US EditionDutch Inventor of Hit Game 'Kapla' Dead at 80: Family
Tom Van der Bruggen created Kapla, a wooden construction game sold tens of millions worldwide, inspired by his castle-building experience in France.
- On February 14, Tom Van der Bruggen, Dutch inventor and creator of Kapla, died aged 80 after about a year of illness with heart problems and diabetes, his wife told AFP.
- While building his first castle in Aveyron, Van der Bruggen conceived Kapla in the 1970s, spending 16 years constructing the castle and living there without electricity for six months.
- After founding Kapla in 1987, Van der Bruggen built a business that let him move to Monaco, buy a home and Rolls-Royce, and launch TomTect and K'Tom ventures.
- Kapla's reach spans children and architects over four decades, and the couple moved from Monaco to Nice to open the world's first Kapla gallery in early November.
- Van der Bruggen framed his work as driven by invention and described himself as 'intense' and a compulsive inventor, saying to Dutch broadcaster KRO, `I discovered that blocks you can buy in a toy store, they're too bulky to build with.
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36 Articles
When building a model lock, Tom Van der Bruggen comes up with the idea for his kit toy Kapla. In 1987, the Dutchman founded the company with the same name. However, the success is still waiting for a few years. Now Van der Bruggen died at the age of 80.
When Tom van der Bruggen tried to recreate a French castle as a model, he quickly invented his own modular toys – a huge success. Now the Dutchman died at the age of 80.
Le Huffington Post
Laminute.infoThe Dutchman had invented the Kapla not to play, but to visualize one of his architectural projects in the early 1980s in France.
Dutchman Tom Van der Bruggen, the inventor of the famous wooden board-based construction game Kapla, died at the age of 80 in Nice on Saturday, his wife announced Monday at the AFP.
Originally, the Dutchman had used the Kapla ("small boards of luteins" in Dutch) to visualize one of his model projects.
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