Kapla at the American International Toy Fair®

On February 11-14, 2007, come check out KAPLA on the third floor at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City!
We are Booth No. 2589. This is the largest Toy Expo in the Western Hemisphere.

Kapla goes to School

Last week Kapla was invited to Delphi Academy in Clearwater Florida for a day of building and fun. The kids ranged in ages from K - highschool. None of the kids had played with Kapla before and yet the results were stunning! They loved it! In fact one little girl burst into tears when her mom came to pick her up to take her to the movies- she was sobbing as she told her mother that she would rather stay and play with Kapla than go see a movie. Sorry Disney.

The day was a great success- the little ones building a fantastic Kapla village- each of them creating their own house- while the older kids were challenged with a building contest- building the tallest tower possible with only 200 planks in 10 minutes- the catch was that each tower had to somehow contain 1 golf ball and 1 tennis ball - neither of which were allowed to touch the ground...after some fierce competition and several tense moments- the girls won with a tower nearly 6 feet tall. Needless to say- fun was had by all...

I want to thank Delphi for hosting this event and also a HUGE thank you to all of the kids who participated as well...

Kapla on Vacation

I was in Wells, Maine last week on a family vacation...and what do you know...the Kapla came out...

...they had a grand idea to engineer a line of Kapla that would fall in a domino effect to take out the tower in the back...

...but the wind had other plans...

- in the end they settled on a swift blow to the bottom floor...

Kapla and Karate

Here are some new photos of Kapla in action..

This is my little sister Nikki who lives in NY. She came to visit after competing in the Karate National Championship in Miami...she's like a quadruple double super black belt and won 3 gold medals and 2 silver. Needless to say I don't pick on her too much...

...anyway this was her first time playing with Kapla...not bad huh?

- this is my nephew Kai...he loves Kapla...

...and his favorite part...Karate Chop!

this is my first official blog. blog is a very satisfying word to say. looks even better spelled out. okay here i go.

one...two...three...blog...

kapla.

what is kapla you ask? well my friend, you have come to the right place...let me tell you...kapla are wooden building blocks from france.

yep.

what makes them different from other building blocks?

why it is their unique shape and size and the fact that they don't snap or lock together.

whoa whoa, slow down you say.

okay.

in your mind picture a stick of gum. juicy fruit, big red, doublemint etc...(not that bubbalicious kind).

got it? now stack 3 pieces on top of each other.

good.

now make it a little bigger. little more...okay stop. right there. turn it into wood.

pine. french pine.

that's it. if your piece of wood measures 4 5/8 inches by 15/16ths by 5/16ths then you've got it!

well, close enough.

anyway, that's kapla. each piece is EXACTLY the same. there's other technical stuff that i could get into, but lets leave that for later...

instead lets talk about what you can build with kapla...

well...

how about...cars, boats, flowers, dragons, mountains, spirals, towers, trains, airplanes, giraffes, snakes, octopi, turkeys, turtles, dogs, cats, Eiffel towers, trees, birds, rivers, trucks, whales, bridges, houses, castles, lions and tigers and bears and mazes, villages, aqueducts, roads, forts, the great wall of china, pyramids, furniture, doll houses, snowmen, princesses, kings and queens, optical illusions, monuments, rockets, cities, baskets, butterflies, snails, spiders, games, spaceships, planets, pineapples, forests, fields, huts and dogs, did i say dogs?

well you get the idea.

point is- you can build anything. all it takes is a little imagination. so go ahead. build. play. create. welcome to the world of kapla....