K'nex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%27Nex), my personal favorite as a child- rods and plastic connectors that you can use to build vehicles, small scale models, toy guns, etc. I really liked them a a kid because while LEGO are more about building static dioramas/models, K'nex is more about building dynamic/usable contraptions. For example they had really cool kits to make solar powered robots that would crawl around and were very easy to modify; unfortunately these days they seem to be more focused on branded content (e.g. Mario Kart, Angry Birds).
Logiblocs (http://www.logiblocs.com), plastic blocks from the UK with electronic components encased in plastic that are easy to plug together, allowing kids to assemble projects such as alarms or a basic voice recorder. E.g.: http://www.logiblocs.com/images/understanding_spytech.gif . Their website seems to be stuck in the 90s :)
Littlebits (http://littlebits.cc), in a way a modern reinterpretation of Logiblocs - electronic components that snap together using magnets, sold as kits.
And of course Lego, but no need to talk about these :) Although the LEGO Mindstorms series should get a special shoutout.
Those are all the ones I can think of, but I'm sure other HNers will have contributions. I wonder if there's room to do a construction toy these days, given LEGO's titanic market and mindshare. I was very excited about Goldie Blox recently, but I thought it fell kind of flat - their models aren't very extensible/modifiable in the way that LEGO or K'nex or Capsela are.
I always thought that meccano was originally English?
The great thing about meccano was because it was made out of steel that it could take some amazing abuse - the downside was the nuts and bolts were very easy to lose. I ended up with a whole series of beaten up plates that I could not bolt together :)
It was originally British, yes: developed by Frank Hornby in Liverpool. It's now made in France. There are still avid constructors who prefer 'original' Meccano (red/green coloured metal) as it is supposedly better build quality than today's product (blue/yellow).
I recently bought some Meccano. I also noticed that the build quality is not so good anymore. The beams bent easily. The Capsula introduced by the topic starter look fun. And they teach an important principle of object oriented programming: encapsulation and the single responsibility principle.
FWIW, there's also Snap Circuits: http://www.snapcircuits.net/ I had this one as a kid, and I had fun with it, but I don't know how it compares to the other electronic kits you listed.
Technic is a line of Lego interconnecting plastic rods and parts. The purpose of this series is to create more advanced models with more complex movable arms, such as machines with wheels, in addition to the simpler brick-building properties of normal LEGO.
For some reason they changed Lego Technic to studless beams (removed studded bricks) years ago. Lego has begun to re-incorporate studded bricks back into the Technic line - that's good.
"Unlike other building toys such as Lego, Construx feature beam-like pieces of varying lengths that snapped on to cubical connector knots in order to build large shapes. These are relatively secure even though no nuts or bolts were used. Panels allowed assembly of flat surfaces. Hinges, motors, wheels, and other movable parts expand the number of different shapes that can be built, and make moving creations possible."
I had two motors and could build simple robots. Due to the long size of the pieces, one could build truly gigantic things. I build really big helicopters, AT-T Walkers and whatnot. I played with this much more than with Lego. Also, the pieces had a bit of a 80ies future style look, which fit well for all the Sci-Fi things I was building.
I absolutely loved Construx growing up. I also had the motor box for it and distinctly remember my father explaining how gear ratios can increase torque by trading off turning speed using the rubber o-rings and yellow pulleys. One advantage Contstrux had over Lego is that once assembled, they were pretty rigid and sturdy toys. A great creative toy for kids.
I loved Construx when I was a kid. My brother and I would each build a vehicle, sit on the kitchen floor facing each other 10 or 15 feet apart, and ram them together. Whoever's vehicle lost the least number of parts won. We were probably 7 or 8 or so, and I clearly remember the process of coming up with an idea, building it, testing it, tweaking it, and so on, until we finally came up with what we thought was the optimal ramming vehicle. It was a great learning experience.
Looking at it now, I knew nothing of the comic book/TV show connection. I saw them at some children's science museum (maybe in Chicago?) and spent the better part of a day building cars and simple robots.
