Slashdot Mirror
Lego Loses Its Unique Right To Make Lego Blocks
tsa writes "The European Department of Justice has decided that the Danish company Lego does not have exclusive rights to the lego building block anymore (sorry, it's in Dutch). Lego went to court after a Canadian firm had made blocks that were so like lego blocks that they even fit the real blocks made by Lego. The European judge decided that the design of the lego blocks is not protected by European trademarks and so anyone can make the blocks." If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors. Perhaps at long last I can build a life-sized Hemos statue for my office.
Lego was naar het Europese Hof van justitie gestapt in de strijd tegen de Canadese concurrent Mega Brands, die een blokje op de markt heeft gebracht dat past op die van Lego. Het Hof oordeelde vandaag dat het ontwerp van Lego niet is beschermd door het Europees merkenrecht en dat er dus geen sprake mag zijn van alleenrecht.
Can't really argue with that....
This guy's the limit!
one 1x1
The decision can be consulted in English as well at the ECJ's website: http://curia.europa.eu/
(and Lego hasn't had such exclusive right for quite a while...)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3784225,00.html The news is not that generic blocks didn't previously exist. It's that Lego is unable to retain the trademark.
And here comes the end of the Lego story. Too bad, they won't be able to make a decent profit and get good media deals (Star Wars sets, etc) if they don't have a decent monopoly on blocks.
My kids have been playing with Mega Bloks for years. When you can buy big buckets of them for $20 when Lego costs $100 or more for the bigger sets, well, the choice is obvious.
Maybe I meant... All your blocks are belong to us...
There have been Lego knockoffs for years. But they're just not as high quality. Lego blocks are expensive because they are made to exacting tolerances, and last for a long time.
Don't expect that off-brand statue to stand on its own, Rob.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I think they ought to take the ruling in stride and just open source the bricks. Make them an ISO standard, but continue to provide quality over quantity. Then let the Canadian company do the cheap bricks so that we can build whatever we want out of bulk. Wish they would do this with the mindstorm stuff too!
Forgive me, O! All-Father of Trademarks. I shall do penance with a huge Lego block construction of Marge looking sad and concerned.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Yay, time for some cheap Chinese knock-offs. Just watch out for the lead paint!
I wonder if there will soon be a whole section of Lego-compatible bricks in the toy store.
We zijn net opgekocht door een Nederlands bedrijf, dus moet ik borstel op mijn Nederlands.
So, what Lego needs to do now is publish the OLS, or Open Lego Standard. Seriously, when it becomes obvious you're going to lose the battle, maybe it's time to embrace the alternative? Instead of fighting to keep your ideas out of the hands of others, fight to make sure that *everyone* uses your idea. It makes your assets valuable in a different way. This way, they'll still have control over the standard, and if products meet the standard, they get branded with "OLS Compliant!" and consumers know that if they buy "OLS Compliant!" parts, they'll work with their other "OLS Compliant!" parts, which makes consumers very happy, which makes the standard valuable.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Now that they can't charge $50 for a few dozen bricks, I can't imagine them surviving. Expect layoffs and diminished lines.
On one hand, it's kinda cool, because for a very long time their product has been way overpriced.
On the other hand, it'll be an end of an era.
Too bad they aren't a US company. We probably could of just given them a 75 billion dollar bail out.
I can't wait to play Blocko Star Wars next year.
Summation 2
Maybe it's more like this:
All of your blocks are belong to us, but so are some blocks from someone else, too.
I had a lot of these when I was a kid - both the real, and the knock-off types. I can't remember how many times something fell apart because I'd accidentally gotten a knock-off brick in a bad spot and it didn't hold properly. The knock-offs just can't hold properly when you use them to make a hinge...
The questions is, would it be an anatomically correct Hemos statue?
Most parents buy on price, not quality or brand name. If Chinese Legos cost a third of real Legos, they'll buy the Chinese version. Which is a shame because Legos' core sales helped fund some of their other intellectually interesting Lego projects, like the mindstorms stuff. If Lego stays in business, they'll have to reinvent themselves, but they wont be in the plastic brick business for very long now.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Maybe they won't get sued for using the 8-blob Lego brick as a icon for stories about toys.
I have mixed feelings about this. I have 38 years' worth and hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks, which cost an enormous amount, and it'd sure be nice to get vats of cheap bricks so I can build some of the things I want. (I'm halfway through making a 3-D printer using chocolate, that has a working space of about 9 cubic feet, and boy does that take a lot of blocks.)
But at the same time, companies will rush into the space formed by LEGO losing their trademark, build cheap bricks, outcompete LEGO, LEGO will go out of business, and then we'll be stuck with lots of cheap imitators who aren't making the beautiful stuff LEGO created, and that could end up destroying exactly what makes LEGO worthwhile.
There is a value to having a single entity driving a market -- a planned economy in miniature.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Lego tried an end-run around the law.
Copyright couldn't cover their bricks.
Patents ran out eons ago.
But Trademarks, Trademarks are perpetual... so they 'Trademark' a physical object instead of a name & logo. anybody wonder why they lost?
If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors.
I thought you could already do that.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I was a lego boy when I grew up. I had a lot of legos.
I also had some imitation blocked made by Tyco. These immitation blocks never fit together well. You'd build something and it would fall apart. Although the bricks looked almost identical, the Tyco bricks just sucked.
So, I do worry about imitation blocks. Lego blocks are the best because they have impossibly high standards during manufacturing in order to avoid the frustration I experienced with the Tyco blocks.
If someone else is going to start really making sets to compete with Lego, let's hope they go the distance and implement quality control like Lego does.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I for one am looking forward to the explosion of availability of cheap melamine and lead-laced lego-like blocks for young toddlers.
Mmmm, mmmm! Nothing says safe, wholesome and tasty like cheap imports from third-world sweat-shops.
After Hilary Page commited suicide, LEGO purchased the expired patents from Page's estate so they could pretend they invented them in the first place.
LEGO did invent and patent the little tube on the bottom of the brick, which wasn't in Page's original design, which allows for more connection possibilities. Once that patent expired, other companies, such as Canada's MEGA, (creator of Mega Bloks) created clones. LEGO, of course, sued for trademark infringement. In the US, they lost, because you can't trademark and patent the same things - functional elements, which are covered by patents, can't be trademarked. Other countries treat this issue differently, hence LEGO enjoys some trademark protection even for the purely functional elements.
Apparently, LEGO's view is that a patent should be valid as long as the company holding the patent continues to manufacture the product, and tends to be pretty aggressive about it. The irony they they effectively violated the patents of the original inventor is completely lost on them.
