Meccano?

I haven't but just to say my brother always had Meccano at Xmas and he puts this down to his remarkable ability to mend, make and repair things now - so its probably a good buy anyway in terms of development.

We have real Meccano come into the charity shop I work in and have two sets at the moment The plastic stuff yes plastic horrible plastic seems pretty poor in comparison, but I agree that Meccano and Lego are good for kids who have a liking for putting stuff together

I think the plastic meccano is only for the younger children. I have some mini sets metal that are going in six year DGS stocking and looking on the internet you can get lots of metal sets but I think most are for 10 plus.

Buy a secondhand set of real metal Meccano. Plenty available on ebay. Plastic Meccano is a waste of space

eBay might be too late for delivery for Christmas though

My OH loved meccano as a child but when he bought our youngest DS a kit he wasn’t interested at all, he (OH)was so disappointed! Agree avoid the plastic stuff , Lego and KNex (sp?better.

My 5 year old gs loves his plastic Meccano set I got him in the Boots sale last year.

You can still buy metal Meccano but it seems to be specific sets rather than freestyle stuff. The worst mistake we ever made was to buy Meccano for DS one Christmas. He absolutely hated it and still reminds us of it now. We bought GS K’Nex a couple of years ago and he has not showed the slightest interest in it (he is, at heart, a Lego man), and having had my step grandson add his large K’Nex collection to it, we are now overrun with K’Nex. I’m hoping that one day GS will find an interest in it. I think it’s great!

I had one grandson who would play with. nothing but Lego and the other played a little bit with Lego but was not interested in any of the other construction games... Now give him a another football and he was delighted even though he already had plenty... he s just the same now as a mid age teen

I help out in our local charity shop and I have picked up lots of toys and games for GS that way. However for a birthday or for Christmas I always buy new. I have looked up K’Nex on the internet as never heard of it, it looks quite good.

Artyfarty I had never heard of K’Nex until my StepGS took part in a national K’Nex building competition for schools. His school did well apparently. Schools use it to demonstrate basic engineering concepts to children apparently.

Get him a kit for an older child. That will be metal.