I have an old, four-motor Robotix system from my childhood. It's part of the reason I became a programmer beyond QuickBASIC for DOS. Having played with the Robotix kit, I encountered an articulated robot arm in tech ed, in 7th grade, and wanted badly to program it. I learned the basic command language, excelled in the class, found out that C++ was what it used for the advanced stuff, and started to learn C++ on my own. Sadly, we moved before I got to program it further in 8th grade.
Robotix is definitely inferior to Capsela, because the only gearings it provided were the things necessary to run the sample project toys you could build, such as the grabber arm (use the slower, stronger motor for the hand!).
I had a big robotix kit and loved it. My parents kept it and I was planning to have my kids use it, only to find out a few years ago that none of the motors work anymore, and a lot of the plastic has become brittle, so breaks easily when taking things apart. sigh
Author here, thanks a lot for the suggestion. I will definitely consider some of these.
I have a daughter and I bought her two capselas back when I wrote the blog post two years ago and she wasn't that interested. I think she expected a more espectacular outcome given the effort :)
I didn't have legos, as I mentioned I'm from Argentina and it wasn't very popular here, we had a clone called "rastis".
This year I went for the first time to US and we bought legos, but not a set, the $ 15 glasses of pieces. I did another trip in March and I bought more and last month a friend bring us another one. My daughter play with this every day.
I think legos in general and capsela are very different, but Lego as a brand has many different sets.
I agree with another commenter than "technic" is similar but it is a set and you know all the time what you should assemble and that's the reason I don't like Lego sets/models but I do like the pieces a lot.
The technic are sold as a set but it doesn't stop kids from creating a lot of different things with them. As a kid, I almost only played with the lego technic but almost never actually assembled the object from the set.
My step father had a bunch of these that he brought back to the States from Germany in the 70s. They were seriously high quality with steel bits that would stand up for large load-bearing designs which wouldn't work with plastic toys like Lego Technic.
I wanted one of these so bad when I was a kid. I did have a couple of these awesome science/engineering type of toys, as well as a load of lego.
The one that stands out in my mind still was a little solar steam "engine". Once heated by the sun would draw water through it with a loud "putt putt putt" sound.
Oh wow, thanks for some nostalgia! I grew up in Ukraine and played with this :). It wasn't exactly the most reliable thing (like lego bricks are, for example), but definitely fun memories!
Another lesson applicable to coding that this toy taught me was about the basics of standards, compatibility, and lock in. I believe I only had single set of Capsela, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them to satisfyingly inter-operate with lego, mechano, or any other building-toys. Getting more was a non-starter (pre-internet). My dad had brought it back from a business trip to SF where he visited FAO Schwarz, and I'm not even sure they sold other sets.
There was definitely more than one set. I remember that I had one and my friend had a different, larger set. According to wikipedia [0], they've been rebranded and are available (in Japan at least) [1].
For me, it was Lego Technic that played the role that Capsela played for the OP. One of my fondest memory as a child was when I created a mechanically programmable excavator 3-joints arm by mixing ideas from some of the suggested models... I just wished that modern-day Lego didn't have so many specialized, single-use parts.
I just spent the past hour playing with a capsela clone that we got our daughter for Christmas :-) I had these as a kid too, although the legos were better in some ways: less prone to destruction and more "abstract" in tht you could create anything you could imagine.
This is the great thing about 3d printers, as Linus Towards said:"if I had one of these (3d printers) when I was a kid, I would have done amazing crazy things".
We teach little kids basic freecad, openscad design and give them communal access to the printers too.
Some of them are really great designers. It is amazing when they start thinking on their own.
Loved this in the 80's. Wonderful thing about this toy is that it was very accessible, you could do something fun in one or two capsules and grow from there. No need to build an entire model before something works. Adding e.g. gears took seconds, which gave a very intuitive feel for the mechanics.
Lego, Meccano, Capsela. Great childhood memories :)
Thanks, came here to ask if this still exists. No children but I'm probably going to buy a set. Mainly because of the floating devices: I used to have close to the entire range of Lego Technics, but there was none of the things which could float.
