There’s much more going on here than play

Originally published 13 December 1993

Years ago, when my chil­dren were young, we lived for a year in Lon­don, not far from the famous Har­rods depart­ment store. A favorite fam­i­ly out­ing was a vis­it to the toy depart­ment. While the kids bus­ied them­selves with dolls, trains, scoot­ers, and skip ropes, Dad focused on the con­struc­tion sets.

Best among them was Mec­ca­no, a French ver­sion of the Amer­i­can Erec­tor set. And best among the Mec­ca­no sets was an extrav­a­gant­ly expen­sive super-set that came in a many-draw­ered wood­en cab­i­net. Clear­ly, this thing was intend­ed for the off­spring of an Ara­bi­an prince or the play­room of Buck­ing­ham Palace.

I lust­ed after that Mec­ca­no set. It was the only time in my life that I wished to be embar­rass­ing­ly rich.

We even­tu­al­ly bought the kids a starter Mec­ca­no set as a gift from San­ta, and by Christ­mas after­noon I had it all to myself. In the British spir­it, I bolt­ed togeth­er flex­i­ble steel plates to make Cunard ocean lin­ers, Spit­fire air­planes, and artic­u­lat­ed lor­ries. Of all the con­struc­tion sets I have seen, Mec­ca­no yields the most real­is­tic toys.

But real­ism isn’t every­thing. Con­struc­tions sets are stim­uli for the imag­i­na­tion. They teach sym­me­try, bal­ance, ten­sion, com­pres­sion, force, motion, ener­gy. They plug a child’s mind into the very fab­ric of mate­r­i­al cre­ation. Even the slot­ted card­board con­struc­tion set I received as a Christ­mas gift in the war-weary win­ter of 1943 taught me valu­able lessons in the phi­los­o­phy of science.

Con­struc­tion sets are a part of child­hood that some of us nev­er out­grow. Around our house you will often find adults build­ing with what­ev­er con­struc­tion set is at hand, usu­al­ly to meet some whim­si­cal chal­lenge. A Lego arch that spans twelve feet. A Tin­ker Toy can­tilever that sup­ports the weight of a book. A tow­er of blocks that reach­es to the ceiling.

Now, it’s again the sea­son of con­struc­tion sets, and for the first time in decades I have a legit­i­mate rea­son for buy­ing: a cou­ple of three-year-old grand­chil­dren. So it was off to the shop at the Muse­um of Sci­ence to see what new devel­op­ments in con­struc­tion play have tran­spired dur­ing the past 20 years.

Erec­tor is back as Mec­ca­no Erec­tor in all of its nuts-and-bolts glo­ry, after near­ly dis­ap­pear­ing into obliv­ion. The French com­pa­ny has bought the Amer­i­can trade­mark and restored the orig­i­nal A.C. Gilbert qual­i­ty. This is still the most real­is­tic con­struc­tion set on the mar­ket. How­ev­er, the old draw­back remains: Erec­tor toys are fun to put togeth­er, but tedious to take apart.

The Japan­ese Capsela sets are still pop­u­lar. This con­struc­tion toy offers inter­con­nect­ing trans­par­ent plas­tic spheres full of gears, motors, and oth­er mechan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal giz­mos. Capsela is almost too clever to waste on kids. Many a hap­py Christ­mas after­noon I spend snap­ping spheres togeth­er while my chil­dren mum­bled to their moth­er “Dad won’t let us play.”

Is there a child in Amer­i­ca who has not built with Lego? The Dan­ish com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to diver­si­fy. The muse­um shop now car­ries some­thing called Lego “dac­ta,” inge­nious kits that will give new life to hand-me-down bins of lit­tle red bricks.

If my grand­chil­dren were old­er, I would buy them K’Nex. This col­or­ful new entry in the con­struc­tion set mar­ket is an ide­al cross between Tin­ker Toy’s sim­plic­i­ty of assembly/disassembly and Mec­ca­no Erec­tor’s con­cep­tu­al sophis­ti­ca­tion. Thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can in design and man­u­fac­ture, K’Nex is a per­fect excuse for becom­ing a grandparent.

All but the last of these con­struc­tion sets appeared under our Christ­mas trees when my kids were young. Box­es of assort­ed parts still linger around the house, although many com­po­nents have dis­ap­peared down the heat­ing grates or up the hose of the Hoover. The only con­struc­tion toy that remains intact is the first we ever bought: a huge set of maple blocks. These are inde­struc­tible and too big to get lost. When we bought the blocks 30 years ago, the pur­chase rep­re­sent­ed a sub­stan­tial finan­cial sac­ri­fice. We have nev­er regret­ted it. It is prob­a­bly the best invest­ment we ever made in our chil­dren’s education.

A con­struc­tion set need not be expen­sive to be excit­ing. Some years ago our fam­i­ly resided for a spell in Ire­land. At that time, Irish ice pops came with plas­tic sticks inge­nious­ly designed with slots and notch­es to snap togeth­er. We picked up hun­dreds of these from the road­sides of our vil­lage and at no expense acquired a con­struc­tion set with which to build colos­sal bridges and tow­ers. One sub­tly-designed mem­ber, in suf­fi­cient num­bers, yield­ed hours of pleasure.

There is more going on here than play. A good con­struc­tion toy touch­es upon the mys­tery at the heart of sci­ence. The Greeks called it “the prob­lem of the One and the Many”: How is it that a few kinds of inter­change­able parts can give rise to a uni­verse of seem­ing­ly infi­nite vari­ety and complexity?

The answer can be found in a con­struc­tion toy under the Christ­mas tree — or even in a pile of plas­tic ice pop sticks gath­ered from the side of the road.