[stby]

Lego specifically lasts pretty long, I've got some of them at home that survived three generations of kids. But apart from that I do feel like there's way to much plastic in toys, so I'm curios - do you have any good recommendations for alternatives? There seems to be plenty of wooden toys for toddlers, but not so much for kids older than 4.

[red_admiral]

There used to be meccano - think "Lego technic but metal". Not sure if they're still going.

I played with wooden Kapla bricks until I was way older than 4, though the adults kept telling us to stop making catapults to knock down bridges and towers and stuff.

Maybe with laser cutters there's a new market for wooden construction toys.

[seabass-labrax]

Meccano still exist, but hardly: they no longer have any dedicated factories (discussion at [1]), and a very limited range of kits - only eight for sale in Britain at the moment, none of which are based on real-world designs.

I'd say that Meccano has always seemed to me to be less of an engineering toy and more of a modelling one; one can make functional machines, but there are few parts capable of free movement. There are so many more ways to build machines with original Lego Technic pieces - gears, belts, pullies etc.

This appears to be a self-imposed limitation and a rather short-sighted strategy on the part of Meccano. They don't sell genuine individual pieces and spares, even though there are multiple third-parties who do manufacture such parts.

> Maybe with laser cutters there's a new market for wooden construction toys.

I hope so. There's an interesting discussion at [2] about which timber lends itself best to mechanical devices, but then there's the additional questions of what subset of those types of wood would also be suited to laser cutting. Additionally, if you combine wood with metal you have to take into account the differential in expansion and contraction between materials. Plastic pieces such as Lego are less susceptible to that effect to start with.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35501335

[2]: https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/wooden-gears/

[indigochill]

> Maybe with laser cutters there's a new market for wooden construction toys.

At least in my very limited experience, merely the cost of quality wood makes it an expensive material to build toys from.

For example: https://www.communityplaythings.com/products/play/block-play...