I read the comments to see if anyone had posted this yet. I Had a few small sets of Capsela when I was a kid and by far the most fun was making watercraft. I will forewarn anyone, especially those with kids, that if you let them play with Capsela in the bath -- with soap and dirt and grime and whatever else -- they will get nasty and perhaps unrecoverably ... maligned.
Technic pieces won't float because they have no internal air pockets, but Lego has produced quite a few boat sets with floating hull pieces. Here's a list: http://brickset.com/sets/list-5930
I would imagine that you could also make a floating contraption with enough bricks stuck together in such a way as to make the internal spaces airtight, but I've never tried it.
Denshi blocks were one of the most significant educational toys that I had as a kid growing up in the 70's and 80's, and many an afternoon was spent with my Space 1999 Eagle model, a Capsela "moon base", and me "inside with the computer" (Denshi blocks) commanding 'the system'. Ah, to return to those halcyon days when modular toy systems gave my systems-management skills a sharper edge. ;)
You're welcome! I await the Denshi Block revival and subsequent recognition as one who was there and that, and all that. ;)
Seriously, if you do anything with Denshi blocks, let me know. I keep trying to get my local hackerspace denizens to reproduce the casing and update it with the 3d-printing and the laser-cutting and all the other potential energy to be applied, but there are always so many other interesting things to do ..
> In this vide you can see even a remote control that I never had. I read also in wikipedia that there was a model with an interface to Commodore 64, a Lego Mindstorms predecessor!
Lego Logo predated Capsela and was mostly inspired from Seymour Papert's 1980 book, Mindstorms. It ran on an Apple II through a special daughtercard and was amazing.
I got to play with Capsela as well, but only ever the basic kit without any expansions. Mostly because of the astronomical price of the parts. I wouldn't be surprised if there is someone with a 3D printer trying to design a printable modular motorized construction kit.
My memories of it are a little fuzzy. I only got to use the system for 1 year, when I was nine years old. There was no assistance, I had to open the Apple and set up the driver card myself, taught myself logo too. I spent every recess inside just to get more time on it. (The kit went to a different school every year.) Unfortunately I didn't grok algebra until the following year, so my programs were essentially simple lists of commands with no math and (at most) limit-switch logic.
I recall using Logo in 3th grade at a Purdue University CS summer camp program. The camp was 1 week long and we stayed in the dorms like real university students - very cool! However, I don't recall any Apple computers. I think it interfaced to a PC using a serial cable. The next year the camp upgraded to Mindstorm kits and we used pbForth instead of the GUI RoboLab. pbForth's author, Ralph Hempel, came down from Canada to teach the camp. It was a true treat! Imagine a bunch of elementary students successfully learning Forth in a week!
>I wouldn't be surprised if there is someone with a 3D printer trying to design a printable modular motorized construction kit.
Seems like 3D printing would only solve a tiny part of the problem. Some of those Capsela capsules have some pretty complex assemblies inside, which would still be a lot of manual work.
So? It would take hours to print each one. Five minutes snapping in the gears and shafts is no big deal. The children these toys are meant for have loads of free time. They could do that step themselves.
The problem is the price tag. None of those mechanisms are complicated. Simple gear boxes mostly. At the same time I was playing with Capsela I was also building those same gear mechanisms from scratch with Lego Technics.
If anyone is considering printing these, using off the shelf nylon gears would be a very good idea.
I had the big kit. It was one of the most awesome toys. I looked into buying one again but there seem to be a lot of poor reviews of the newer versions. They don't make them like they used to, and the old versions are pricey retro items. I thought about 3D printing something similar, but for the amount of time involved it's worth it to buy the real thing.
From what I remember as a kid, they'd develop little cracks along the facets of the connectors, which killed the friction that keeps everything stuck together.
I just found a completely new, unused (things are still in plastic baggies) Capsela 400 box at the thrift store. This is one seriously great toy. I don't know whether to let my daughter play with it or sell it on eBay...
I remember being upset my parents wouldn't buy me video games or action figures like GI Joe, Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and whatnot, but looking back I'm really glad they bought me LEGO, Meccano, Capsella, etc instead.
I know LEGO still exists of course (despite LEGO's focus on movie tie-ins, Technic and Mindstorms still seem like good products) but are there other similar newer products worth considering?
