From the Series
David van der Stel, a Design Academy Eindhoven graduate, has designed Hackjes, a toy-hacking kit for the home.
Hackjes is a toolkit of useful connectors and add-ons such as wheels, connectors, propellers and trumpet horns, which turn mundane household goods into amazing toys. With Hackjes, objects such as PVC pipes, funnels, unused toilet plungers and broomsticks possess the potential to be the most exciting toys.
The kit has endlessly imaginative applications – children and adults can make trumpets, skeleton structures, bows, and vehicles. The kit encourages active play in young children while celebrating play, imagination and fantasy.
A graduate of the Department of Man and Leisure, Van Der Stel says he enjoys using “movement, new techniques and a bit of humour” to solve a question and feed desire. The toy hacking kit feeds the childlike desire to create and make inventive things and it provides and alternative to the culture of ready-made, mass-produced toys.
