- Will you consider this?

Your kids can be building steam with things that move, bend and fold.

I'm Christine Zak Edmonds, stay with me to see what's made in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) They're colorful, they're hands-on and they teach engineering skills and snap.

There's a structure that can be reinvented time and time again.

Mike Acerra from Knox County, Galesburg, is the man behind the invention of Lux Blox.

And he joins me to tell me the story.

Welcome, Mike.

- Thanks for having me, Christine.

- I look at these colorful things, they're awesome.

And let's get into your background first before how you and your wife invented Lux Blox.

- A lot of people who have toy companies were coming from the toy industry, right?

And they work their way through and we weren't toy people at all.

In fact, my wife didn't like toys as a kid.

I grew up on a construction site my dad was a contractor, so Italian-Americans in Chicago building things so when I grew up my dad had built in our backyard 75 bed nursing home, he built every house in our block.

So my normal as a kid was entrepreneurial family, construction workers and so building was normal, we built our tree house my wife's dad, Brad, was the captain in the Galesburg police department and every night after work or on the weekend, he was building something in a garage pouring a foundation he was always building houses, so we both came from building families.

And we didn't think much of that but we got married and when we were dating my wife and I we both went to Knox College but we didn't date there.

But we were dating after we met Chicago later on, we'd go camping up in Wisconsin at a place called Spring Green they had a outdoor Shakespeare festival.

Yeah, yeah went to the Shakespeare festival - [Christine] Teliesin?

- well, that's it.

So we went to Teliesin, which is Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio, right?

Beautiful and there's also one in Arizona too.

And we were just soaking in the beautiful art and the design and we went to the bookstore because we we're fans of Wright, so we went to the bookstore we found this book called "Inventing Kindergarten."

I never knew it was invented, right?

- I had no idea.

- But it was by a guy named Friedrich Froebel.

And Froebel was a friend of Maria Montessori, a student of Pesto Lhotse who was also a student of Russo.

So it was the romantic era it was the progressive movement of education.

The big difference between the progressive educators and the Scholastic educators, scholastics we still have today, believe that kids were these empty vessels and you talk at them and have them repeat what you say over and over again, and sit them in straight rows and basically I've got something to teach your kids shut up and listen kind of thing, right?

And they memorize.

And that was a scholastic era which was started the middle ages.

So they're saying no actually kids the progressive thought.

Kids are these sophisticated unknowns that we really don't understand how the brain works but we do understand a little bit about human nature and inspiration.

So we should feed kids beautiful things and beautiful experiences and let them make their own connections and let them surprise us and we might make geniuses in people we actually could need to actually fix this world we're in, okay?

And luckily for them they had lots of orphans because Napoleon had been at work and there were lots of orphans.

So the Catholic Church didn't know what all you do with all these kids there's kids everywhere.

So they had lots of that so they started these kindergartens and that's what he called the kindergarten the child garden.

- Sure.

- And so he'd invented all these toys a Hasbro actually in Milton Bradley actually some of their toys like Tinker Toys came out of that movement.

- Really?

- Yeah, so we were like, wow, this toys are learning things and all of that.

So my wife and I were inspired to make a new Froebel they call them the gifts Froebel called them the gifts, all the toys he had made we said we should make a Froebel gift, a kindergarten tool for the 21st century because we know so much more now than people in the 1850s did.

And he was a scientist he studied crystals he was a geologist.

So that's what we did we said let's think about hard about what kind of construction experience kids should have that they're not getting at Lego and KNex and Tinker Toys.

- Right, well, so Lux Blox that's spelled L-U-X B-L-O-X.

- And Lux means light in Latin it's like sheds light on the way universe puts itself together.

- Right, and so we have some things here that they're quite colorful quite creative and you and your wife know more about toys now than you ever thought you wanted to.

- Yeah, we don't see yourself as toy people we're more educators and people people, we love life, and we found ourselves in the toy industry and we were crazy about the toy industry because it's like any other kinda commodity and we our heart where it really wasn't about selling people just stuff.