Absolutely LOVED Capsela! Eventually, I started applying a lot of the modularity concepts to my Lego Technic projects by recreating the gearing sets and interconnects in Lego. Great stuff!
The toys I remember best from my childhood were all the building toys - LEGO, Capsela, k'nex, and this one where you built towers with beams and blew them up with a timed bomb. I had cars and action figures and such as well but can't really picture them and remember as well as the construction toys.
92 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadSimilarly engaging toys:
Meccano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano), a French brand of metal rods, plates, gears, etc. that you can assemble together to form functioning small scale models (usually of vehicles). E.g.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Meccano_0...
K'nex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%27Nex), my personal favorite as a child- rods and plastic connectors that you can use to build vehicles, small scale models, toy guns, etc. I really liked them a a kid because while LEGO are more about building static dioramas/models, K'nex is more about building dynamic/usable contraptions. For example they had really cool kits to make solar powered robots that would crawl around and were very easy to modify; unfortunately these days they seem to be more focused on branded content (e.g. Mario Kart, Angry Birds).
Logiblocs (http://www.logiblocs.com), plastic blocks from the UK with electronic components encased in plastic that are easy to plug together, allowing kids to assemble projects such as alarms or a basic voice recorder. E.g.: http://www.logiblocs.com/images/understanding_spytech.gif . Their website seems to be stuck in the 90s :)
Littlebits (http://littlebits.cc), in a way a modern reinterpretation of Logiblocs - electronic components that snap together using magnets, sold as kits.
And of course Lego, but no need to talk about these :) Although the LEGO Mindstorms series should get a special shoutout.
Those are all the ones I can think of, but I'm sure other HNers will have contributions. I wonder if there's room to do a construction toy these days, given LEGO's titanic market and mindshare. I was very excited about Goldie Blox recently, but I thought it fell kind of flat - their models aren't very extensible/modifiable in the way that LEGO or K'nex or Capsela are.
The great thing about meccano was because it was made out of steel that it could take some amazing abuse - the downside was the nuts and bolts were very easy to lose. I ended up with a whole series of beaten up plates that I could not bolt together :)
The UK scene is quite active : http://www.skegex.nmmg.org.uk/
Lego Technic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Technic
Technic is a line of Lego interconnecting plastic rods and parts. The purpose of this series is to create more advanced models with more complex movable arms, such as machines with wheels, in addition to the simpler brick-building properties of normal LEGO.
For some reason they changed Lego Technic to studless beams (removed studded bricks) years ago. Lego has begun to re-incorporate studded bricks back into the Technic line - that's good.
"Unlike other building toys such as Lego, Construx feature beam-like pieces of varying lengths that snapped on to cubical connector knots in order to build large shapes. These are relatively secure even though no nuts or bolts were used. Panels allowed assembly of flat surfaces. Hinges, motors, wheels, and other movable parts expand the number of different shapes that can be built, and make moving creations possible."
I had two motors and could build simple robots. Due to the long size of the pieces, one could build truly gigantic things. I build really big helicopters, AT-T Walkers and whatnot. I played with this much more than with Lego. Also, the pieces had a bit of a 80ies future style look, which fit well for all the Sci-Fi things I was building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx
https://www.google.com/search?q=construx&safe=off&biw=1202&b...
But maybe I'm not :-)
However, I did get a set of Robotix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotix_(toys)
Looking at it now, I knew nothing of the comic book/TV show connection. I saw them at some children's science museum (maybe in Chicago?) and spent the better part of a day building cars and simple robots.
Robotix is definitely inferior to Capsela, because the only gearings it provided were the things necessary to run the sample project toys you could build, such as the grabber arm (use the slower, stronger motor for the hand!).
I have a daughter and I bought her two capselas back when I wrote the blog post two years ago and she wasn't that interested. I think she expected a more espectacular outcome given the effort :)
I didn't have legos, as I mentioned I'm from Argentina and it wasn't very popular here, we had a clone called "rastis".
This year I went for the first time to US and we bought legos, but not a set, the $ 15 glasses of pieces. I did another trip in March and I bought more and last month a friend bring us another one. My daughter play with this every day.
