Minibrix

A British-made construction set in the interlocking style of Lego and Betta Bilda, but predating both and made entirely of rubber. The bricks were (mostly) a reddish-brown with two lugs on the bottom and and two holes on top - unlike Lego, the lugs were meant to stick down, not up. There were rubber bases, with holes only, to get you started and, as well as 1-hole and 2-hole bricks, there were angled bricks (for gable ends) and lintels. Columns, balustrades, etc, were also available, though these were mostly found in the more expensive sets, or bought as spares. Roofs were made of hinged green rubber sheeting, moulded to look like slates and simply draped, but were of a fixed size, which rather limited the sizes of building you could make (unless you cut them, but then you could get stuck with lots of small bits). Doors and windows were made of acetate sheet with frames printed on; these simply wedged into suitably sized openings in the brickwork. There was a range of sets in boxes of various sizes and smaller starter sets that came in cardboard tubes. In the late fifties or early sixties, a range of multi-coloured bricks were introduced (Rainbow Minibrix). Although I enjoyed playing with Minibrix immensely, it did have a couple of peculiarties: the all-pervading smell of rubber, for one! The bricks could also be rather difficult to join and you often ended up wetting the lugs to get them into the holes more easily. Problem was, when you came to get them apart again, they were sometimes so firmly joined that the lugs would stretch and tear off! Prising a torn-off rubber lug out of a brick hole was almost impossible! Still, I spent many happy hours with them and, after I started at secondary school, they came in handy as pencil-erasers...