The Little World

Walter, you and your Mum may have been wondering why I went off on a tangent about Meccano, Erector, and Dux sets last time we spoke. Let me explain.

We live in a world of plastic. It’s a wonderful material and can be made to simulate nearly anything – from bricks to steel girders, to real people. When it does this we can use it for our own Little Worlds to make airplanes, cars, boats, and buildings. We can make plastic horses, and cows, and people. The Japanese make plastic food to put in the windows of their restaurants to help customers imagine what it is that they serve. But you have to remember that plastic is just…plastic.

If plastic masquerades as brick – as the LEGO company has done – it can be made to look like any sort of a building you like. But it cannot be made to do the things that wood or steel do – only to masquerade as if it did.

If you want to do what wood does in your Little World, you need to use wood. As a little kid I used Lincoln Logs to make buildings. They were wooden dowels notched at the ends to fit together like the log cabins of the North American continent in the 1800’s. They came in a big cardboard tube and you got a lot of wood parts for very little money – wood in the 1950’s was cheaper than plastic. I used to make no end of structures on the kitchen floor under my Mum’s feet while she prepared dinner. I don’t recommend this as your Mum may be cooking with hot water and other things that splash. Build your log cabins in the living room…

Okay, that’s wood. Now we come to steel. Meccano is steel, as are Erector and Dux. ( BTW, don’t expect to find Dux constructions sets. The East Germans packed it in in the 1980’s and they don’t make export toys for western dollars any more…more’s the pity…) The steel that they use is very mild but it can still do things that plastic blocks cannot. It can make machinery that works. And you will learn more building a miniature dockyard crane or a car chassis or a transmission than ever you will get from the schoolroom – you’ll learn with your hands and eyes and what you teach yourself will never disappear.

Don’t dismiss plastic at this point. Accept it for what it can be – as long as it is true to itself. Build plastic airplanes and cars and boats. The material in the hands of good moulders will teach you about the shape of the world far better than any picture or diagram. Ask for it to be smooth and not to support too much weight. It will respond well.

Note: Materials are just the first stage of a Little World. Keep reading for more hints. After all, your Mum and Dad are…