I think legos in general and capsela are very different, but Lego as a brand has many different sets.
I agree with another commenter than "technic" is similar but it is a set and you know all the time what you should assemble and that's the reason I don't like Lego sets/models but I do like the pieces a lot.
[1]: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasti
http://www.fischertechnik.de/en/Home/products.aspx
The one that stands out in my mind still was a little solar steam "engine". Once heated by the sun would draw water through it with a loud "putt putt putt" sound.
Another lesson applicable to coding that this toy taught me was about the basics of standards, compatibility, and lock in. I believe I only had single set of Capsela, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them to satisfyingly inter-operate with lego, mechano, or any other building-toys. Getting more was a non-starter (pre-internet). My dad had brought it back from a business trip to SF where he visited FAO Schwarz, and I'm not even sure they sold other sets.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela [1] http://www.iqkey.jp/
Working with my classmates, it was the first time I didn't feel like an idiot. I just simply 'go it' and knew how it worked.
I was quite let down when they took it away, and fobbed me off with an excuse that I can't remember now.
It would take me over a decade to find that part of me, but we got there in the end.
Thanks for the reminder (and the name) of this great toy.
Anyway, I too had one of these and what I loved most was that you could build boats with propellers.
I loved propellers and floating vehicles although I didn't have a pool to test it out back then.
http://iq-key.com is the manufacturer.
We teach little kids basic freecad, openscad design and give them communal access to the printers too.
Some of them are really great designers. It is amazing when they start thinking on their own.
A trip down memory lane when I was looking for my old Legos and found this (well part of it) in the box as well.
Lego, Meccano, Capsela. Great childhood memories :)
http://www.captoy.eu/toys/iq-key-and-capsela-358/
I would imagine that you could also make a floating contraption with enough bricks stuck together in such a way as to make the internal spaces airtight, but I've never tried it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakken_EX-System
Denshi blocks were one of the most significant educational toys that I had as a kid growing up in the 70's and 80's, and many an afternoon was spent with my Space 1999 Eagle model, a Capsela "moon base", and me "inside with the computer" (Denshi blocks) commanding 'the system'. Ah, to return to those halcyon days when modular toy systems gave my systems-management skills a sharper edge. ;)
Seriously, if you do anything with Denshi blocks, let me know. I keep trying to get my local hackerspace denizens to reproduce the casing and update it with the 3d-printing and the laser-cutting and all the other potential energy to be applied, but there are always so many other interesting things to do ..
Lego Logo predated Capsela and was mostly inspired from Seymour Papert's 1980 book, Mindstorms. It ran on an Apple II through a special daughtercard and was amazing.
I got to play with Capsela as well, but only ever the basic kit without any expansions. Mostly because of the astronomical price of the parts. I wouldn't be surprised if there is someone with a 3D printer trying to design a printable modular motorized construction kit.
Do you have any link, reference or picture about lego logo?
http://www.applefritter.com/content/lego-tc-logo
My memories of it are a little fuzzy. I only got to use the system for 1 year, when I was nine years old. There was no assistance, I had to open the Apple and set up the driver card myself, taught myself logo too. I spent every recess inside just to get more time on it. (The kit went to a different school every year.) Unfortunately I didn't grok algebra until the following year, so my programs were essentially simple lists of commands with no math and (at most) limit-switch logic.
thank you very much!
I remember making a conveyor to sort blocks using a color? sensor. The older kids got to make and use the turtle, which just ran logo commands.
Seems like 3D printing would only solve a tiny part of the problem. Some of those Capsela capsules have some pretty complex assemblies inside, which would still be a lot of manual work.
The problem is the price tag. None of those mechanisms are complicated. Simple gear boxes mostly. At the same time I was playing with Capsela I was also building those same gear mechanisms from scratch with Lego Technics.
If anyone is considering printing these, using off the shelf nylon gears would be a very good idea.
I don't think I ever got into them in the same way I got into tinker toys or lego though.
I know LEGO still exists of course (despite LEGO's focus on movie tie-ins, Technic and Mindstorms still seem like good products) but are there other similar newer products worth considering?