Building blocks (toy)
The basic components are usually cuboid-shaped, cylindrically studded at the top in a grid pattern, hollow-bodied at the bottom and smooth at the sides.
The handling of building block toys requires and trains the visuomotor, the coordination of visual and haptic perception and the movement apparatus (eye-hand coordination, force dosage buildup), fine motor skills,[1] color perception, spatial visualization ability and spatial cognition therein, and mental anticipation of action steps.
The material of the building blocks must be elastic to compensate for the difference in size between the studs and the recess and to create a permanent clamping effect, while remaining dimensionally stable and unbreakable even with multiple disassembly and reassembly and mechanical stress like tensile or compressing loads.
Surfaces should be smooth but grippy and have tolerances of only a few micrometers, as the top and bottom of the clamping components serve as plug-in socket for each other.
The polymer degradation of building blocks made from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS) can take between 100 and 1300 years in the ocean, depending on conditions,[9] according to a University of Plymouth research finding,[10] which is why some manufacturers are looking to switch to sustainable raw materials; some manufacturers make Lego-compatible bricks from wood,[10] for example, from bioethanol[11] or use resins from natural materials as a base,[12] likewise, packaging is sometimes intended to become more environmentally friendly.
[19] A full history of Halsam and its founders cites the existence of interlocking plastic bricks prior to LEGO in America.
[20] In 1949, the Danish company Lego began industrial production of its Automatic Binding Brick, which, however, like its predecessors, was hollow inside and therefore produced very little adhesion.
The modifications [...] included straightening round corners and converting inches to cm and mm, which altered the size by approx.
The number of combinations increases to over 85 billion with only seven same-colored 4×2 bricks,[24] as a paper from the Mathematics Department of Aarhus University states.
Lego itself largely adopted the dimensions of the bricks in the late 1940s from an invention by British toy developer Hilary Page.
[35] In 2002, Lego's Swiss subsidiary Interlego AG successfully sued the company Tianjin CoCo Toy Co. Ltd. for copyright infringement.
CoCo was ordered to stop manufacturing the infringing sets, publish a formal apology in the Beijing Daily, and pay a small compensation to Interlego.
In October 2011, Lego filed a lawsuit in United States District Court in Hartford against Best-Lock over the minifigure trademark.
[27] Mega Bloks won a case in the EU Court of Justice in 2010 against Lego's trademark registration of a red toy brick.
Lawrence Rosen of LaRose Industries was approached by Capriola to invest in the company at the North American International Toy Fair in February 2011.
Instead, Rosen applied for and received an accelerated patent in 2012, and LaRose Industries' Cra-Z-Art division then began producing Lite Brix light-up blocks.
The two companies settled out of court, with Guangdong agreeing to issue standalone packaging and produce a new figure called ToBees.
Thus, for example, complex words have arisen in the German language that attempt to dignify the cease-and-desist declaration, which, however, is also understandable considering the history of the building block.