We really sincere about our mission, right?

So we found out our heart was more with educators in schools and working with big companies like Fisher, Scientific and Kaplan Education, people like that who are trying to get things in front of teachers and kids.

- Because you studied engineering and you were in education also.

- Yeah.

- And your wife Heather?

- Yeah, Heather was more political science and education and now she's a human resources executive and she sells not right now she's actually selling she has a day job.

So she sells benefits to big companies she's a broker.

- All right, so tell me a little bit about Lux Blox then enlightened me.

- So the way Lux Blox works is it's a very simple system I'll give you an example, so I'm gonna break this first thing, we'll do is break this, okay?

So these are 10 Lux squares, okay?

And they snap together they have a hinge, okay?

All these squares are identical they snapped together and so it's a pinless hinge they move like that and you see how they move, right?

So there's motion like how that structure, I defined structure is the tendency of something to change its shape.

You really don't want your buildings to change your shape too much that could be a disaster, right?

So maybe the sway in the wind a little bit but we're not gonna come down on you, right?

So how do you make something lightweight strong and perform a lot?

You do it by using it intentions the minute you fold these are very strong.

There's a very strong little bridget it's made because I folded it.

We do the paper all the time we can't find her a little dustbin.

So take a piece of paper and crimp it right?

- Right?

- Yes, we do with a natural thing and leaves do that too they corrugate themselves to hold- - It's nature - It's very natural so it's a very immediate natural engineering experience that meant the kids folding go, oh my gosh, it's strong now, that's so weird it wasn't strong and now it's strong.

So that's what we wanted to do like for instance these little triangle become trigones is a Greek word the old Greek word for triangle, they'll form a little virus structure like a little buckyball or a carbon 60 molecule, right?

This is a blastula, not blastula what's it called?

Oh, it's a bacteriophage it's a virus, right?

It's a virus that will sit on top of a microorganism and inject his DNA inside of it.

But it imitates this model of a bacteriophage virus is very close to the real thing, because they have a little helix here, little icosahedron head here where the DNA is located a little arms here to grab onto something and injecting stuff like a hormone needle inject its DNA to something seeming to go away thinking is okay, then it'll explode with millions of these guys so it's kinda nature's kind of scary.

But anyways my point for showing you this scary thing is that kids will accidentally just through creation, make things that will teacher's head scratching they won't know it And that's kinda where education should go, where the teacher is stumped by the kid, right?

That's what we'd love that.

- They're challenged.

- Yeah.

- The teacher is challenged - Honest situation is the teacher with the kid is like isn't the world great and mysterious let's go discover, right?

So that's what we want we wanna kind of promote that and push that in and disrupt that.

- And you came upon this accidentally kind of, how did you decide on, how long did it take you to perfect your shapes and do all that sort of thing?

- Well, it was an accident the invention they actually helped me was my mom had a like a lot of people in her generation had discovered she had a disease, the blood disorder what's that called hepatitis.

She got it and she got it my brother had it, and the doctor who's getting a test, this is a weird story but it relates to this.

He got a test in a doctor's because he had free insurance.

And my brother was like why I didn't do drugs in college, I don't know how it hepatitis no, no son, you have so much in your system you had it in utero.

We need to talk to your mom.

- Oh, wow - So my mom had gotten a blood transfusion after she had my sister, and that's how she got it.

And so she just learned this through my... so I'm at my house my parent's house because I might be a donor for a liver.

- [Christine] Okay.

- So that's why I remember this story I'm sitting at our kitchen table thinking about a problem about how do you make to how do you make a hinge come together and snap that you can make an a two-part mold without a pin because you know, hinges on doors have pins.

- [Christine] Correct.

- And I was like put my fingers together like this like how would you it?

You have to trick it, you have to have a mold that would trick it.

How'd you do that?

