construction set: Brandt's Brick Box for Town Building

Construction sets are as simple as a pile of rectangular blocks and as intricate as sets designed to replicate Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters and Guggenheim Museum. Many early German sets built idealized versions of the Germany of myth and legend. Child experts have long known that the importance of construction sets is in what kids make of them--literally. Using building sets require imagination, creativity, planning, critical thinking, and strategizing--all skills that kids will rely on when they enter the adult world. Since the nineteenth century, toy makers have tried to produce a better construction set. The wooden blocks were succeeded by such twentieth-century classics as Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, LEGOs, K'NEX, and others.