Building Toys

I love Lego!  That said, I find it fun playing with different types of construction/building toys.  Currently we are amassing a collection of Duplo Lego.  I like the look and feel of the pieces and their durability.  There are a variety of different pieces and sets that add variety and make it interesting for Isaac to play with.  The main frustration with duplo bricks in general is that they come apart pretty easily so when we build a tall tower, it tends to topple over.  I'm still looking to pick up a few more specific sets if I can find them on sale from Lego, Toys R Us or at Value Village.

Mega bloks can be used with duplo blocks, though they feel a little cheaper in quality and the nubs aren't finished as nicely as the duplo nubs.  There are also a variety of mega bloks sets and they generally cost less then lego ones.  I confess that I bought a mixed bag of mega bloks just to get some of the duplo pieces that were included in the bag, then donated the mega bloks back to value village.  We were recently given a mega bloks pirate ship, though we left it at the Grandparent's place.  I will have to see what the boy thinks of it and what we can do with it.  We will test it out in a few months when we go visit our family.

I found a small set of Infinitoy Zoob with 15 pieces.  These are pieces are ball / socket types of parts which can snap together in different ways.  We can't really do too much since we only have 15 pieces, but Isaac likes to pull the pieces apart when I snap them together.

We were having a web chat with grandparents the other day and we needed to keep the boy entertained  in his booster seat, so I whipped out a "new" building set from Value Village.   He was very focused playing with the bricks and spent over an hour trying to see what they could do and how they worked together.  Morphun Junior Blocks come in square and triangular pieces of varying height (depth).  Some square pieces have nubs on top - these look like the duplo 2x2 pieces except they have a ridged 1/2 circle indentation on each side and a ridged circle on the underside.  The pieces connect with slide-in spindle pieces or by stacking square nubbed pieces on top of each other.  The nubbed pieces are compatible with Duplo (provided the spindles don't stick out if they're used).  I like the different ways the pieces can connect together and it's great that it can work with duplo bricks.  The only disappointment is that Isaac broke a Morphun brick by jamming a spindle through a square block.