It was like the light bulb moment.

I said, I called my wife I think I just invented something you know, and so that's what we did.

We invented a pinless hinge and that's what Lux is.

And I said, we can make us know a toy the toy was this after thought.

'Cause I was just thinking of like how do you make two panels that have no extra parts they look exactly alike Just push them together and they snap and they move, that was the problem I gave myself.

And because I'm weird, so.

- It's awesome, so and you work with educators and stem and steam programs.

So tell me about that.

- The blessing is that people come out of the woodwork earlier to call them earlier adopters.

You know, you say you make claims when you have a product like oh, it does biology and chemistry I'm not a chemist I'm not a biologist I studied this stuff a lot to understand how I'm doing DNA.

But you know, then all these people who were specialists came out of the woodwork and said, you know, I have department of defense clearance I worked for Boeing I tuned satellites and my kids are on the spectrum And we bought your product early on because you were made in America, and now all we do is use your product and teach it in homeschool and college school.

And then we have people like that to come forward and tell us like let me show you how we use your product, how it's used in biology and mathematics and things like that.

So yeah, we have dozens and dozens of people working for companies like down the road.

Well, from research they do AI we have friends there who tell us about how this could actually model the computational nature of the universe.

Like I think a lot of the computational nature of the universe.

- I had no idea you just lost me.

- So yeah, I'll tell you And again, we've put ourselves in a situation where the dumbest person in the room, which isn't the worst situation to be in.

- [Christine] Because you can learn.

- Yeah, exactly so now we have people coming to us saying, do you know your product does this?

We had one guy, he's quite a famous guy in this niche community of mathematician artists.

He said, "I know the secret behind Lux Blox, like what's so special about it It makes hyperbolic shapes."

And then I had to go look what the heck he was talking about hyperbolic shapes.

- [Christine] What is that?

- Hyperbolic shapes coral is a example, of a hyperbolic shape.

It's basically when you could put I think it's when you could put like a hexagon, I'll give you an example, like a hexagon is when you put six triangles together you make a hexagon, right?

- Okay, yeah.

- If you add another triangle, right?

You're getting into hyperbolic shapes, okay?

And they'll make these little spongy crazy things.

And hyperbolic shapes are what Einstein had to investigate when he came up with his theories of hyperbolic space.

- And how they stayed together.

- Yeah, how they shape how nature is shape might be shaped, like crazy noodles, right?

They're not just cubes with up and down and side to side but actually it's like crazy spaghetti and mushroom thunder you can look at underneath the mushrooms those ribbings.

nature is very lacy and weird.

So we were able by accident to give kids access to the really weirdness of nature, you know, the squeezy, squishiness of nature.

- And they love it.

- Oh my gosh.

- And the thing is pillows are squishy, right?

But there's a shape it's actually a structure going up at biggest pillows or a macro structure.

There's a gazillion little things going on a pillow you can't tune into.

But here's an example, of squish as a mechanical reduction a simplification of squish.

All these pocketed modules are identical to each other they're all on one central access here, but they're showing you a squish that's mechanically reducible and it recovers from itself.

Lego and the KNex really have a hard time doing that.

- [Christine] Because they are structures.

- And static structures, mostly, mostly, and this was an accident of design.

We didn't know it would do this.

- Okay.

- So this idea of series linkages, this was a kid a 12 year old named Gerard Remise, a neighbor boy figured out.

We knew that you can make these things do this like they come wider and longer and stuff, we didn't know that hey would actually merge out this way.

And some kid came up with it a neighbor boy, Gerard who's now at Benedictine college studying studied music so, yeah.

- All right, well, okay, so and we're made all manufacturing in America?

- Made in America made in Illinois we tried to locally source everything.

Now, our containers come from Idaho.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And we use food grade containers or plastic containers because I don't know where they went to.

- We'll show them later.

- Yeah, yeah, so the one reasons why we don't suffer from supply chain issues so much 'cause we've sidle up with really big partners.

