Sunday, December 04, 2005

Anker-Stones


Anker is German for anchor, Stein is German for stone, but Anker-Stones are not the same thing as Ankerstein or Anchor Stones. I try to be careful but I may slip and use the wrong reference.

Anker-Stones are made of a material similar to Ankerstein, but not identical. They are often compared to Lego because of the protuberances and holes, but these are more a matter of bumps and dimples, and serve only for alignment -- there is not a hint of locking the pieces together like Legos.

The buckets are apparently randomly filled with loose stones, in contrast to the careful selection of stones in each Ankerstein set or expansion set. I got my bucket used though, from someone with more than one bucket. It is possible the buckets were mixed together for play, then divided in a less useful mix than a factory-fresh set would have provided.

I suppose if you had lots and lots of stones, you could build rather interesting things. I suspect that fans are regularly buying more buckets, trying to get a few more of some particularly useful stone shape, meanwhile accumulating ever greater numbers of the common shapes.

4 comments:

Herman said...

sheesh, all the times you've talked about it, I never realize anchorstein and anchor stones were different.


the bumps seem like they would be a good stimmy

Alan said...

Ummm...

Ankerstein and Anchor Stones are the same thing.

Anker-Stones are different.

The bumps are good. Next time you are over, I'll let you fondle them for a while.

Herman said...

ok, so I'm just gonna be confused then

Spacehead said...

It is a complete random mix.I believe they were sold by weight. This bucket set was sold by Pier One and I picked up one bucket and then had to go back and get 2 more! Wish I had more $ at the time, I would have gotten even more! Just pulled them out for the kids to play with over the holidays and found myself lost in them...again. LOL

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