Posting anonymously because I've had previous run-ins with LEGO's lawyers.
Finally, I knew all this Dutch my parents learned me would pay off! This had better give me some free karma.
Lego loses it's unique right to make Lego blocks
Luxemburg - It'll be hard to swallow for the Danish manufacturer Lego now that the European Court of Justice has decided Wednesday that everyone can make a block that fits the original legoblock.
Lego had gone to the European Court of Justice battling against the Canadian competitor Mega Brands, who has brought a block on the market that fits Lego's. The Court ruled today that the design of Lego is not protected by European trademark and that there can be no such thing as an unique right.
The Lego block was invented in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen in the Danish city Billund. The name LEGO is derived from the Danish words "LE GOdt" (play good). Later the word appeared the word could be interpreted in Latin as "I gather" (or 'I choose' or 'I read').
LEGO is a Danish toy manufacturer that became famous because of the colored plastic blocks. The blocks are sold under the name "Lego"; that way they refer not only to the manufacturer, but it also became a generic brand. The manufacturer is the biggest toy manufacturer in Europe with a revenue of 7823 billion Danish Krone ( 1049 billion Euro or 1337 billion dollars ) in 2006. Meanwhile, LEGO has won the price "Toy of the Century" twice.
The LEGO Group is the fifth biggest toy manufacturer in the world.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Fitted? Really?
Made for children, by children.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Lego is a high-quality product. There have been knockoffs out there for a while, but Lego holds dominant because they have an excelent recipie for the plastic (held as a trade secret) and are fit to extremely tight tolerances. They might be more expensive than Megablocks, but they're worth it.
Not a typewriter
Finally, someone can start making those adult themed legos! I can finally make that square boobed (and whatever else females have) lego robot I've always dreamed of.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Lego hasn't had a monopoly on the bricks for decades. (They have a monopoly on making bricks that actually work, but that's not for legal reasons, that's just because their competitors are incompetent.)
Lego has used a red 2x4 Lego brick in advertisements, and they believed that this particular brick could be used as a trademarked "logo". The European Department of Justice decided that the brick picture is too generic to be trademarked. The decision will be appealed.
So all it means is that competitors are allowed to put that particular brick in their advertisements and on their boxes. They already had the right to produce the brick.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Following their pattern of Wait & BadlyCopy, Microsoft will announce the need for the strategic purchase of Mega so they can Embrace the Blocks, Extend, and Extinguish Lego!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Now I can make big custom LEGO blocks filled with isolating material to build my dreamhouse and change the floorplan whenever I feel like it.
http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/18382
Probably won't help with the pirates. Real pirates!
Makin' money, makin' friends, makin' whoopee and wearin' Depends
Danish!=Dutch
When I was a kid in New Zealand, we had something called Betta Bilda which was very similar to Lego.
I know we're supposed to think whatever benefits the consumer is good but Legos is an unusual situation. They have a company built on a unique product. They spent many years promoting the product and were very successful doing it. Now anyone can produce their product and use their name since it's now a generic term, Lego. Ultimately whoever can produce them the cheapest will win and it's highly unlikely Lego will survive. The competing companies will even benefit from free advertising since Lego company advertising will effectively promote companies that simply call their product Legos. I think the courts signed the company's death warrant. In the end all that will be left are companies making cheap knock offs. Where this doesn't benefit consumers is the knock off companies aren't innovators they are in effect parasites feeding off the creations of others. If creation and innovation dies because of a lack of market protections then the consumer looses. It may mean cheap crap but ultimately it'll just mean a lot of crap available. Already with small business your only real protection are lawyers and if you can't aford them you are defenseless. You can spend a lifetime creating a unique product only to have it knocked off in less than a year. It'll cost you all your profits to defend your rights against the parasites and in the end you'll probably have to file Chapter 11. Without protections the parasites will always win.
at long last I can build a life sized [Hemos] Tux statue for my office
FTFY
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
My shot at it:
Lego was near hot European Hasselhoff just in time to gestate in the stride generator concurrent with the Canada geese Mega Brands, ...okay, I give up...
"If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors."
Given the D&D Insider Magazine ad at the top of the Slashdot discussion page, I'm guessing that a girlfriend-shaped and colored block would sell very well.
Sent from my iPhone
The manufacturer is the biggest toy manufacturer in Europe with a revenue of 7823 billion Danish Krone ( 1049 billion Euro or 1337 billion dollars ) in 2006.
1337 billion dollars?
Now that's some leet amount of money, eh?
Fixed it:
All your baseplates are belong to us
mod me funny
Personally, I hated megablocks, because the bricks are not made with the same quality as Legos. Legos have a very exacting standard they make for each brick, to guarentee they fit together and stay together when you want to, and come apart when you need them to. Megablocks I found are looser, and don't stay together as often. I'm anal. I played with Legos when I was young, but when I grew up, my son and I put together some megablocks sets he got from someone else. The comparative quality was very poor.
However, in terms of business, a competition between Megablocks and Legos is a good thing. Legos wants (I hope) to be a higher quality toy, while Megablocks is for those who are less anal and more frugal. They have carved out their own niches and provide choice for the consumer. Additional players in the market should help.
At the same time, I hope someone tackles with the idea that lego sets are too specialized now. There are so many specialty pieces that it limits the amount you can create with a single set, and limits the replay value. Back in the 80s, there were tons of new pieces that weren't all just bricks, but those pieces could still be creatively used to build new models from your imagination. The odd shaped clear plastic panel that curls around the model just so and only has one real use is annoying.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Yeah, on the one hand, the race to the bottom wins again.
On the other hand, Lego is a socially responsible company with zero waste, excellent pay and bennies for all employees, and an all around good company. I hope this doesn't mean the collapse of the Danish economy. I mean, they pretty much have Legos, Bang and Olfsen, Hans Christian Anderson... and that's about it.
Tyco are the only clone bricks I've come across that are close to Lego.
I'd throw out any Megablocks I find, but my parents wanted them for a friend's kid.
The design of Lego bricks is functional. It should never have been a trademark to begin with.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I was thrilled to discover that Lego boxes are clearly labelled indicating the source(s) of their plastic blocks. Some indicate that blocks were made in China but most are not... so I could vote with my dollars for (presumably) safer product for my child.
Losing this case means the company will no doubt have to compete on price, to lower quality and to cut corners thereby safety concerns.
