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It's time to play the "what brick is this" game, and this time our contestant is definitely non-Lego, yet vintage. This brick was in a small lot of early-60's Samsonite Lego bricks, and I am assuming it is nearly as old as those.

It appears to be CA plastic, has studs (but they are taller than Lego studs), and a stylized "S" logo of some sort in the center of the surface of the brick. Inside are slots and sidebars, rather than tubes. Here are some photos to help.

enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

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5 Answers 5

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That is a Kawada Dia Block made in Japan. Entex and Sears imported those into the US in the 70’s and 80’s and repackaged them under such brands as Loc Bloc and Brix Blox. The “S” is actually a K on top of a D, which is the emblem for the Japanese toy company Kawada. Dia Blocks are still made and available in Japan today.

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9

I have solved the mystery. After searching up many different vintage plastic bricks (I had no idea there were so many), I stumbled upon LOC BLOC, made in the USA in the 1970's by a company called Entex. I still don't get what the "S" symbol on top of the brick is, but they match completely.

http://www.architoys.net/toys/toypages/locblocs.html

enter image description here

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  • Very nice! You didn't happen to stumble across anything like this in your search, did you? bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/… That's been unanswered for quite some time.
    – jncraton ♦
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 19:05
  • Not exactly like those, unfortunately. If they really are from the 1980's (could be the gift was in the 1980's, and the bricks are older) they are past what I was looking at. I was shocked to find so many kinds of bricks were produced in the 1950's-70's that weren't Lego. I looked at: American Plastic Bricks, Playskool Plastic Building Bricks, Educational Building Bricks, Sta-Lox, Auburn Bricks, Betta Builder (UK), Airfix (UK), Block CIty, Playmate (Australia), and Loc Blocs.
    – sampoerna quatrain
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 19:45
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This is positively a Kawada brick:

enter image description here

Thanks to @Dean Rumsey for pointing me in the right direction to find an example so any doubts can be put to rest. He seems to be paraphrasing the Wiki article that briefly covers their history; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loc_Blocs

"They were marketed in the 1970s and 1980s by Entex Industries, and manufactured in Japan as Dia Block by Kawada Co., which still produces sets to this day."

"They were also sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. under their house brand "Brix Blox." Today, similar blocks are still manufactured in Japan as Diabloks and sold in the U.S.A. under the name "Disney Build-It" blocks."

To further complicate things, I found inconsistencies in the way these blocks were marked. In my research I found that most of the bricks sold under the Entex/Loc Bloc and Sears/Brix Blox name were not marked with the Kawada company logo on them. However, I found one example of a Loc Blocs set that did appear to contain bricks with the Kawada logo (assuming the bricks were all original):

enter image description here

Based on these findings, this brick could have come from any set using bricks made by Kawada, regardless of the brand it sold under.

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This appears to be a nano-block, though I can't be sure, as I can't make out the size of that brick.

This is the nano-block website. http://www.nanoblockuk.com/ Nano-Block underside

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  • Why do you think this is a nanoblock? Are there any markings that lead you to believe this? Is the bottom slot design typical of nanoblocks? The brick looks very worn and old, is nanoblock old enough to have bricks of this age?
    – Phil B.
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 10:21
  • On second thought, that brick is too large to be a nano-block, the bottom slot is similar (see answer edit), and I doubt nano-block is old enough.
    – user8495
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 10:45
  • I did neglect to mention that it is roughly the same size as a 2x4 brick. If it helps, it's leaning against a brick separator tool in the first photo (the one that used to be sold on a card with the red measuring tool; not one included with larger sets).
    – sampoerna quatrain
    Commented Mar 21, 2017 at 12:59
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I had these bricks when I was a child in the 50´s, so they can´t be neither Nano-blocks nor Loc-Blocks. Sorry, I can´t give you any moore info. The bricks were lost some time in the late fifties.

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    I fear the photo showing the logo is strong proof that the other answers are correct; perhaps very similar ones were available 70 years ago, but the one in the photo is from Kawada Dia.
    – RSchulz
    Commented Dec 29, 2022 at 23:25

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