Lincoln Logs Rule for Bricklyn Kids. What!?

by Brenda Softbrick, The Bricklyn Eagle’s culture & history (& kids’ toys) correspondent
September 20, 2021

Summary of Article ➤ Many of Bricklyn’s kids love playing with Lincoln Logs. Is that surprising?

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner (on Wikipedia), Photo taken on November 8, 1863, eleven days before Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address.

Why do people assume that Bricklyn kids would want to play with LEGO bricks? Is it because you (or your children or grandchildren) enjoyed playing with LEGO bricks when you were growing up?

But think about it. Wouldn’t expecting LEGO kids to play with LEGO plates and tiles be the same as expecting your kids to want to play with heavy concrete blocks and chunks of masonry (just please don’t tell us that’s what they like to do!).

It’s more fun to play with something simulating buildings and cities, rather than with the real thing. The key is play … and creating things through imagination!

Milly surveying her pile of Lincoln Logs before starting to haul and piece them together — with some help from Mom.

Federal Council President Hilma Plater-Zybrick, despite all the demands on her time, still enjoys taking time off to join Milly, her six year old daughter, in building Lincoln Logs houses. Lincoln Logs are what Hilma also loved playing with as a child, despite the fact that Lincoln Logs — back then — were considered a boy’s toy.

*Photo of reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home (till he was eight years old) in Knob Creek, Kentucky. See National Park Service site for more details.*

Evidently young Milly shares her mother’s preference.

As Milly told us: “The wood logs are so, so cool.📍 I love the way they feel when you lift them up and turn them around … and they fit together in all sorts of ways. Me and my friends built a very, very tall log cabin, with lots of yellow windows. Plus Mom likes Lincoln Logs too. I think that’s why she’s President of Bricklyn, which I’m also going to be some day!”

*Patent application drawings by John Lloyd Wright for Lincoln Logs.*

📍Lincoln Logs were invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright, son of the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Both John Lloyd Wright & Lincoln Logs were among the first inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999 (along with LEGO and fifteen other toys).

After (shockingly) changing their wood logs to plastic and moving production to China, Lincoln Logs in 2015, returned to being made from real wood, the pieces manufactured in Maine. See “Lincoln Logs, returned to made in U.S.A. of real wood, turns 100” (Woodworking Network, February 13, 2016).

There was — and still is — nothing like the fun Bricklyn kids get in building Lincoln Logs cabins and other log structures: buildings they’d simply not find in Bricklyn or other LEGO cities.

If your real world is made of LEGO bricks, why not have your imaginary world made of Lincoln Logs! ✥