Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

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sadowsk1
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Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by sadowsk1 » Fri May 20, 2011 5:15 am

I was thinking about this the other day as I was paging through a Lego catalog and I wondered if there is any other toy out there that comes close to the level of collecting Lego can achieve? I'm not very familiar with many other toys out there, I used to collect Star Wars Action Figures, but is there anything that competes with the variety and customizability that Lego has?

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by lukeskywalker » Mon May 23, 2011 8:21 am

I don't think so. A lot of people like bakugan, but they aren't really customizable. I think lego is unique in that regard.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by legitimatealex » Thu May 26, 2011 1:45 pm

I can't come up with any. I mean there are a lot of toy brands that have been around forever, but to compare to LEGO? Not really. They've been in the same business making the same stuff for so many years, they're hard to compete with.
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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by johndroberts » Sat Jun 04, 2011 7:54 pm

Have you heard of K'nex? They are not entirely like lego but they are close.

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My favorite Lego set has to be LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean Queen Anne's Revenge. It has a lot of pieces and is challenging.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by lukeskywalker » Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:20 am

johndroberts wrote:Have you heard of K'nex? They are not entirely like lego but they are close.

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I would have to say that K'nex is the biggest rival of lego. I know a lot of people who have both of them and they usually use the k'nex for skeletal building and lego for more detailed stuff. K'nex does have some bricks, but from my experience, they are not very good. Basically, K'nex is probably better than technic in skeletal building but lego is better in detailed building.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by atmail35 » Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:53 pm

The only other company I can think of is Playmobil (http://www.playmobilusa.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). We have collected a lot of Playmobil in addition to Lego. However, Playmobil is more about role-playing/imaginative play since you assemble it and then go...you can't really rebuild or customize that much. I also don't think most Adults or Teens collect Playmobil and it is mostly young kids who have the sets.

It does rival Lego as far as price goes....and small pieces to get lost in the vacuum ;)

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by r1chard » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:53 pm

don't forget mega bloks

here are some photos from my blog.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by legoeggo » Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:36 am

Playmobil isn't a building a toy but it shares a lot of the same generic themes, has an iconic look to it and has the same European roots as Lego

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by flyngryter711 » Sun Jun 19, 2011 10:40 pm

I'm not sure if you have heerd of Kre'o but Hasbro is releasing those to compete with LEGO. They are compatible with LEGO and their first sets involve the transformers.
I love collecting LEGO cars 2 toys. My favorite is Classic Mater.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by lukeskywalker » Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:14 am

flyngryter711 wrote:I'm not sure if you have heerd of Kre'o but Hasbro is releasing those to compete with LEGO. They are compatible with LEGO and their first sets involve the transformers.
Those sound good.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by turtle1173 » Mon Jun 20, 2011 8:33 am

Has anyone here purchased any of the Kre-o sets yet. My son and I have been looking at them at TRU. He loves the little 80's looking mini figs. I was curious how well the actual pieces "stacked up" against Lego. They certainly are just as expensive as Lego is.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by natelite » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:41 am

i had a look at the set boxes and i wasn't impressed with them enough to buy any. i was tempted by the mario bros sets from knex though and i bought both luigi and mario. waiting for new sets to appear. :P ones that are cheap enough to collect the minifigs. :P

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by iamangel » Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:32 pm

I've also seen robotic construction sets -- if you are into that kind of thing. I don't recall what the name was though. I think they may have been called Mindstorm.
I love the Hasbro puppy line like FurReal Friends Cookie and furreal gogo my walkin pup in addition to Legos.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by Nepenthe7 » Fri Jul 15, 2011 5:06 pm

Megabloks , I would say is a LEGO rival. Sometimes, they have licensed characters not available in LEGO. They had Cars (in the duplo size), HALO, Dora, Diego, etc.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by lukeskywalker » Fri Jul 15, 2011 7:34 pm

Nepenthe7 wrote:Megabloks , I would say is a LEGO rival. Sometimes, they have licensed characters not available in LEGO. They had Cars (in the duplo size), HALO, Dora, Diego, etc.
If they were good quality, they might be really popular. They're not, so they aren't

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by natelite » Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:58 am

I wouldn't say quality as much as inconsistency of pieces. Almost every unique pieces were created specifically for the set and can't be reuse in your own moc. And the pieces look horrible too. The fact that the designers were underpaid was also very apparent since there is virtually no or little building in the sets too. So there's no incentive for the parents to buy mb sets for their kids. Lastly the mfs suck. Every single one is unique. You can't exchange the torso or head or any other parts because each figure especially licensed themes is molded uniquely.

I think some other companies are beginning to get lego's appeal and we'll probably start seeing better competition. For eg knex Mario bros sets have the right idea. hasbros kreo too is in the right direction with the kreons though the sets themselves not transformable suck like 99%.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by natelite » Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:07 am

I just saw r1chard's blog and it kind of reinforce my view of mb. There is hardly any building at all and the mfs can't be taken apart and mix and match. Until some company truly addesses these issues we won't be seeing real challenges to lego's reign. I think the mf patents are still current, so no one can make compatible mf parts just yet. Tlc would be smart to keep preserving that patent otherwise we'll really see true competition like what we see from the customizers.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by vynsane » Sat Jul 16, 2011 6:38 am

I have one MegaBloks set. I had a gift card to Walgreens and they had no good LEGO sets for the amount it was, so I decided to check out one of the HALO sets (a small one with three Spartans and some sort of anti-aircraft gun). Some of the pieces are surprisingly cool, like the round 2x2 domed pieces with grating, the 1x2 "cheese slope" type piece, but with studs on the angled portion instead of the grating, and their equivalent to the old LEGO 'stick antenna'.

That said, the package I got was actually missing one of those antennae, and had a slew of duplicated pieces. The clutch power is also not as strong as LEGO.
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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by jsnweitzel » Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:03 pm

natelite wrote:Every single one is unique. You can't exchange the torso or head or any other parts because each figure especially licensed themes is molded uniquely.
Just for the record, my son has several MB Halo, knight and super hero sets and you can interchange the heads, arms and legs of MB minifigs. He does it all the time. They are all ball joints and you simply pop off one head and put on another. The sets in the blog pics are Duplo type sets.

I don't think you can change the chest/pelvis, I believe that is one molded piece. But the sculpts on the minifigs are very good.

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Re: Are there any toy rivals of Lego?

Post by gamermic » Sun Aug 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Tried MB Halo minifigs... Totally diff from Lego.
Tried Emco as well... Brick quality isn't as good as lego's.
Tried a few china-branded... Diff brick quality as well...
There's nanoblock... Smaller version of bricks.

Thinking of getting kre-o but the idea of transformers not able to transform just feels weird... Even though the minifigs do really look cool!

Accessories would be like brickarms, brickforge, Si-Dan...
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