New Legos Inspired by Arts & Crafts

With a little help from Japanese home goods company Muji, Lego is introducing an innovative new line of craft-inspired toys. Sets include some bricks pieces from Lego and some colored paper sheets and stencils from Muji. A special hole punch then lets fit your pieces together and build.

Looking to the world of arts and crafts for inspiration seems like a "back-to-basics" move by Lego, and is an example of companies extending themselves backwards to capitalize on the world of products they first leveraged. I think these basketball hoops and pitching machines from EA Sports fall into the same category.

(via PSFK)

The Rubik's Redux

I've been reading people's posts on the American International Toy Fair, which wrapped up last week in NYC (photo gallery here). The Rubik's Touch Cube took home top honors for toy of the year, which, from what I can tell, is the toy industries version of an Oscar for Movie of the Year. Lots of thank-you's and people onstage hugging. The handheld-puzzle classic has been given an iPhone-inspired makeover, with touchscreen interfaces and multiple games.

Other cool debut's included Elmo Gloves (Mattel) and 3-D Sidewalk Chalk (Crayola).