If you ever played with Lego, you understand why other companies would want to imitate their recipe for success. Kawada Co. Ltd does that with Nanoblock, a line of building blocks which are just like Lego, but smaller.
Kawada Co. Ltd learned a lot from the Danish toy company rival, and one of those lessons is that licensing brands and popular properties is good for business. It began with the McDonald kits that builders used to recreate the iconic fast-food restaurant and some items from the menu with tiny plastic bricks.
Created with photo camera collectors and vintage device enthusiasts in mind, today's Nanoblock box allows the building of the first SLR Nikon camera ever released, dating back to 1959.
The high-fidelity of the model comes from the staggering large number of plastic pieces, which allow producers to add a lot of detail in the kits.
Even if some mechanical engineer would put his mind to pack a working diaphragm and lens inside the model, it would be useless. The tiny spaces between the 1,000 plastic bricks are large enough to expose the film before you would say the first "cheese!"
It might be a great way for decorating a photo studio or a perfect present for Nikon fans. If one of your friends is a Canon zealot, a prank involving the assembled kit could be hilarious. There are instructions inside the box, so assembly should be useful to the Japanese literate of us. Users who already search for their credit cards should know that the kits can be purchased only in the Japanese Nikon Direct online store.
Also known as the Nikon F, the first SLR camera from the Japanese producer made history with professional shooters in the late '60s, before the F2 model replaced it in 1972.
For a price of about $33, customers from Japan get an affordable and cute do-it-yourself toy that showcases both the photographic history and the joy of childhood block-building. Shipping to the U.S. mysteriously is not allowed, which means that for those who really want one, ordering through a Japanese friend or paying attention to Internet resellers are the only options.
