Perhaps the grandest alphabet blocks were made by W.S. Read Toy Co. They were building materials for a tower that featured moving parts, including a pulley that operated elevators and rotated flags.

Blocks are gender neutral. Blocks seem like fixed points in a swirling world. The simple alphabet block inspired by 17th century philosopher John Locke, for instance, can still be found on toy ...

Like with traditional alphabet blocks the cartoony characters inside some of these clear plastic cubes correspond to the letter printed on the outside. So the ‘J’ has a tiny jellyfish inside ...

These carved wooden cubes (imprinted with child-safe inks) can be used as a puzzle, building blocks and -- of course -- for learning the ABCs.

Not long thereafter in 1820, the S.L. Hill Co. of Williamsburg, N.Y., took out a patent on wooden blocks embossed with the alphabet (commonly called “alphabet blocks”).