At some point in the future we'll be hearing about toxic lego blocks outgassing neurotoxins that give kids seizures or some such thing.
We use the mega blocks and duplo blocks, both. There both okay for pretending.
However, I've found that both I and my kids cannot easily take legos apart. In addition, the form factor of legos makes it easy to make their intended toy (if you want to spend the time), but comparatively hard to make other things.
I remember the days of American Bricks, though, when we'd make marble machines, spaceships (tiny, med, large, and super), ships, and whatnot. Yeah, it didn't have all the specialized parts that lego has. But that's what imagination is for. I remember playing the Children's Space Revolution (in 1972, with a theme song that was remarkably similar to that which came out for Star Wars), and other stories that we made up as we went.
I never saw that with legos -- not with my brothers, not with my oldest son. We gave it up. The kids do pretend with Mega Bloks. As a parent, I'd much prefer something that falls apart every so often, to something that you can't get apart without tremendous effort.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
This is bad, now all the âforeignâ(TM) companies that use bad chemicals and poison our children will be selling knockoffs. I trust the Lego brand, and would hate to see a Chinese made knock-off.
Lego loses exclusive right to make lego cubes Luxury Ohio - It will be the Danish manufacturer Lego to swallow are now the European Court of Justice has ruled Wednesday that everyone must make a box that fits the original lego bit. Lego was to the European Court of Justice and were active in the fight against the Canadian competitor Mega Brands, which is a block on the market that fits that of Lego. The Court ruled today that the design of Lego is not protected by the trademark and that there should be no question of monopoly. he stone is lego in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen in the Danish town of Billund mind. The name "LEGO" is derived from the Danish words "Leg Godts" (play well). Later it was found the word in Latin to interpret as "I collectables" (including "I choose" or "I read"). LEGO is a Danish toy manufacturer that has become familiar with colored plastic cubes. The cubes are under the name "Lego" sold, thus the name refers not only to the manufacturer, but is also a generic name for the toys become. The manufacturer is the largest toy manufacturer in Europe with a turnover of 7823 billion Danish kroner (1.049 trillion euros) in 2006. Meanwhile, LEGO twice the price "toys of the century" won. The Lego Group is the fifth largest toy manufacturer in the world.
I am not too worried on behalf of Lego -- I have used mega blocks many times, and frankly while they are compatible, the quality and tolerances are not even close to lego. They don't even stick to each other all that well.
Basically, while this might mean there is a flood of cheap bricks on the market, I will stick the to orgiginal for my kids when I have the choice because the quality is so much better.
Besides, when I step on them in bare feet, I want to curse their damn legos all over the floor -- it sounds better than damn mega blocks..
More Caffeine. NOW
OLS 2.0 Full Speed
OLS 2.0 Hi-Speed
"Original OLS"
OLS Universal Host Controller
OLS Enhanced Host Controller
Wait... What were we talking about again?
This space is not for rent.
No, that's not "about it".
The problem is, Lego might be a household name, indeed in some countries it is a generic name for building blocks, but it is still a family-owned business. It's CEO and Chairman is a cool-looking grandson of the founder, and it resides in a rural town in Denmark called Billund, with a population of about 27,000 where nearly 90% of its manufacturing still occurs. The town is almost entirely dependent on Lego.
Lego is among the world's best employers (if not outright best). Equal opportunity in action. Employees, including the CEO, do not have reserved parking spots at the HQ's carpark, offices mostly resemble community areas rather than walled rooms, free food and drinks are all over the place, not to mention some of the best sporting and health facilities provided to employees. Blue collar workers receive the same treatment, for most things from gym membership to access to the health clinic, there is no difference between the executives and simple manufacturing employee. People don't wear name tags, they nearly always wear casual, unless they have a meeting with an outside party.
Lego has Idea Labs where people just experiment with new toys. It employs scientist, from chemists to child psychologists just to carry out all sorts of experiments. It is such a fun place, you'd be forgiven if you thought you where in Wonderland. It has a museum full of toys that it invented but failed to manufacture, mostly due to safety concerns. I can understand why some of them might have been thought of as dangerous, but boy are they cool!
Of course, with all the above, with the cost of employing and manufacturing in Europe, it can't compete with the cheapest-of-the-cheap Chinese factory which just mass produces plastic blocks. I understand that in this case, IP laws do not really cover its business, and anyone is legally able to copy them, but IMO it's rather sad to see that such companies can't really exist in this world, that consumers don't value the history and the culture of a company. They just look at a price tag and make their decision solely based on that.
Everyone I met at Lego is aware of these issues. They have carried massive restructuring plans since 2005, but they know they can't compete against most rivals whose costs are simply lower; yet they really want to preserve the unique culture that has made Lego, Lego for the past generations. Short of outsourcing manufacturing to some place in China, closing its museum and laboratory and airport and with it the town and becoming just another plastic manufacturer, I can't think of a way for them to survive. As I said, it's rather sad.
--
Here's the translated page. And no, BabelFish did not produce a translation of the same quality.
Google frightens me sometimes. Almost every day now.
May the Maths Be with you!
The name LEGO is derived from the Danish words "LE GOdt" (play good).
"Le godt" [pron: ~~~"meh gut", s/m/l/] means "laugh well". "Leg godt" [pron: ~"lie gut"] means "play well".
"godt" also means "good", but "well" is the right word to use here.
From the perspective of a man who grew up with legos and duplos- The legos were waaaaaay easier to snort.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
to the entire article translated.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Really? A life sized Emo statue?
Modeled after CowboyNeal?
(shivers)
NO SIG
Tempur-Pedic as well (yes I know they say "swedish mattresses and pillows" but their european factory is in Denmark.
I can't help but think of those leg'go my eggo commercials.
"Leggo my trademark!"
You forgot the red-light districts.
Not that I've ever been there. Nope. Uh huh. Nyet. I'm just a Puritan American and have no clue what "red light" means. Yep.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
What does it matter when all they're pushing is the Bionicle stuff these days?
For great justice.
OK, I don't speak Dutch, but...
The competing companies will even benefit from free advertising since Lego company advertising will effectively promote companies that simply call their product Legos.
Is the decision about the *shape* of the toys, or the *name* of the toys?
http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=630
My son had LEGO blocks, but I soon discovered that they have sharp
pointy edges, and hurt when you step on them barefooted in the dark.
Needless to say, any block I encountered in the dark disappeared. Soon
he had none. That never did teach him to pick up his toys. Grrrrr.
