Category: Playing_bricks

Posted on by

Mr Splitter also likes to have fun!

I guess all fans of building blocks sometimes have trouble separating some pieces. The problem is most striking especially in case of completely new sets, as intensively used bricks tend to stick to others a little weaker.

By looking at our oldest bricks, we could analyse our dental development, but we do not recommend such solution for separating pieces – and neither does your dentist.

An interesting way to disconnect the blocks is to use a paraphrase of the principle that a bigger problem drives out a smaller problem. Since the problem usually lies in separating couple of plates – attach a brick  to one or both resistant plates and try to separate the stubborn pieces.

Partly that might have been the principle upon the creation of the  so-called by us Mr. Splitter – a special functional piece. 

Everyone has experienced extremely difficult cases to disconnect pieces at some point. Our toughest case is a combination of two blocks:

with the same, but reversed:

Just don’t connect these blocks, it’s really difficult to separate them! Mr. Splitter won’t be of any help here.

Ok, but the post was supposed to be about something else – about the creative use of Mr. Splitter and his clones – an example is shown in the photo. In our opinion, brick-worms are Mr. Splitter’s natural environment!

Posted on by

Wish you were here! That was an epic naval battle!

Today we combine two previous posts – ships and organizing bricks.

It turns out that when we have a box of same type bricks on hand, we automatically start building various structures. This time we made fancy ships from bricks of the same color, while the figures we made from elements from another box (“tiny sloped tiles “). We made the ships modular – they can connect with each other, dock next to each other, etc.

And for those who prefer more “organized” ships mada of bricks, we recommend a Brikido construction – a Viking ship, all range of sizes available here!

Aerial view of the battle:

Posted on by

Small is beautiful – play ships with us!

Today we have an inspiring idea for great fun – let’s call it the ‘ships game’.
How about we build a fleet of ships? Container ships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, battleship ships. The rule is simple – ideally the ship is 1, 2 or 3 bricks wide! (However, we also produced some bigger ones.)
The proposed game has many advantages, including: we have a quick effect in the form of an interesting built and an exercise in imagination development.

PS. The recently watched cult movie “Das Boot” was inspiration for this play.

Titanic

Container ship

Aircraft carriers

Battleships

Posted on by

Bricks Sets’ Boxes – should they be thrown into the paper bin or not?

Today, a supplement to the post about organizing blocks, i.e. organizing boxes.
That is a challenge – what to do with the nice-looking but big brick cardboard boxes so that they don’t take up a lot of space?
We propose to do the so-called gallery! Almost everyone faces the problem of not having enough space at home. We will share with you how to save both space and great-looking bricks boxes. Our method also has the advantage that selected sets can be sold in the future – having the original box (next to the instructions and all the bricks) is an advantage to obtain a better price.
The photos show how you can flatten the box while keeping it almost intact. Additionally, from time to time it is great fun to look through the stack of boxes we have i.e. our “gallery”. Highly recommend solution!

Step 0 – closed box

Step 1 – opened box

Step 2 – both sides opened (you may cut the side parts with scissors if you wish)

Step 3 – flatteend box (you may stick it with a few pieces of adhesive tape)

Boxes organised in a box…

Posted on by

So here we go! We suggest to start with establishing your workstation!

We would like to welcome you to the Brikido blog, where, as members of the Brikido team, we will write about our most interesting experiences with bricks, and we will also try to inspire you to create your own constructions – not necessarily using the Brikido algorithm, sometimes just letting your imagination run wild.
There are many blogs about bricks on the Internet, we hope that ours will be as good as the best ones. Our blog is intended for everyone, with particular emphasis on families with children. Children (and maybe adults too?) often need stimulation with new incentives – in our opinion, bricks are way better at this than smartphones and tablets. We plan to inspire you to have fun and not necessarily buy new sets all the time.

So here we go!

My Mom taught me that when you start doing something, it is worth ESTABLISHING YOUR WORKSTATION FIRST – so today we concentrate the post on sorting the bricks.
There are several approaches to organizing your bricks:

  1. The ideal approach in which most of the bricks are kept built as in the original sets. We do not recommend this approach, although in that case the order is perfect. Bricks should be used to build & destroy; repeat!
  2. System approach – depending on possessed number of bricks, we distinguish individual categories and keep them in separate boxes. There are convenient drawer boxes available on the market, but we use many different ones, including dishwashed plastic takeaway lunch boxes. We distinguish the following categories of pieces and keep them separately:
    • Bricks (including technic kind of beams)
    • Plates
    • Minifigures with accessories and tools
    • Vehicles and transportation – parts typical for cars – wheels, steering wheels, wheel arches/fenders, chassis, windows, etc.
    • technic kind of bricks
    • The so-called “lights”
    • Hooks/connectors
    • Slopes, bows, tiles, inverted bows
    • Small roof tiles, inglots, tiny sloped tiles
    • Miscellaneous – everything else!
      You can additionally consider separating another category for large-sized, unusual blocks – e.g. entire walls constituting one element.
      In special cases, when someone has really huge amount of bricks, it may make sense to separate additional categories or color divisions of the above-mentioned categories.
  3. Total mess – acceptable for us only at the stage of initial bricks (e.g. like Duplo®)
  4. Mix the above methods!

In our opinion, bricks can be categorized also in many other ways (e.g. by colors), but the proposed method is, in our opinion, the best.

The attached photos show our ordered bricks.

Bricks (including technic kind of beams)

Plates

Minifigures with accessories and tools

Vehicles and transportation – parts typical for cars – wheels, steering wheels, wheel arches/fenders, chassis, windows, etc.

Technic kind of bricks

The so-called “lights”

Hooks/connectors

Slopes, bows, tiles, inverted bows

Small roof tiles, inglots, tiny sloped tiles

Miscellaneous

All of them!