various forms from Box with X shaped divider, to small cannisters similar to Lincoln Logs and  Tinker toys, to blister plastic on cards.

The number of pieces ranged from around 20 for some of the carded sets to well over 100 pieces in boxes.

Bringing together my lover of giant monster movies and construction Toys

American Bricks

These bricks were created by a company called Elgo that later changed it's name to Halsam

They were an alternative to Lego bricks, but completely incompatible.

The bricks had several configurations that were similar to Legos, but are wider and longer and not as toll as the more popular brick. 

These bricks were intended for the use of building houses or other buildings.

The basic configuration of an American Brick is 8 pegs x 2 pegs.  The size is 1 3/4 inches long, 3/4 inch wide and 1/4 inch tall.

The were made in two colors: white and red.

The white bricks were intended as foundation pieces and lintel pieces for the doors and windows.

The red bricks are the actual wall pieces.  They have brick texture on the outside

Other red pieces are the roof peak pieces.  They are the 2x2 hole configuration on the bottom and are a wedge that is 2 bricks tall.  The idea with these pieces is to build the peak on the ends of the house and then lay the green cardboard roofing pieces over the finished model.

There are several different configuration pre-made windows bricks in these sets. Most of them were hinged, so you could open and close them at will.
There are small 1 brick windows, 2x2 windows and 2x3 windows that have the hinges. 
There are also non-hinged picture windows and slatted glass windows.

All sets come with pre-formed, hinged doors as well.

The hinge configurations on doors and the windows that have them are right side and left side.  All intended for double window or "French" door style doors.

Some of the larger sets have garage doors

All of the accessory pieces have a hole in the bottom and a peg at the top so that they can all be built directly into the walls of the models

Here's a nice description of American Bricks from Jackie's Architectural Toys page

The American Bricks toy was my first introduction into construction toys.  I never had a set, but my cousin, who lived across the road, had a couple of sets and I would go to his house and play with them several hours a day in my early childhood.

These toys are what I credit with my love for building toys of all sorts.

American Logs

American Logs were originally produced by the Halsam corporation

Montgomery Ward had the exclusive rights for the sale of Lincoln Logs and J.C.Penny, a competing department store chain, contacted the Halsam corporation to copy and manufacture them under the Halsam label for them.  Halsam refused to duplicate them, but instead applied their own spin by creating a similar but different log toy.

These log toys were called "Frontier Logs" in the south as a direct competitor to the name "Lincoln Logs". 

The logs changed even further by becoming square and compatible with Lincoln Logs.  The word "American" was later added as a selling point.

The peaks for the structures are created by building up interlocking logs that are angled on the ends and get smaller to the peak.  The green slats are similar to those in the Lincoln Logs sets, but they're a little thicker with a thin slit going down each of the sides.  This slit allows the roofing slats to be interlocked to appear like they overlap one another.  As I was growing up and playing with them, I found the American Log roof slats and Lincoln Log roof slats were pretty much interchangeable.

In 1962 the Halsam company was purchased by the Playskool company who already owned the similar Lincoln Log toys.

Halsam filed for trademark registration of the American Logs name in 1969, while owned by Playskool.  The application cites the date of 1935 as when they entered the toy market.  The earliest advertisement that I've found for American Logs was from 1939

I've found there are two distinctly different sizes made by the Halsam company.  The traditional, or senior sized set that is compatible with Lincoln Logs and the smaller size, that's about 1/3 the size of the traditional logs.

Both were manufactured by Halsam and are labeled as American Logs.

Lego Meets Harry Potter

I found this video via a link on Facebook

This is a stroll through the Harry Potter universe's Diagon Alley highlighted by Beyond the Brick

This is the short teaser version

Here's a link to the 49 minute long YouTube.com version

Project: Recreate Erector Instruction book - Robot cover - Part 2

I believe that I've found the requisite plans and parts lists to build the robot

The parts needed to build this robot are laid out in photos 2, 3, and 4

I found another image scanned from the December 1948 issue of Popular Science that contains a nice graphic explanation of the walking mechanism

It's really quite straight forward, except I'll have to change the feet from the plans to look like the ones in this photo

Gotta build the robot before I can stage the photo  :)

Next phase of this project will be the actual building of the robot.  I'll include step-by-step photos of my progress.

More to come . . .