wooden lego blocks by mokurokku
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wooden mokulock bricks
what if ole kirk kristiansen, the founding father of the LEGO group, didn’t make the technological leap to create toys made from ultra modern ABS plastic in the late ’40s? see how it could have looked liked if it had been carved from wood!
japanese firm mokurokku hopes to get you feel closer to nature with their new wooden bricks.
each box of mokulock bricks is priced at ¥2,835/USD31 and includes 50 pieces.
they seem to be compatible with standard LEGO pieces, and we would want to see sets of mixed plastic and wood construction on different textures and colors. the mokurukku set has a disclaimer that the pieces can warp or fit together imprecisely due to the nature of the material in different temperatures and scale of humidity...
I would happily pay whatever Lego wanted to charge if they included these sorts of ‘real’ building materials for their Architecture series. Think this is fantastic. Questioning sustainability considering the sheer number of lego blocks produced a year, but to look at and to feel.. awesome.
Love the idea. Can we get concrete too? I second pb that this adds a whole new dimension to building with legos.
L’ECO
Would be great to make them out of PM material or die cast aluminum/magnesium. The possibilities are endless.
Nice though wooden versions of industrial products are to touch, there is something slightly perverse about making wooden Lego.
The disclaimer about them potentially warping and not fitting together precisely is the key,
Ole Kirk Kristiansen made traditional wooden toys, but was far-sighted enough to see the future lay in plastics.
There is an anecdote, (related in the official Lego histories) about Ole meeting a toy buyer on a ferry from from Denmark to Britain, who complained that there was no toy on the market with a really good idea behind it.
Ole returned home, drew up a list of the qualities he thought the perfect toy should have, then assessed all his wooden product lines to see which had the greatest potential.
He chose the wooden brick, and from there developed the hollow plastic brick, but the real inovation was adding the tubes on the underside which meant the brick would snap together and hold fast, opening up new possibilities.
(There should be 3 tubes under the bricks pictures, not 2 – I suspect this will have implications for its compatibility).
Lego’s success is down to the fact you can combine bricks in almost limitless combinations, thanks to the design and the precision with which they are moulded. (They still lock together after 25 years use). The more Lego you have the more possibilities there are, because ever piece is compatible.
It’s a classic example of standardisation, mass production and interchangeability of parts.
Making a wooden version of a precision plastic moulded component, which won’t lock together reliably and is likely to warp over time is effectively undoing all Ole’s good work!
It’s not eco design, or intelligent design. It’s just a bit of fun.