Things I Miss: Construx

Next to Lego, this is the greatest building toy that I ever laid hands on, and in some ways, it surpassed Lego. The size of the pieces and the way they were designed allowed for larger projects than Lego could handle, which allowed for such projects as bridges, buildings, and any other thing you could dream up. These were awesome if you had a fertile imagination. My brother and I used to build goose neck trailers for our Tonka trucks to pull along. 

The fist set that I had was the bridge set. I remember it not being exactly easy to follow the directions and complete the build, but not so hard that I had to have help either. I just had to take a little longer than my older brother did to complete it. But when it was done, oh my was it ever a fun thing to play with. He and I ended up using those bridges to enhance the fun in our G.I. Joe adventures. As a matter of fact, just about everything we built with the Construx were to play with some other toy line we had. Rarely did we build anything just for the sake of playing with the Construx. I would put together swords and ninja stars when I would watch a martial arts movie and then let my imagination run wild. I would use them to construct obstacle courses and run my G.I. Joe men through their paces trying to re-enact the latest episode of American Gladiators. We used them to build tunnels and other things to go along with our Hotwheels fun. 

But my fondest memory of them would be the time I used them to build a scaffold. It was 1986, and The Road Warriors and The Midnight Express had just wrestled in a scaffold match at Starrcade 86, and I just had to re-create that. Years earlier, my father made me a wrestling ring, and I spent hours pitting my G.I. Joe men against one another in combat, pro wrestling style. I even gave them cool wrestling names and all. So I used the Construx to build a scaffold over my toy ring and used it from then on to settle the most intense feuds to ever take place in my room.

In later years, the line produced some “Space” sets with glow in the dark pieces. We had those as well, but mainly used them for what they were intended in the Space theme. But it was cool to take some of the glow in the dark pieces and use them to make “flash lights” to use on sleep overs. Construx were so versatile a toy, I think they could hit the market today and be a hit all over again. I think they were fairly popular in their own right during their original run, but Lego had the market cornered, and Construx just didn't make it. Sad. It was one fine construction based toy line, and I'm grateful I had the opportunity to enjoy it. It was a role player. A solid backup. It enhanced the play of so many other toys in my collection, I would put it in the Hall of Fame just for that.