Let me see. If i just open my p2p program, to get my ubuntu iso or another kind of legal share, iam sued by 1000000 Lawyers, that tell i do a crazy crime for download a more than 50y old music and i need to pay some kind of U$ 300000000, and all my kids will be at street asking for food. ITs ok. THE LAW of GREAT FREEDOM NATION seems to be good enough to be used all around globe by the US PUPPIES ( well if i have luck, they can say that iam a crazy terrorist/pedofile to, what mean is do my life ends).. now Lego one of most know trademark around globe, cant do use of old and well done patent? Great ( at last no one send the police to get out all lego from BIG REPOSITORY in allegation is free to public now). wondering what will happens with windows when the right of use go.. Microsoft will end?
>Lego was naar het Europese Hof van justitie gestapt in de strijd tegen
>de Canadese concurrent Mega Brands, die een blokje op de markt heeft
>gebracht dat past op die van Lego. Het Hof oordeelde vandaag dat het
>ontwerp van Lego niet is beschermd door het Europees merkenrecht en dat
>er dus geen sprake mag zijn van alleenrecht.
Here's a translation, I've tried to use more English expressions where I can:
Lego has been to the European head of justice in the battle against Canadian competitor Mega Brands, who have put Lego-compatible blocks on the market. The head decided today that Lego's design isn't protected on the European market and that there is no talk of them having a monopoly....
Do you have a disability of the hands? Are you extremely weak? I have seen 3 and 4 years that are able to take Lego blocks apart without issue...the only time I have seen that there is a problem is if it is a small plate attached to a small plate... The form factor making only the intended toy? http://www.brothers-brick.com/ take a look at what people do with this limited form factor bricks...
I'm afraid the original options for 1x1 were square and round...
Flat came much, much later...
Yeah... I look at this as a mixed blessing.
I have a substantial collection of Lego, and I have a single MegaBlocks model... as much as I hate to say it, there's really a difference in quality. The Lego plastic is actually superior, and the quality of the molds must be better, too.
So while I'd like to be able to buy bulk packs of pieces (which I've done via bricklink for some years now) at cheap prices (at an average approaching $0.10 piece for a little piece of molded plastic?), I certainly wouldn't accept lower quality just to get cheaper pieces.
I'm all for competition, though. If Lego reduces prices (I know they whine they are barely making it... which is just baffling to me), then I'll be all over it. I mean, go ahead and charge $50 for a 400 piece Star Wars set... but let me buy bulk bricks to build my mega (no pun intended) structures, and I'll be a happy guy.
Sometimes on bricklink you can find pieces you like for less than a penny a piece... unfortunately, while I admit I don't look very often, I haven't seen that kind of deal in some time.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So did I as a kid, and we actually managed to break some of the Lego parts. Not the classic 4x2 bricks, but some of the more fragile ones. So there is an argument for cheap replacements ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
The choice of bricks in Lego's shop might seem large, but it's actually quite limited, compared to the number of types of bricks which have ever been products (over 10000 at a guess).
Try here instead: http://www.bricklink.com/
I believe they also export cheese and pork in various forms.
In fact, Danish cheese is the only Danish stuff I can recall buying in the past few years.
I'm just a Puritan American and have no clue what "red light" means. Yep.
It means 'if you accelerate real fast maybe nobody will notice you blowing through the intersection'.
It would be good if companies to find someway of adding value while still staying compatible to lego so the blocks still stuck together
I for one love to see Lego blocks with electronic components built in that way you could build a a house which also lit up or summit. You could have some simple stuff like capacitor resistors diodes/LEDs ans slightly more complex stuff like op-amps etc
A O O O
O O O C
This type of layout could be used for simple 2 pin components (the A is the anode and C is cathode If relevant, O are blank or just pass though signals)
more complex components could be easily accommodated using example of simple op-amp
+ V O O
- O G o/p
(where + is non inverting input - is inverting input, V is connected to 5V, G to ground and o/p is output)
Maybe a good easy way to get kids into analogue/discreet electronics without giving them some components and a bread board
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
Seeing how all made-in-china stuff tends to have lead in them... perhaps they can advertise this feature (superman cannot see through your china-lego bricks).
In all of my lego collector items, you had to build everything including the people(arms, legs, head, hat, cape, etc). Mega Blocks contain pieces that are prebuilt and will on fit the intended design. All the gears, hinges, and sturdiness are from the individual pieces and how they fit together.
My Lego Star Wars Collector's TIE Interceptor comes with a stand that you have to build put together from lego pieces. Mega Blocks look like Lego's Duplo set that a 2yr old would play with.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
It may not have been spelled exactly like that. You'll have to forgive me since I've had mine for over 30 years and the original boxes are long gone.
I've hauled around a five gallon bucket of these things for years. For quite a while they were just part of the stuff to move but now I'm using them as temporary framing for building miniatures. So I'm technically still playing with them!
The fit can be a bit loose on some of them but overall I had nothing but fun with them when I actively played with them. They even have a motor and gears to make moving stuff.
Lego will still have their licensing deals so while you might get basic sets the special ones (Star Wars, etc.) will probably still be theirs and theirs alone. I can see generic Galaxy Wars sets but kids want the things they see in the movies.
Forget cheap plastic. What about titanium? Alunium? Stainless steel?
Although Lego is still a danish company, I believe they moved all their production operations from Billund, Denmark and the US into the Czech Republic and Mexico back in 2006... So for what it's worth, maybe not China, but Czech republic and Mexico aren't known as hot-spots of eco-consciousness either...
And here I was, frustrated and ready to clarify that Danish != Dutch, but what do you know -- that story actually is Dutch! Touche.
We recently bought our first Mega Blocks set for our son, who has a big collection of Lego/Duplo bricks.
The Mega Blocks set was missing two pieces (and had two other wrong pieces instead). After a month's use, one of the main pieces broke! I don't remember this happening to me with Lego in 25+ years of use, so differences are quite obvious...
I guess the judge said, "Lego has enough money". So I wish they would do that with the music industry. Q: Why can't I use any song like Happy Birthday like I can Mozart!
When I was about 12 years old (1993)
made me feel *old*!
You know, it's sad people have to do this. You can easily get a sense from Babelfish or Google, and Dutch and English are not so radically different that you can't piece together some of the rest. I don't speak Dutch at all, but I've learned "het" for "the" and have gotten a bit more adept at recognizing cognate words between the two.
To this day, I have longish fingernails, and I think that's one reason why. I never usually had too much trouble taking Legos apart, but heaven help me if my fingernails were just cut.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Well, the grammer's very different, but there are so many English words (ESPECIALLY in IT) that English-speakers can make sense of it...