So the Midwest Molding our injection molders in Bloomington, and their big customer used to be Mitsubishi, but Mitsubishi is gone.

- [Christine] Right.

- So now it's who the electric car people?

Rivian, yeah, they're so busy, oh my gosh.

So making parts for Rivian, because you have a partner like that they fit us into their schedule and they'd still get the discounts on because they order truckloads of plastic.

- [Christine] Interesting.

- Yeah, you want to partner with people.

So when we did the tubes, because like they call it one of our tubes is called the "Jerky Canister."

Because one of the number one uses of it is beef Jerky, right?

So you wouldn't know looking at tube that is a beef jerky canister, it's actually very clean and nice, but it's a beautiful canister but people aren't gonna stop eating beef jerky anytime soon.

So that's a commodity product is very readily available you can order whatever we want.

So being a micro manufacturer like we are, we don't have the problem of a container being stuck off coast.

- Correct.

- Off the shark.

- Well, now you were saying, I listened to a podcast that you had that kids today don't have the advantage that kids may be in the 1800s early 1900s had because of mechanics because everybody is so online, onscreen on focused.

And they don't really necessarily when they have some of those testings you know, to see well, if this gear is going this way which directing the aptitude tests, and this presents itself to them.

- Yeah, by using the example of a kid just this random kid.

His job in the morning is in the 1850s, is to go to the shop get coal and put it in the boiler and light it up and the boiler gets hot, right?

And when the workman come to do whatever it is, leather working or mill shop or sewing machines whatever it is they would turn the boiler on, they get the seam going in the piston, the piston would do fly wheel and they engage a clutch, and you've seen these shops.

- [Christine} Right.

- And we get these leather straps usually leather or cloth.

And they'd go to these big wheels they weren't that safe, right?

And the wheels go all over the ceiling, and then you could go to a lave for instance which you turn wood and they can just engage a clutch, and then that we would engage the pulley, and you could your lave with the go.

- [Christine] The whole thing, yeah.

- So talk about a beautiful educational situation, 'cause that gives saw where that coal that carbon was ignited into fire, heated water, right?

Pushed a rod, pulled a belt, right?

Turned a cam and that turned into work, which is a scientific term for that it turned into work, right?

Compare that to a kid with a tablet, or a plug in the wall It might as well be magic.

Because the kid can't conceptually connect the plug in the wall with the windmill turbine, or the nuclear power plant or the coal plant.

They can't there's no a heuristic or a connection in any way.

- [Christine] Right.

Unless you tell them and then it's still not a good connection.

- But they still don't get it.

- Why would?

They need some other stuff mom told me.

- Yeah, just go charge it.

- Yeah, go charge it.

- So show me then how this works really quick while you're telling me about.

- This is an example of that cam I was telling you about so let's see let me get this right here, yeah so this goes here I was just snap this like I said that these things move so this is a squishy little thing, I'm gonna snap it into place.

Okay, this little blade like a governor, this is based on a Roman design the Romans were the first ones they have a water powered sawmill - Okay.

Yeah, so you can imagine having a slave or somebody do this all day It cost money to feed them spaghetti or whatever.

It's like, you deal with people.

So if you could have the circular motion of water of wheel and water turn into motion going like that, you're in business, right?

So this shows you how the circular motion from the water, right?

Went into a kind of a cam here that made this guy go back and forth this way.

So you're translating work into different kinds of motions.

Okay, and it's all based on the transfer of the energy is through these little cheapy little rubber bands.

The best rubber bands that you work for axles and gears, are actually the cheap inexpensive, little rubber, thin rubber bands.

Yeah, little green guys, Yeah, exactly the ones you usually get in the newspaper, right?

So, yeah.

And like I said, there's only seven parts in our whole system.

There's two squares, there's a square, a triangle, the two wheels that go with them, like this is a called a trigon wheel and square wheel, and three different sides of axles and that's it, it's very simple.

