With brand recognition playing such an important role in the success of companies, it can sometimes feel like the big names in the toy and children’s entertainment industries are ganging up and creating a hostile environment for independent toy companies, Click-A-Brick Co-Founders Georg de Gorostiza and Jason Smith say, but this also drives innovation among the smaller players, which helps the toy industry, in turn. Most of the toys that are predicted to be big hits throughout 2015 are from large toy brands and are associated with major entertainment franchises....

The announcement that the Canadian Toy Testing Council will be ceasing operations in June has the founders of children’s learning toy company Click-A-Brick Jason Smith and Georg de Gorostiza shaking their heads in disbelief and calling for larger toy manufacturers to step up to the plate. The group announced that it would be shutting its doors at the end of June after being in operation since 1952. Since that time, it has provided independent advice to parents about which toys are best for their children. Its annual Toy Report ranked...

Co-founders of building block toy company Click-A-Brick Georg de Gorostiza and Jason Smith have given their praise to Bloomberg News for spotlighting an oft-neglected issue; the lack of toy safety inspections. A Bloomberg News story in the Columbus Dispatch highlighted the fact that the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is tasked with regulating 10,000 items ranging from apparel to toys to household appliances, actually inspects less than one percent of imported goods under its jurisdiction. This means that between overseas manufacturers who want to cut costs, and unscrupulous toy importers...

Imagine if your child was in school sitting in math class and the teacher just wrote a bunch of numbers on the board and then left it up to the students to figure out what to do with those numbers. That wouldn’t be very helpful, would it? But, that’s essentially what happens when a parent buys an educational toy for their child and then just gives the child the toy and leaves them with it. Children don’t learn by osmosis, they need to be guided and sometimes even shown how...

Amazon’s launch of its dedicated STEM toy site has garnered praise from educational toy company Click-A-Brick. The site features toys for children of all ages that focus on developing science, technology, engineering and math skills in kids. Part of what prompted Amazon to launch a site focusing on STEM related toys is that these toys are currently a hot trend in education and they were the second-highest visited section and second-highest selling toys during the 2014 holiday season, a clear indication to the company that customers are highly interested in...

New research that points to building blocks as helping children with their spatial reasoning has Click-A-Brick co-founders Georg de Gorostiza and Jason Smith nodding in agreement and saying the highly affordable toy can play a key role in children’s development. Researchers from Rhodes College have determined that children who frequently play with building blocks, puzzles and board games tend to have better spatial reasoning ability than children who play with these items infrequently. Their findings were recently published in the Association for Psychological Science’s journal Psychological Science. “Our findings show...

Wading into the debate about gender specific toys, Click-A-Brick co-founders Georg de Gorostiza and Jason Smith say they believe parents should listen to what their kids want in terms of the toys they buy. Further to that, the pair say they want parents to view the company’s latest offering, the recently released Click-A-Brick Army Defenders 100pc Educational Toys Building Blocks Set for Boys and Girls, as a toy that is just as viable for girls as it is for boys. The debate about whether or not companies should design and...

Click-A-Brick is ready to launch its new learning toy set, which will have over three times as many pieces as the company’s original offering. To help them name the new set, the team held a Facebook contest and asked its fans and customers to choose a name for the new military-inspired set. The winner of the Facebook contest is Brittany Holt and she chose the name Army Defenders for the new set, which is slated to be released early April 2015 and contains 100 pieces.Click-A-Brick co-founder and Brand Manager Georg...

Click-A-Brick is pleased to introduce its newest team member, Public Relations Manager Rob Swystun, who has been hired to take the reigns of the company’s continued push into the competitive and lucrative North American building toy market. Now that Click-A-Brick has established itself and secured a good foothold in North America thanks to a strong showing during the 2014 Christmas season, the company aims to keep riding that momentum throughout 2015. As the company grows, Click-A-Brick wants to add strong team members to ultimately create a cohesive unit that will...

Co-founder of educational toy company Click-A-Brick, and educational toy expert Georg de Gorostiza, says parents need to engage their children in play from a young age or they can risk stunting their mental development and miss the opportunity to foster a love of learning in their children. Playing with children and engaging their minds need not be time-consuming or have too much focus on teaching them something, it can be as simple as just showing them very basic maneuvers and having them follow along. Using Click-A-Brick as an example, parents...