Pfft. Look through any sizable collection of legos belonging to someone under, say, age 8.
Give me a nickle for every brick with teeth marks on it.
This is the final judgment of an appeal brough by Lego against the earlier judgment. http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=EN&Submit=Rechercher$docrequire=alldocs&numaff=T-270/06&datefs=&datefe=&nomusuel=&domaine=&mots=&resmax=100
K.
Lego are utterly fantastic at making their bricks. They're mind-bogglingly good, in fact. To work properly, Lego bricks must be made to a tolerance of one micron, otherwise models would fall apart or the bricks be too hard to separate. Those little plastic bricks are as precisely engineered as the most precisely engineered components in the most expensive Swiss watch. They've been making them exactly the right size since the 1960s - the bricks you or you parents had in the 60s will still work perfectly with the bricks they make today.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
So why is it a mixed blessing? If Lego's products are better, they'll win on quality and be worth the price. Or perhaps the general public doesn't value the difference, in which case the public gets what it wants. This is capitalism working well: competition, with competitors competing on quality and price and consumers having options.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
According to one interview I read somewhere, the most expensive Lego parts to manufacture are the mini-figs. I believe they cost something like a little over $1 US to manufacture.
Lego uses very precise molds. It is the key to the Lego bricks' distinctiveness, and why they fit well. Old molds are destroyed by burying them in the concrete foundation of buildings. They also have several different kinds of plastic to create different specialized bricks and pieces. People can replicate the design of the bricks and sell them cheaper, but I don't think they can replicate the manufacturing process and not be forced to raise prices.
I have yet to read TFA (go figure), but I'm guessing this has something to do with Lego trying to maintain IP protection on their brick design by claiming that their trademarked logo is on the stud, and therefore the idea of a stud is trademarked as well.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I remember having a huge bucket of Tyco bricks when I was a kid, about 20 years ago. Good quality plastic and fit, but I don't know if they would have fit with actual Lego blocks though. Other than possibly the size they were identical. It only had generic blocks, base plates, and slanted-top ones for roofs. In hindsight that was probably more fun than Lego's specialized space, boat, etc pieces since I had to get more creative to make things look like what I wanted. I made power armor for my GI Joe figures. That's the creation I'll never forget.
I'll be having children in a few years, and I'm not thrilled about bringing them into a world that is without Construx.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
Option 3 is also a possibility, but what can you sell more of by selling cheap construction bricks?
Condoms? *walks away, lost in a dream world*
They were brand less, but interchangeable with Lego's.
The problem was the tolerances where not as good and so they didn't lock together as well.
Lego has one large advantage which is quality precision plastic molding. I don't think many low end toy companies will be able to make blocks of the same quality that are dramatically cheaper.
Still I do hope the costs will come down.
Some of these sets are getting ridiculously expensive for such a small amount of blocks.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Uh, I did not know that the Dutch red light district had any competition from the Danish red light district. Unless you mean to have sex with Lego figures, that is.
They're already in one. Lego has been able to keep Mega Blocks from selling in Europe until now via this bogus trademark law, but that was the last holdout. Most countries have already ruled against Lego on this issue.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
*whoooosh*
It's a mixed blessing because of exactly what you point out...
I think people will go for low prices, and before they realize it was a mistake, Lego will already be out of business. You'll say the customers have chosen (they have), but even most of them will realize they chose wrongly only after it was too late.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You like Danish cheese? I love Cheese Danish.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The Lego plastic is actually superior, and the quality of the molds must be better, too.
They were pretty famous for being obsessive about mold quality and tolerances
slashdot article about manufacture:
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/21/1716239
They've only been making them excatly right since 1980.
For generic building activities (of which I have not done any) I would buy mega blocks if they were significantly cheaper. But for specific building sets, I don't buy anything but Lego. "Lego" is not replaceable in my opinion.
It might be fun to duplicate various lego sets with mega blocks pieces if they are cheap enough though. After all, the Lego Death Star, AT-AT walkers and Star Destroyers are so expensive!
I guess my "moral/emotional" loyalty to Lego ends at about $50... after that I would look to the competition.
What about their muffins?!
For lack of a better signature...
Lego blocks are quality and most people taking advantage of this will probably make cheap blocks which will in turn bring down Lego's quality to compete.
This is only one Lego. Anything else is junk.
[i]According to one interview I read somewhere, the most expensive Lego parts to manufacture are the mini-figs. I believe they cost something like a little over $1 US to manufacture.[/i]
I believe it, but it's still mind boggling that, after all this time, despite how precise their molds are, that it costs so much for a molded piece of plastic.
Even if the plastic is super high quality, you're only getting a couple of grams of it.
How long does it take for a high quality mold to require replacement when it's just molding plastic? I don't know.
Still, it seems to me that technological advances should make it cheaper for them to be able to produce those parts... ultimately it's still just molded plastic.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I have been to one and can attest that the lights are actually green.
...well, you are forgetting about ...so Danish economy is not likely to collapse from these news.
Carlsberg, the 5th largest brewery group in the world.
Maersk, largest container ship operator. 131 on Fortune 500.
Vestas, largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world.
Grundfos, the world's largest pump manufacturer.
Danfoss, components and solutions for Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Heating & Water.
Just visited a LEGO store at a mall in San Jose. They have a wall of Lego piece dispensers all individually filled with unique common Lego pieces. You can grab a cup for 7 bucks, or a bigger one for 14 bucks, and fill it up with as much pieces as you can fit. Definitely beats bricklink. check it out!
So why is it a mixed blessing? If Lego's products are better, they'll win on quality and be worth the price. Or perhaps the general public doesn't value the difference, in which case the public gets what it wants. This is capitalism working well: competition, with competitors competing on quality and price and consumers having options.
Quality doesn't win in this market. You can win on marketing, but not on quality. This ruling means there will soon be lead-tainted Lego-compatible pieces made in a certain Asian country and sold mostly through Walmart. Yeah, they'll break, discolor, and not fit together all that well, but they'll be significantly cheaper than genuine Legos, because Lego can't get away with paying its employees $2500 a year. And these new parts will soon outsell Lego. Now Lego does have a good marketing position, given their great brand recognition, and they'll make a lot more money per part. This will slowly erode, however, until Lego branded parts are a either niche market for elitist liberals who buy their groceries at farmers markets, or it will go away entirely.
