Mess-free crafting.
Recently we reviewed a
Star Wars-themed Aquabeads set which involved arranging small plastic
beads into a pattern and then dousing them with water to make them
stick. We had a similar kind of fun a couple of years ago with the
SpongeBob Squarepants Bead Creations set, which had us arranging tiny
beads onto a pinboard and then ironing over them to make them fuse
together. Both ways of crafting were fun, but hardly adult-free fun.
That is why is Simbrix caught our eyes.
Simbrix are small
bead-like building bricks which, despite coming in many different
colours, are all the same. Each brick consists of two sticky-out
parts, and two sticky-in parts, allowing it to combine with any
number of other Simbrix to form a pattern or shape. Once clipped
together, the creation doesn't need water or heat as it will stay
firmly combined in that shape until you take it apart to make
something else.
So basically, it is
crafting without the mess or danger, allowing kids to make cool 2-D
shapes and images without adult supervision. And it is just 2-D
shapes they can make, as there is no way to 'build up' from a flat
surface. But, just like the SpongeBob set we played with (as you can
technically put layers and layers of Aquabeads on top of each other –
as we saw in our London Toy Fair 2017 report), this means you can get
creative with pixel art and try to make scenes and recreate
characters in an 'old-skool' computer game way.
Simbrix are also very
small, and despite being sent only a relatively small pouch of them,
we still ended up with about 500 bricks – more than enough to make
a large picture. Colours range from the primary colours to several
other shades of green, blue, purple, greys, browns, pink, and black.
It's called the Cute Kit, and contained a sheet of ideas and
inspirations to get you crafting. Also available are the larger Geek
and Crafter kits, as well as individual colour kits if you need
specific shades for a particular project. You can also buy a small
glow-in-the-dark kit, with bricks that... yeah, you get it.
Simbrix are fun,
mess-free and pretty open-ended. The lack of any binding agent or
action is quite unique for this kind of craft system, and attaching
each brick really is very simple for small hands. Check 'em out.
Cute Kit £15
Geek Kit £25
Crafter Kit £35