Subject:
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Re: Box-4-Blox(tm)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.shopping
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Date:
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Tue, 22 Oct 2002 13:32:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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575 times
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> http://www.box4blox.com/
>
> says that they have thousands of satisfied customers in AU and NZ. Has
> anyone heard of them? Any satisfied users? Any unsatisfied users?
I've seen them in lots of homes here in Oz where there are small children and
Lego, so they certainly sell well.
As you can probably see from the WWW page, the boxes are basically designed to
do a coarse sort by part size by a sieving technique. Like all sieving
techniques, you can't put too much in at one time. For example, once the large
holes in the top box are covered with large parts, small parts can't get past
into the lower boxes. So you have to remove the big stuff in the top box that
is clogging up the holes before proceeding.
Personally I've never bothered with one. Partly because I don't find sorting by
hand that big a deal. When I pull a model apart, I tend to put each piece as I
remove it into piles based on loose classification (i.e. a rough sort) and then
I fine-sort each pile into their respective bins, bags, tubs for permanent
storage etc. Partly because my final storage system is based around type of
part primarily (brick, plate, slope, etc) with size of part a secondary
consideration. So using the boxes to do a primary sort by size is not so useful
to me. Partly because no having kids means my Lego never starts out as the kind
of mess shown on the WWW site (well, apart from the fateful day I managed to
knock over a tower of stacked Lego drawers and watched 1000s of Lego pieces go
flying all over the floor).
Although parents here clearly like the boxes, I have to say that I most often
see the boxes used to store Lego rather than to sort it. The reason is obvious
to me. I too store my Lego in a (much larger) number of wide shallow drawers as
it makes it easier to find a piece than a tall deep container does. However,
how does Lego sell its products? Usually in a simple glue-down cardboard box
(which ends up in the garbage) or one of those deep buckets, neither of which
are good for permanently storing Lego pieces in a way that makes them easy to
locate. So, I think children find it easier to locate pieces using these boxes
and hence are less likely to just tip them all out over the floor, which gets
them under Mum and Dad's feet. Since the boxes stack, the Lego occupies less
floor/table space when not in use, again the kind of thing that parents like.
And they are relatively sturdy (essential with children) and come in nice
primary colours :-)
So, while these boxes are popular with parents and kids, I suspect this may be
more for other reasons than the obvious sorting capability. In which case,
AFOLs may not get the same utility from them.
On the other hand, one set of boxes doesn't cost the earth, so if sorting is
really a hassle in your life, buy yourself one and if it doesn't work out for
you, donate it to some kids and improve the life of their parents.
I had to laugh at the FAQ (see Testimonials on the WWW site) about sorting by
colour :-)
Kerry
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Box-4-Blox(tm)
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| (...) Me too, I feel the same way you do, except for bulk bricks. Since I have over 70 3033s worth of bulk, most of which is unsorted, (but still in the individual bags) I can see where a first pass sort using these might save me a fair bit of time, (...) (22 years ago, 22-Oct-02, to lugnet.market.shopping)
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