Just so you know.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
As many have noted already, Lego bricks are more expensive and have a tendency to be higher quality. As an adult collector, I could care less about Megablocks as cheap imitations of a good product that easily break. Lego sets, on the other hand, have a huge resale value, often garnering the collector more than the original Lego price (especially for sets in the Space / Castle genres). Parents who buy megablocks for their kids today because they are "cheaper" will never gain back any of their lost money, but the parent who ensures that only a few pieces in a lego set are lost is likely to regain most if not all of their investment--if they watch their kids carefully and keep the box hidden away somewhere for ten or possibly even five years, they'll recoup their investment on most models completely.
Don't forget their pastries! I love me a good danish!
I think I'll just get one of these:
http://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
and set up in my garage.
Maybe I'll change my name to "The Hof" while I'm at it.
I have one of those stores here (in GA), and it's actually very conveniently located for me...
I go there all the time, but there's only a few dozen types of pieces at a time, and those ROUND cups they have make it difficult to effectively use the space in them.
But I have bought pieces there plenty of times... but it surely doesn't beat bricklink when I want black or white or even gray 2x4 bricks and all they have is pink or purple 2x2 and 2x3, some fence pieces I don't want... the small car plates (but no wheels)...
But they rotate inventory in and so I do go there occasionally.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
He as a guy who values quality over price(or quantity if you want) sees this as a mixed blessing since people would probably care more for quantity. That would make Lego lower their prices which might lead to a diminish in the quality of the work.
Usually when something is produced by many companies in big numbers marketing starts to take over and quality is most of the times compromised for flashiness or ease of use and other idiot friendly things.
An example that comes to mind is digital cameras. Most cameras these days have more megapixels than they can handle and most parameters are automatic which in IMHO is retarded. It's really hard to find a camera that lets you set the focus and exposure as you like. Instead they have features like print directly from the camera, post on hi5 or something like that... That happening to Lego would make it a joke and destroy one of the only toys that actually educates children instead of dumbing them down (or brainwashing if you want to be more extreme).
PS: Before you start flaming me about the camera example, I am OK with having an automatic focus/exposure/etc. But not including a slider that lets you select 1/100 seems stupid since it's a simple UI element and if you can program an automatic system for the focus you should be able to make it manual. Also, when I said "more megapixels than they can handle" I was talking about the noise that appears because the CCD is just too small for the resolution they are cramming on it. There is a proven limit on the resolution that depends on the lens size and CCD size and as far as I can tell most cameras exceed the limit.
ics
At least they have multiple Legos, so no matter if one goes down, there are always others.
I totally agree. We recently "polluted" my son's Lego collection with MegaBlocks, and after several tearful episodes ("They won't stick together!" "They don't fit!") have decided to root this evil from our house. They're a scourge.
They give all their employees excellent pay *and* drugs? I can't see how that would be socially responsible, but my resume is in the mail.
If Lego's products are better, they'll win on quality and be worth the price. Or perhaps the general public doesn't value the difference, in which case the public gets what it wants. This is capitalism working well: competition, with competitors competing on quality and price and consumers having options.
No.
First of all, you did not consider the fact that the general public is often unaware of the quality difference; what the general public sees is (1) the price, (2) the ads saying that (in this case) "our bricks are just like Lego, just cheaper"; any serious thoughts about quality usually come several years later (and it's usually way too late for the original company which is floating belly up by that time). In general, it's naive to think that competitors really compete on the quality plane.
Lego is a perfect example of this; actually, given the current price of these toys, it's a low hanging fruit every toy producer in the world is or has been thinking of.
And, don't get me wrong: I think Lego (the company behind it) deserves a good ass-kicking, if not for the exorbitant prices (that I doubt is only high enough to make up for the high quality), then at least for the dumb marketing practices (who the fsck needs Star Wars sets with only a handful of bricks, most of them custom at that? where are the generic bricks?).
I am just pointing out that it has nothing to do with "beneficial" effects of capitalism.
And, Lego is unlikely to survive it, at least as we know it today.
Being most of their uses by kids to make small cars and towers Megablocks probably do the job good enough. However even for the Lego artist they can save some money by using the Megablocks as filler and the Legos as the outer casing and main structure support. Also Giving kids incompatible blocks can make them Brand Snobs learning X does work with Y means their X is better then the others Y. Yes kids to think like that.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Once a week my son goes and plays at my parents house for a few hours. The Brio trains from when I was a kid still work great, but the cheap knock off add on parts my parents bought to have more for him are crap... they had to find an affordable retailer online to get more stuff. As he's moving past the real little kid blocks and into Duplo, the fact that everything from my childhood held up is remarkable.
However, just about everything that we buy on the market at this point, is cheap and crappy. It's gotten to the point that we just buy whatever is cheapest at Walmart, because trying to get the higher end stuff isn't higher end, just more expensive. Why pay twice as much for the same falling apart plastic junk from the same factories in China? After churning through $100+ car seats, we not just get the $40 ones at Walmart, and when they go, we replace them. I have two kids, 18 months apart, and just about none of the stuff gets handed down because EVERYTHING on the market is poorly made.
It's easy to blame consumers, but a lot is a function of smaller family sizes. The generation born in the 70s was born when average family sizes were over 2.5 kids, so 2-3 was normal, and plenty of families of 4-5 existed. Family sizes for middle class families (the ones that buy this stuff) are probably under 1.5 right now... If most of your customers won't have a second kid, why would they pay more for quality, it's not getting passed down.
America just isn't child friendly anymore... and we have fewer kids in each family... can't put 3 kids in a normal sized sedan, need either a giant sedan, SUV, or minivan with a third kid, and kids under 13 aren't supposed to ride up front... WTF? The sedan was the quintessential family car... now a mom running small carpool with 4 kids in her car needs a minivan because you can't put one up front and 3 in the back, something that was routine for us growing up as kids.
Alex
Buying ripoff Lego is like making your own play-do. It's just not the same.
Well, the real problem here is that, as Walmart has proved, people are willing to sacrifice quality and the legacy of a good product from good people in favor of cheap plastic crap made overseas in bad conditions, with materials that will possibly harm them, in a factory that pollutes like crazy, in order to save themselves a couple of dollars. So, consumers will go into Walmart or other big-box stores, see Lego at X price, and see "Fully compatible with Lego!!!!" at 65% of X price, and go, "I can save money!" even if their purchase pollutes, is made in sweatshop conditions, and will wear out with use.