- And you have patterns for these, but also kids can invent anything they want.

- We put instructions in there for the parents and nervous storekeepers and grandparents.

The kids are like, yeah, that's a good idea And they are doing their own thing and that's what we want.

- [Christine] Or they might wanna do it the first time - And it's fine and we give instructions for that, but usually they'll improve our designs very quickly.

- Okay, well you have a couple of incidents where some kids were in fisticuffs in a school and they were sent to the principal's office.

- Yes, yes, yeah - Okay, and then what happened?

Well, the principal Galesburg God bless him.

He told me the story, and then the superintendent and a principal, the Galesburg two told me independently told me another story.

She told me he started where she had boys that were fighting.

And before she went and said I'm gonna call your parents you little guys I'm on you're in trouble.

She said, I want you guys to sit in this room together.

And she gave them some Lux Blox, and I want you guys together to build me a car.

And if I don't like it, I'm calling your parents about your fight or something like that.

And she came back 20 minutes later and she asked the woman who worked in the office how are they doing she was during their giggling.

Right, so all the attention.

Right, so like she told me that story it had a happy ending.

So the principal the superintendent of Galesburg, he keeps in his office... And when you walk in the superintendent's office there it's a beautiful building.

You'll see a big ball when you walk in a fLux Blox on a table.

And I noticed that when I came with all cool you got it spots.

He goes we actually use that.

we have a remediation, we have kids who are like in trouble then we could get expelled and the parents come in It's all very, very serious you know, - This is big trouble, right?

- Yeah, he'll say I'll tell the kid I'll say I bet I could build a better dragster than you, or a better race card in you.

It 10 happens to be that a lot of kids are creative are naughty boys go figure.

- Well, they're their creative brain when they're in a school situation they're being sit in the seat keep your mouth shut and they're bored out of their mind.

- Yeah, I think a lot of comedians are born in school because of the perfect comedic situation, there's a straight person talking to us here's my captive audience I'm going to kill, right?

So, but he found out that when he does that when he asked the kid he challenged the kid to build a better car that kid just laser beam, right?

And it brought the tension down he does it all the time.

- What has been the biggest surprise out of all of this that you just stumbled on it in what 2015.

- The biggest surprise had to be the Spectrum Community.

This was never intended to be anything that we never thought about people on the spectrum, Autistic kids, kids with Asperger's things like that.

They came forward and said this child of my friend, whereas ear protection 'Cause he sounds sensitive he doesn't play he doesn't like hand over hand play he's doesn't play.

He saw a sister planet Lux Blox, and he intimated to his mom she turned her phone on and he wanted to play at Lux Blox.

And he liked the snapping sound, he started putting them together.

That was I mean, he was an extreme case, he had extreme autism but then there was other kids who I'm like I tell you about these high-performing kids.

A lot of people with autism marry each other and have more kids with autism.

That they have is like professors marry each other and they breed in certain good qualities, but they also might get kids who are little, - some of those sensory things.

- Yeah, some of the sensory things too.

So you see that a lot so I've never thought I'd be so exposed to this community and it's not a monolithic community there's so much diversity in this community it's unbelievable.

So it's not for all kids with autism, You know, I don't want to blanket them at all.

But we've done very well in that community, we win every year from the Autistic Center in California.

They give us every year their toy of the year in some category.

Because it's a very good sensory toy, like I said, it just it is level alone just that, you know, that snapping - Is being able and having on the microphone here.

Yeah, you can hear it.

It makes a nice big snap and it's a lot of control and there's a lot of motion and it acts this way.

I mean, our fingers are have revolute joints, right?

revolute joint is unlike a ball joint Revolute joint is like the joint in a door, right?

The bones in our fingers, these are all revolute joints, this digits are revolute our knees are revolute joints, this is a ball joint, right?

So it's like joint on joint it's like responding very quickly to what you're doing because it has the same joint you do, right?

