Tyrannosaurus Woodkit
by Staff - 2008-05-01 (updated 2008-05-09)
This appears to be a couple of thin sheets of wood die cut into a strange variety of shapes of just the right specifications to allow them to be hooked together in a slot A goes into slot B sort of fashion so as to create a three dimensional model of a Tyrannosaurus. There are a lot of different dinosaur wood kits to choose from and the kits also come in other varieties such as a couple of insects, and a few vehicles. If they are well constructed these could be very cool toys. It will be interesting to see how easy they are to assemble, what the quality of the wood is, how stable the assembled model is, and what can be done with them afterwards.
Construction Example
We got one of the Tyrannosaurus wood kits and had Catherine take a stab at putting it together. We took a picture of the finished creature sitting proudly on one of the book shelves. Catherine really was proud of the job she did, and I must say I was fairly impressed myself, she did it so effortlessly. The ease with which a 6 1/2 year old put it together could be a great testament to the simplicity and quality of this product -- or maybe to our bright young daughter. In either case, she likes it and wants to do more, and Tommy is chomping at the bit to build one as well, so we're going to be placing an order to get a variety of them in stock for the store.
Deconstruction anyone?
I don't know if the product is intended to be disassembled and put back into the little flat box it comes in, but that is what we did and it worked great. we took the pieces apart with a small amount of care and had no problem putting them back into the spaces in the wood frames that we had saved. We then slid the frames back into the box, slipped the tab into the slot and now the kit sits nicely on a shelf like a thin book waiting to be built again. I'm intending on waiting a while and then letting Tommy try his hand at the rebuild. Will have to run some tests with other varieties after we get them in stock and see how easily they can be disassembled to determine whether we should consider that a feature of the products in general or not.
Update 5/1/2008. We decided to order all sorts of these woodkits, they have animals and insects in addition to the dinosaurs, and hopefully we'll have them in stock long before the new website goes live.