In a couple of ways I'm lucky. First, I don't have time to play with Legos anymore even though I still have a couple of rubbermaid tubs full of 'em (and with most of my vehicles still assembled from 20 years ago), and second, we're probably going to be able to afford to buy the real thing, rather than the knockoff, when we do finally have kids, as we'll compromise where it doesn't matter and hold to our principles where it does. The very few legos that I broke as a kid were pretty much all intentional; even leaving them out in the weather, in the mud, or the sand box, or on hot concrete or asphalt didn't really cause problems.
Lego needs to start selling bulk pieces cheaply. By all means, continue to sell kits and directions and special things for a premium, but I think that it's an easy decision to buy a bunch of Lego when expansion sets are reasonable.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Source? Sorry, no one in their right mind will believe this without more data than some random /.'er claiming it. I mean, sure, there's a tolerance, and according to LEGO company (Warning: PDF, see page 18) it's "as small as 2um" (twice a loose tolerance as your claim.) To me, the "as small as" bit means "no smaller than, and often larger than" so please share why you think it's always twice as accurate as LEGO claims it sometimes is.
everything in moderation
they make good quality legos too. I was waxing nostalgic last year and bought a generic bin of legos at kmart or something, it wasn't lego brand but looked identical, and they held together like crap.
I remember taking my 2x8 blocks and seeing how far I could get them to extend horizontally while stacked, and could get over 50 sometimes. The crappy new ones were lucky to see 10.
I also made things that required proper tolerance. I made a working lego lock. Tried to make one with the new blocks but they kept catching on each other. crap I say. Pay the money and get the real Lego.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The problem is when you buy a set of Legos most of the premium you pay isn't going for superior build quality, it's going for licensing because you're getting "Harry Potter" or "Star Wars" wrapped up in the deal, but don't worry they're nice enough to spread the cost to all their lines.
You also have to deal with the politics of Lego. No modern weapons, no Nazis for Indiana Jones to foil. I love my Legos, and the build quality is superior, but there are plenty of other reasons to shop Megablocks.
"That would make Lego lower their prices which might lead to a diminish in the quality of the work."
It may but it doesn't have to. After all, the basic blocks haven't changed for probably 50 years. It can't cost much to make plastic blocks from standard dies.
The new stuff, sure. And if Walmart carries legos, they will squeeze them anyway, competition or no.
Achtung! Alles turisten und nonteknischen lookenpeepers! das legodeschien ist nicht fur der gefingerpoken und mittengraben! oderwise ist easy to schnappen der springenwerk, meldenpoolen und poppencorken mit spitzensparksen. ist nicht fur gewerken bei dummkopfen. der rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottonpicken hander in das pockets muss. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER APPEALS COURT RULING
I had three construction related toys when I was just a little bit younger: Legos, K'nex, and 1 set of Mega Blox.
The K'nex were unrivaled in their ability to bruise the tips of my fingers with frustrating 'square peg in round hole' construction, but at the same time the motorization made it extremely fun.
The Legos always snapped together, and even though most of my legos came from sets, I was able to piece together just about anything from it (for the longest amount of time, I had a black Arwing).
The one Mega Blox set I had, was pretty fun. The parts took a bit longer to snap in, but it worked fine. Until, however, I tried to use the parts with Legos. They were slightly bigger and clunkier, and they didn't snap in as well. In fact, I had a few pieces break, and the figurines had a higher probability of their limbs just popping off.
It's kind of like trying to play Doom on Windows XP; if you don't have jDoom, it works, but it's a little like pulling teeth at points.
The color doesn't matter. I could go blind and I could still accurately sort Lego vs Mega/Tyco/Etc blocks. The plastic feels very different to the touch. The clones (even recent models I've gotten in bulk lot buys) just aren't quite as quality as real Lego bricks.
Lego themselves have had some quality issues as they've moved their brick production into other cheaper countries (one in I think what was Chech Republic and one in Mexico? I'd have to go look it up in the book I saw it in...). I suspect it is more of a QA issue; that they have the same problems in Denmark but are much better at catching and removing them before they get to consumers. Or maybe the Danes are just more skilled at machine maintenance.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
What about those cookies that come in a tin that my Grandmother used to give me at Christmas?
You know, I love capitalism and letting the market do it's thing, but in those few cases where you have a great company that does all the right things and takes the profits from their admittedly expensive product and invests it in neat tech like Mindstorms, or my beloved Ferrari F1 cars, this makes me sad. All this will really do is take the R&D money out of Lego's pockets and send it to the lowest bidder. I, and I hope many others, will stick with the Lego brand if for no other reason than the superior products and devotion to expanding minds instead of pockets.
I have seen their manufacturing plants on TV (can't remember if it was How Do They Do It? or one of the other shows like it) and the tolerances, rate of part rejection, etc. are just astounding. Also, the white rooms where the creative minds sit and play with Lego pieces all day, dreaming up new toys... it is simply wonderful.
Quality before quantity, please.
Mike O, KT2T
If you want some Nazis or guns to go with your Legos here you go. From what I've seen very quality build work too. Enjoy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They have one of those stores around here also. While the back wall has a lot of unique pieces, they always seem to be a little lacking on the more common ones. When one box is filled with door frames, other with doors, and yet another with little plastic flowers, there just isn't much room for square bricks.
I agree completely. LEGOs are one of the best toys out there IMO. Without them, I may not have ended up being an engineer. They used to be the obvious gift for me for Christmas and my family would always end up getting me two or three sets. Even now that I'm 21, I still love these little bricks. Now I just tend to look for the more detailed sets like the Ultimate Collectors sets. I will be really sad if LEGO is driven out of business b/c of this decision.
Alas, now pointing out an error of 2x magnitude is now being a cunt, is it? Sounds like my post was the straw that broke the exaggerator's back. If you're so tired of being corrected, perhaps you should be more careful with your claims?
You may also find yourself further insulated from the corrections that you find so painful by resisting the fallacy of the excluded middle. That is, there is a happy land of accuracy between "it's got 1um tolerance" and "it's totally shitty and unimpressive." In this case, this happy middle-land is known as "as low as 2um tolerance."
Or you can carry on with the hurling of invectives and names and whining like a baby when corrected. It's up to you, champ!
everything in moderation
Um, nickle?
:p
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So, without even going to Harry's Hofbrau, the Canadian company did a EU-DOJ (sort of Hail Mary) on the Lego Company, and pulled an Apple "Brick Job" on the Legos. So, effectively, any former Lego protections have been BRICKED.
Now, Legos can be embraced and extended, and extended and embraced.