So yeah, so kids are making arthropods.

The first thing that kids will do is they'll either make an arthropod like a scorpion or a turtle or they'll wear it.

Don't make a Tiara or more than likely either Tiara armor or both are armored Tiara, right?

Depending on who you're talking to.

- [Christine] Right.

So, and then they'll have stories they'll get very narrative like, oh, I made my egg and I'll kill my turtle, and it's actually a magical turtle and they'll go, you know, kids.

- Which is great so that's more creativity.

- Yes, we want to hear.

- Yeah, so where do people find you, you have a website?

- The best place to go is our website.

Yes, you can make the most money.

And because it goes right to our office and we get to learn who you are, and sometimes we can help you out if you need advice, we can tell you do I don't get there if there are only four you'd probably want to get this one not that one it's kind of complicated.

Most of our customers are aunts, uncles, a lot of parents, a lot of grandparents, a lot of grandparents and we were on Fox news last week that was a lot of grandparents.

And we got like, you know, a lot of orders in one day it was crazy.

- How long does it take to fulfill an order because then you ship out straight from Galesburg.

- Yes, we do and it's very quick.

Usually we're a little backlog now because we got like a thousand orders in one day.

So we had a hire and I told people on TV, I said, the more you order from us the more Knox couch, because we're hiring, we hired four kids that one day.

- [Christine] Really.

Yeah, we had Heather put on the boards that Knox looking for kids to do fulfillment, media, things like that.

And we just got inundated with kids who wanted to work, and we were next grads my wife and I.

So right down the street we're on Prairie Street right down the street is Knox College.

So these walk over and they're sweet kids very smart.

One girl, Zoe, I saw her working she's working like a, just like, just cut the tape guns.

She's taping boxes.

I go, what do your parents do?

You know, I couldn't believe she was working the way she was working, right?

And she's, oh, you know, I'm second generation Netherlands, my parents, my dad's family there were salmon sane fishermen in Alaska.

I'm like, no, I'm not surprised by the way you're handling that tape gun you're a fisher woman.

So it was so nice to meet these kids and see the kind of kids are getting out of Knox County.

- And we don't have a whole lot of time left but you're also working with Bradley University.

- Peoria has been so good for us and in a lot of ways, Peoria University, Bradley University, they Christina McDaniels over in the stem department, we've come in there and done big challenges like mass contexture, which is a word we made up.

And basically, we challenged the kids they're from the gaming departments and engineering departments too.

In one afternoon build a Martian colony some kind of technology would help your Martian colony, and they bent over backwards that was a beautiful thing in a lab.

Bradley we were the jumps, we did that one incubator program that they do here.

- With Jump, with Jump- - Not with Jump, no with Bradley I forget the name of the program now, it was a kinda a startup kind of thing we did with them.

We've done a little bit of so we've talked to people Jump Center they're awesome too.

you know, we've been really nice to us has been Leland and Christine- - [Christine] Daring.

- daring over at a bump box.

- [Christine] Right.

And they've been very helpful when we came here a couple times and they showed us how they do their behind the scenes, how they use a computer and everything.

- [Christine] Everything went on right?

- Really nice people.

There's a lot of great business stuff happening in the Peoria area.

And people are so nice if you wanna start a business this is a great place to do it because so many go up to try to help you.

Now, you have Distillery Labs coming online, you have The Nest, this is a happening place.

- Central Illinois.

So really quickly because we have to wrap up your website.

- It's L-U-X-B-L-O-X .com.

luxblox.com.

You can get us there you can get us a lot of places online, MyPillow sells us, Amazon sells us, The Grommet sells us if you got, if you're a member of The Grommet.

- Right, well, I would like to thank you for coming over and sharing all this stuff and I'm inspired, now I wanna now I wanna play.

- Let's play.

- Okay, all right.

Thanks.

Thank you for joining us stay a safe and healthy.

(upbeat music)