It looks like the author examined every toy inspired by Lego, other than Lego itself.
For me the big problem with Lego was not clean up time. For me the big problem with Lego was stepping on them barefoot. How do these other toys compare?
For me the big problem with Lego was not clean up time. For me the big problem with Lego was stepping on them barefoot. How do these other toys compare?
Larger (like tall 6x2) bricks are uncommon outside buckets, and a lot of larger pieces like dedicated wall-sections or big vehicle nose-bits or car undercarriages are now rare.
The result is that my old sets are a mix of everything from large contoured structural plates down to tiny pieces, but my kids’ bins of legos are like 98% tiny pieces. They use them less than I did, I think because it’s hard to sort through the loose pieces when they’re mostly very small, and with less variety there aren’t as many large pieces to use as jumping-off points to start a build, and making, say, a house-height wall or the front of a space ship is slower than when we had more bricks that could kinda short-hand those pieces and let you skip the middle, if you will, to focus on both the big-picture and fine details. I doubt I’d have liked Lego so much if mine had looked like theirs.
There is a definite element of “you get what you pay for” when it comes to that stuff. Unfortunately… because some of those knockoff kits look super cool.
Sounds like it's gone too far the other way now and they're still not managing to find a middle ground? But it does depend partly on what age of kids we're talking about.
The 11yo wants few new sets now because he doesn’t know where he would put them, and declines to swap out his assembled sets.
Feels just like Grandma's ole box o bricks
I see that the Lego I remember and the Lego of today are two vastly different things.
Duplo blocs come close, but they are pricey (hard to gift second hand toys) and you can only stack them when the other toys interlock in more interesting ways. For small kids, building an articulating shape the size of their arm with 4 or 5 blocs is really magical.