The veteran-owned company brings realistic military planes, tanks and settings to life through building blocks, much like a Lego set.
In a nutshell
Mil-Blox, which is short for Military Roblox, started when Thomas Mulhall, a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, started making his own suits with the help of a tailor in Thailand. That eventually led to him making his own leather goods for durability, and those products included military patches.
“When I was deployed, I started selling patches on my one day off and was pretty successful with that,” Mulhall said. “I started working at gun shows in the area here, and I kept seeing kids at these gun shows, and there really wasn't much for them. So I was like, ‘Let me find something for the kids.’”
Mulhall brought some military sets to sell at the shows, and they sold out quickly. He started bringing in the larger sets, like planes and tanks, which also sold fast.
Mil-Blox came to fruition, and after more than two years of selling the sets at Christmas markets and gun shows, Mulhall realized he couldn’t run the business out of his garage anymore.
Zooming in
When it came to finding a physical store, settling in Denton was the ideal scenario for Mulhall. He cited Denton’s Texas Veterans Hall of Fame Museum and the sense of community for selecting the area to open his first store.
Mulhall started looking at malls in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and settled on opening the brick-and-mortar store in Golden Triangle Mall. The shop opened the day after Thanksgiving in 2024, or Black Friday.
“I think we were up to 150 or 200 sets at the time. Today, being in the mall, we’ve been able to expand up to 370 [sets],” Mulhall said.
The inspiration
Mulhall said part of the reason he dove deep into creating the Mil-Blox brand was because there weren't military-specific building sets on the market.
He said customers usually are Lego enthusiasts who want to build something historically accurate, veterans who can see the machines they worked on or operated come to life, or kids who like the military or have military ties.
“We get a lot of adults who say, ‘Hey, I flew that plane,’ or ‘I worked on that tank,’ or ‘I drove in that Humvee,’ and they want something to put on their desk,” Mulhall said.
Looking ahead
While he initially was looking for a smaller suite in Golden Triangle Mall, Mulhall settled on a 4,000-square-foot space, using half to sell the Mil-Blox sets and the other half to set up a playing arena and a virtual reality space, which Mulhall said he wants to be fully operational by January.
Another room was built as a video game room with a PlayStation set and a Switch set with couches. Mulhall said he doesn’t charge for people to hang out there.
He also started to use the space for birthday parties, where kids are given “missions” they must complete. Mulhall said he and one of his employees dress up in military fatigues, and the kids assemble sets in the store, play with Nerf Gun sets or participate in a scavenger hunt.
Mulhall has another 200 sets going through production that the store will sell in 2026. Some of those sets include tanks from World War I, themes from the Wild West, new Civil War soldiers, sets from medieval times and sets from ancient Greece and Rome.
“We're trying to expand all the way through the entire human history,” Mulhall said.
- 2201 S. I-35 P1, Denton
- www.milblox.com
