Hilary Page and Kiddicraft

Hilary Harry Fisher Page was born in 1904 and died in 1957.

He was a well-known designer of children's educational toys and founded the Kiddicraft Company at Purley, Surrey, England in 1932. In making wooden toys, he described his greatest problem as finding "a suitable paint or enamel which could not be sucked or gnawed off". For this and because of their " hygienic qualities, attractive colours and absence of dangers from sharp edges and corners" he changed to plastics and made the first Kiddicraft 'Sensible' toys in 1937. He was a pioneer in using plastics as materials in their own right rather than simply translating existing designs to the modern material.

In 1939 Hilary Page applied for a patent for 'Toy Building Blocks'. In this and subsequent patents he described hollow bricks with 4 and 8 studs on top. These Kiddicraft 'Self Locking Bricks' were a Hilary Page 'Sensible' Toy made in England after the 1939-45 war. Lego introduced their "Automatic Binding Bricks" in 1949 after acquiring rights to the Kiddicraft design.