My son graduated from Lego this weekend and built his first Meccano (Metal content) model (He's 8). A rather complicated thing that turned out to be a riding lawnmower complete with motor and spinning "blade." It brought back a lot of great memories from when I was a kid. It made me realize that Meccano had a huge part in my interest in mechanical things and got me on the road to "tinkering." Probably had something to do with my dad's interest too for that matter. And possibly my granddad! Researching the Net it looks like the company has gone through many lapses and deaths only to be resurrected in one form or another. See the wikipedia entry for a good synopsis The new sets have a lot of plastic parts (no brass gears with set screws) but there are still a lot of the old metal strips and plates all punched with holes. Great. One thing I did notice was that all the bolts are now with "allen" (Hex) heads and are easier to control when trying to install in an intricate position. Far better than the flat head bolts that the screw driver would always slip out of and stab you in the hand. The nuts are still the square nuts with the sharp pointy corners that dig into your fingers when they spin while tightening :-) I hope my boy keeps his interest 'cause I have a lot of bigger toys he can play with when he's older. Just thought I'd share. Tom
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17 years ago