Category:Interlocking Building Cubes (Kiddicraft)

1939: Hilary Page's patent for the Building Cubes (granted 1940) [image info]

Interior of a Building Cube, showing credits for Hilary Page and Kiddicraft. Note the "sawn" appearance of the base surface, and the fact that the edge at the bottom of the photo seems to be thinner than the one at the top. [image info]

The Interlocking Building Cube was inventor Hilary Page's replacement for the traditional wooden building block. Page's substitute was a synthetic cube with four curved vertical edges, an open base to allow easy moulding, and pegs on the upper surface to give stacked piles of bricks more stability.

BRI-PLAX INTERLOCKING BUILDING CUBES

Suitable from 1 year to 5 years / Patent Appd. 11577

Building Cubes have always been "favourite" toys during the first five years. BRI-PLAX INTERLOCKING BUILDING CUBES are miles ahead of the ordinary painted or polished ones, as they build up so much better. They are self-coloured and it is impossible for a child to remove the slightest trace of the material or colour, even with constant sucking, biting and gnawing. They are completely hygienic and can be washed indefinitely.
A Hilary Page Design / Made in England

Implementation

The examples of Building Cubes in our collection are not wonderful – although they look great, the alignment of the exterior and interior moulds seems to have been not always quite good enough, resulting in offsets, with some sidewalls being thicker or thinner than others.

This means that with an "unfortunate" combination of individual cubes, they won't always stack together side-by-side unless one tries different orientations. This is not ideal for a children's toy.

We don't know whether our set is of unusually "wonky" manufacture or whether these problems were widespread, but they would probably have led Page to decide that the hard brittle Bakelite-type material used for the blocks needed to be replaced with a more flexible plastic (which would tolerate minor variations in manufacture), and with the Cubes' slightly haphazard moulding method replaced with proper injection moulding.

Transition

The Building Cube was a stepping-stone to Page's next development of the idea - a smaller brick-shaped version of the block with open base and top studs that is now instantly recognisable as the prototype of the Lego brick. This makes the Building Cube an evolutionary link between wooden blocks and Lego.