I have a daughter and I bought her two capselas back when I wrote the blog post two years ago and she wasn't that interested. I think she expected a more espectacular outcome given the effort :)
I didn't have legos, as I mentioned I'm from Argentina and it wasn't very popular here, we had a clone called "rastis".
This year I went for the first time to US and we bought legos, but not a set, the $ 15 glasses of pieces. I did another trip in March and I bought more and last month a friend bring us another one. My daughter play with this every day.
I think legos in general and capsela are very different, but Lego as a brand has many different sets.
I agree with another commenter than "technic" is similar but it is a set and you know all the time what you should assemble and that's the reason I don't like Lego sets/models but I do like the pieces a lot.