As a kid, I loved building sets. I loved pouring out all the pieces, following the instructions and watching a giant machine evolve out of small parts. I still have a giant Rube Goldberg ball machine in the attic, with three different towers involved. I used to dream about making a pinball machine out of Knex but only made the flippers. KNEX controls the entire product; they manufacture the pieces, create the designs and box the kits, resulting in a pretty limited product line. In today's day that's not logical - if you sell a product where half the fun is in customization, and the other half is building the sets, why are they only selling designs they themselves created? Let users propose new designs and work with them to release manuals and custom kits. Give them a cut of the profits and you make the product much more interesting. Imagine surfing designs on the website , all in pictures and videos: four different ball factory designs, a car, a spider that moves, a working printing press, a working arm, a Turing machine, etc. Anything you want to build, you order with one click. Knex puts the necessary pieces in a bag, runs off the instructions and mails it - there should be close to constant returns to scale. They should be taking advantage of their most creative users' creations.

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