Two families, one playroom habit and a new tile.

CONNETIX started with two families in Australia. In an interview with The Toy Book published on 11 February 2022, director Brea Brand said the company was “officially launched in 2019 by myself and my business partner Dave,” and the magazine described the brand as created by two families who met when their children started primary school together. The trade magazine of the Nuremberg toy fair, Spielwarenmesse, names the founders as Dave Alexander and Brea Brand, gives 2019 as the founding year and calls Brand co-founder and chief executive.

The two came to toys from different directions. The company’s own story page says Brand holds a master’s degree in early childhood education and that Alexander brought experience in mechanical design, manufacturing, logistics and entrepreneurship. Speaking to Spielwarenmesse, Brand summed up the partnership as “combining our experience in education and engineering.”

The starting point was their own children’s play. Brand told Spielwarenmesse that the founders watched their children play with magnetic tiles and then “decided to create our own version with strong magnets, enhanced durability and an exclusive design.” The magazine adds that the design was meant to create attractive light refractions and to let children build larger structures.

Home is the west coast. The company’s story page says CONNETIX has grown into a global team “since our beginnings in Perth, Australia,” and a product announcement supplied by the company to Gift Guide Online in October 2025 described it as “Perth-based Connetix.” The footer of the brand’s website names the operating company as Brave Toys Pty Ltd.

A bevel, a rivet and light through colour.

The product is a flat plastic shape with magnets around its edges, the same broad family as Magna-Tiles. The English Wikipedia article on Magna-Tiles names Magformers, Playmags, CONNETIX and Picasso Tiles as similar products. What the founders point to is the detail. The Toy Book described the pieces in 2022 as “uniquely beveled magnetic tiles that offer clear refractions,” and said they combine strong magnets with ultrasonic welding and rivets. The bevel is the design signature: an angled edge that catches and bends light as it passes through the coloured plastic.

Colour is organised into ranges. The Toy Book singled out a signature pastel range in 2022 and said a Clear Range and more base-plate colours were on the way. The brand’s website today sorts its tiles into Rainbow, Pastel, Clear and Glitter ranges, with Light Tiles, base plates and rectangles alongside, so a set can be read by its palette as much as by its shapes.

The system has also grown beyond squares and triangles. The Toy Book described ball run packs “featuring clear, fluted tubes and specialty pieces,” car bases with rubber wheels and large hexagon shapes. Ball runs and roads-and-transport sets now sit as their own categories on the company’s website, so the tiles connect to wheels, tubes and tracks as well as to one another.

Toys and design.

The six brands in this group are construction, building and game names: Magformers, Geomag, Quercetti, K’NEX, CONNETIX and Nathan. Construction-toy brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to larger toy groups or are used under licence, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a supermarket aisle to a specialist toy shop.

A construction-toy brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single piece than by a name, a box and a system of parts, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or licensed its mark to another maker. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its pieces are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its toys are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

New packs, new ranges and a line for older builders.

The range keeps widening. In a product announcement published by Gift Guide Online on 3 October 2025 and supplied by the company, CONNETIX introduced three new magnetic tile ranges, the Portal Pack, the Glitter Range and the Light Star Pack, together with a new line of tiles designed for older builders, CONNETIX Pro. Brea Brand, named there as co-founder and chief executive, said: “It’s such an exciting time for Connetix as we see these new packs come to life,” adding that the company was “always so inspired by our play community and the ways they are seeking to level up builds and expand on creative possibilities.”

The same announcement shows how the brand presents itself in shops. To support the launch, it said, CONNETIX would give retailers a suite of marketing material, including lifestyle photography, video content, social media toolkits and point-of-sale materials, so that stockists could show the new ranges in store and online.

The brand has taken that work to the trade. Spielwarenmesse says CONNETIX has exhibited at the Nuremberg fair, and its magazine profile places the company’s story under the heading “From the schoolyard to the toy industry.”

The name itself is set in capitals on the brand’s own website, CONNETIX, while trade press often writes it as Connetix. The founders remain its public faces: Brand gives the interviews, and the company’s story page credits both her and Alexander with the original idea of open-ended construction toys.

The company now describes itself as a team rather than a pair. Its story page says the people behind CONNETIX include parents, educators, product specialists and “play enthusiasts,” many of whom bring their own experience of raising and teaching children to the work. Spielwarenmesse reported that the company was planning a new product line and three new ranges for August 2025, the launch that the October 2025 announcement went on to describe.

For a design guide, CONNETIX shows how a young brand can stand out in a crowded category with one physical detail, a bevelled edge, and a carefully named set of colour ranges. Compare Magna-Tiles, the American tiles that began in Japan as Pythagoras, and Tegu, which hides its magnets inside wood. For this guide we use deep blue, coral and seafoam with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep CONNETIX’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.