Lo-fi lego

Benjamin Franklin wrote that nothing in life is certain except death and taxes. Closely challenging those two for a bronze medal place, however, is the likelihood that you would always find a couple of stray Sticklebricks at the bottom of your primary school toybox. Ubiquitous in the Cream era, the part-filled bucket of Sticklebrick squares, triangles and oblongs was a stalwart of the wet breaktime classroom scramble. Ironically for a set of plastic toy blocks whose whole raison d’etre was to stick together, pieces would inexplicably find themselves strewn all over the place (as any parent or teacher carelessly wandering around in stockinged feet would confirm).

Designed to appeal to toddlers (the UK version was well-named for infant pronunciation; they literally are sticky lickle bricks¹) these coloured building bricks proved both a visual and tactile delight. Fringed on all sides with flexible plastic brushes, they held together purely by friction grip. Fine when stacking them end-to-end and making a sort of Tootie-Frootie Wicker Man², not so fine if sandwiching them flat on top of one another – thereafter, pulling them apart became a near impossibility for a grown-up, never mind someone still coming to terms with their own opposable thumbs.

Sadly, beyond a certain age, a kid’s awareness of the statute of Sticklebrick limitation became all too apparent. Whether used as a makeshift bed of nails for a teenager’s Action Man, or fashioned into a Blade Runner style skyline on a university hall of residence window ledge, there came a time when everyone put a Sticklebrick to its final use. To be fair, though, they were never much use for playing with anything other than themselves. Unlike Lego or Meccano, you couldn’t really construct yourself additional prop cars or houses, not of any discernable shape anyway. More recent sets have attempted to remedy this by including useful pieces like wheels, lights and, erm, teddy bears. However, we are delighted to confirm that Sticklebrick sets of the present are much like Sticklebricks sets of our past (and, for that matter, Ron Jeremy, Seymore Butts and Ben Dover); they still come in buckets.