Kiddicraft Herocraft – Knight's Castle Building Set KC1501

Kiddicraft's Herocraft Knight's Castle is built from 1,665 pieces — a fortress with towering walls, battlements and a working drawbridge, fully accessible rooms including a great hall, armoury and living quarters, and eight KIDDIZ figures with individual armour and weapons. Age 5+. Compatible with other leading brick systems.

The name on this box is where the plastic brick began

Kiddicraft was founded in 1932 by an Englishman called Hilary Fisher Page, who opened a toy shop in Purley, Surrey, went bankrupt, and kept designing anyway.

In 1939 he filed a patent for something he called the Self-Locking Building Brick. It was a hollow plastic brick with studs on top that gripped the brick above it, and slits down two sides so that door and window panels could be slid in. It went on sale in 1947, and Page and his family built skyscrapers out of it for the Earl's Court Toy Fair — his daughter remembered them being as tall as she was.

A British firm supplying injection-moulding machines showed a sample to a Danish customer. The customer was Ole Kirk Christiansen, and in 1949 his company began selling the Automatic Binding Brick, which became the Lego brick in 1953.

Page never found out. He died in 1957 without knowing that a company in Denmark had built a business on his design. Lego acquired the Kiddicraft rights in 1981 and has since acknowledged the brick's origin; the Victoria and Albert Museum holds a set and lists it among the essential toys of the 1940s.

Which makes a Kiddicraft castle that clutches onto Lego bricks a rather pleasing object. The compatibility is not an imitation of anything — the geometry was theirs first.

What 1,665 pieces buys at this scale

The castle opens for play rather than being a sealed facade. Walls, battlements and drawbridge are structural rather than decorative, and the interior is laid out as rooms with a function each.

Eight figures is generous. A castle with two knights is a building; a castle with eight is a garrison, and the difference matters more to a child than another hundred bricks would.

In the Herocraft range

Set KC1505 is the Knight Outpost, KC1502 the Orc Hideout, KC1504 the Orc Battering Ram, KC1503 the Dwarven Forge and KC1506 the Ranger's Cabin. Figure packs KC1409 (Orc Attack) and KC1410 (Knights) expand the sides.

Specifications

Pieces: 1,665 · Figures: 8 KIDDIZ · Series: Kiddicraft Herocraft · Working drawbridge, accessible interior · Age: 5+ · Compatible with leading brick systems