Kiddicraft Brick City – KIDDIZ Construction Crew Pack KC1401

Kiddicraft's KIDDIZ Construction Crew Pack contains 72 pieces — five construction workers in safety gear, with tools and site equipment including jackhammers, shovels, traffic cones and barriers. Age 5+.

The hard hat came from a First World War helmet

Every figure in this box wears one, and it is a relatively recent invention with a specific origin.

Edward Bullard's family firm in San Francisco sold mining equipment. He returned from the First World War having worn a steel infantry helmet, and in 1919 patented what he called the Hard Boiled Hat — steamed canvas, glue and black paint, built to the same idea: a shell that takes an impact so the skull does not.

It was not immediately popular. Wearing one was optional, and men who had worked without one for twenty years saw no reason to start.

What changed that was the Hoover Dam. Construction began in 1931 in a canyon where rock fell from hundreds of feet above the workers, and the contractor made head protection mandatory — among the first large sites anywhere to do so. Workers who had refused them dipped hats in tar to harden them before the company issued proper ones.

Hard hats became legally required on American sites in 1970 and are now standard everywhere. A hundred years after Bullard, they remain the most visible piece of safety equipment in any trade.

Tools rather than figures

Five workers with jackhammers, shovels, cones and barriers is a site, not a crew. The barriers in particular are what turn a patch of ground into somewhere work is happening.

In the Brick City range

Packs KC1403 and KC1404 add general residents, KC1402 a rock festival and KC1405 the parts to build your own figures.

Specifications

Pieces: 72 · Figures: 5 KIDDIZ with safety gear · Tools, cones and barriers included · Series: Kiddicraft Brick City · Age: 5+