But, a burning question? How many Lego bricks equal an approximate veritable "ton of bricks"?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Though one could argue that in this case, you can make informed shopping of quality bricks. So I guess, this is not directly what the linked article relates to, but more like expensive big iron main frame computers, which most people don't actually need, so most people don't actually pay for it.
I'm just a Puritan American and have no clue what "red light" means.
There are a lot a drivers around here like that.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
There are certain peices which are difficult to separate - such as the half-connector in anything, or the half connector/half cross-section-axle peice inside a T-peice. However, in my day there was a page in the instructions which detailed a set of tricks to separating these.
Admittedly, I ignored them and used my teeth for everything. This left all of my Lego with characteristic teeth marks.
Full of lead.
No thanks, ill stick with the real Lego brand.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They'll be reduced to Bionicles and "Lego" branded video games.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Crappy Lego knockoffs have been available for a long time, thats not what the original article is about. As a parent I have to say that giving your kid any of the cheap crappy Chinese dull colored poorly made knockoffs that all apart is sort of like giving your kid a crappy Chinese MP3 knockoff instead if an iPod. I got 3 happy kids with 3 iPods and about 4 cubic meters of REAL LEGOS :)
PS. If someone claims comparable quality between Legos and crap like Megablocks, they never played with them both.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
seems there have been a lot of LEGO stories lately. It's a wonderful toy product (won the poll with good reason)
A refreshing change from (Useful) Stupid $TECH_PRODUCT Tricks. :P
P.S. Thanks for the Bricklink mentions
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That Canadian firms blocks can be toasted or baked, so you know they have no scruples.
Yeah, that pretty much describes MegaBlocks, all right. And after a couple bad experiences even my kid knows to avoid them now. I don't think LEGO has a lot to fear.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
For your modern weapon LEGO needs, I would check out this site: http://www.brickarms.com/Toys/Weapons.aspx
They claim it's made from the same plastic as real LEGOs, but I haven't used them. Anyways they seem pretty cool.
They also happen to make Nazi figurines for your enjoyment: http://www.brickarms.com/Toys/Minifigs.aspx
According to one interview I read somewhere, the most expensive Lego parts to manufacture are the mini-figs. I believe they cost something like a little over $1 US to manufacture.
I seriously doubt that. They'd be selling them at a loss otherwise.
http://shop.lego.com/
Megablocks are great in the larger (duplo, quantro style) sizes. The smaller lego size is where they suck. The tolerances don't need to be as good on the larger sizes, and megablocks are a lot easier to find in stores than duplo and quantro blocks.
Lego needs to start selling bulk pieces cheaply.
While that would make sense to you or me, Lego is not in the business of selling anything cheaply. Selling official lego cheaper, would just make them lose money.
As with anything else, there are two types of people, those who are willing to buy generics and those who aren't.
One in a suburb near chicago as well. Sadly my neices and nephews seem to have usurped our lego collection or I'd have gotten many more buckets (seeing as I'm an adult now and can choose not to wait til christmas or birthdays for legos). Although I'm starting to wonder if it was them or my brother (their father) who is really pilfering them to play with...
The problem is also that, since Lego has been the only game in town for many years, the average Joe will think that everything that fits Lego blocks *is* made by Lego even if it really is a cheap knockoff. That will dilute the Lego brand itself, which is probably one of the things Lego wanted to avoid by taking these guys to court.
I had a friend working for 3M at the customer support lab for vinyl films. When some vinyl film didn't turn out right, this guy was in charge of inspecting samples sent by the customer and finding out what the problem was. He told me that most of the stuff customers complained about was vinyl film all right... but not 3M's vinyl film.
If this happens with something you buy yourself (vinyl fim) and use professionally, guess what will happen with things (toy bricks) kids usually don't buy themselves but get as a present.
Oh man!
Years on slashdot and finally something to show for it!
Ever used MegaBlox? More like MegaSux.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I've got bins full of Lego, if it doesn't have 'Lego' written on each of the nodules, I throw it in the bin, I don't want my collection tainted by the unclean!!!
fight! fight! fight! fight! fight!
More than 40 years ago, I played with Montini, which was a British version of these blocks, made of nylon - a much superior product to Lego's polystyrene blocks. They went bust, since they could not compete with Lego's cheap blocks.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
True, they have quite a few elements there and in quite a few colors. However, they nowhere near all the common elements listed, and there are no bulk purchases. Sure, you can by a 1x1 yellow plate for about 10 cents. That is a pretty good deal if you need a single plate. But if you need 500 or 1000 such plates it is still about 10 cents a plates. That is not such a good deal. Sadly, they used to have some bulk packs with reasonable per-element prices. Those have all gone away.
LEGO does not understand how to market to Americans.
It's definitely a race to the bottom, because most parents have no clue what they buy their kids. The #1 goal of buying something is to shut the kid up. The #2 goal is to surprise the kid with a gift. And a $10 CrapKit will do either just as well as a $50 quality one. Toys are considered disposable. And the kid has no clue about concepts like quality and functionality - as long as it looks the part. (Brand recognition is a factor.) The kid will play with the CrapKit, find it difficult to proceed beyond the basics, and will likely grow tired of it because of its limitations. The parent will observe that the hotly desired toy stops being played with after a few days or weeks and pats themselves on the back for being cheap and wonders why anyone would buy the expensive version. They leave this to the people with more money than sense. It's a self-reinforcing spiral, simply because the average person is average intelligence, which means if you even bring up the subject of developing intelligence they'll look at you like you're from a different planet. It's just not something that they ever spend a single brain cycle on. Hey, they came out alright... right?
I always played with Legos when I was a kid. Well, to my parents it was playing, to me it was construction projects. As I got older they became ever better planned and thought out, and I'd carefully plan around the parts available. My parents never saw that part. They viewed Lego, I'm sure, as the equivalent of a crayon and a sheet of paper.
By the time I was 10 or so I built things like flexible suspension bridges (suspended with string) that could carry my HO size train set across 3 feet or more, to replicas of buildings I read about. Lego is a fantastic tool for early development of an innate sense of force distribution; in particular how to design for forces to distribute into compression with little pulling (depending on axis) and close to zero twisting. It encourages focusing on difficult problems somewhat beyond the current skill, then learning through failure and developing an innate sense for how to further improve something that a bystander might already be impressed by or think is beyond good enough.
My take on it is that every parent should buy their kid real, quality Lego. Mostly generic blocks. At least give it a try. Because if the kid takes to it - boy are you getting something of real value for dirt cheap!
You must have used the wrong recipe. We made our own Play-doh, it was far superior to the real stuff. It felt better, worked better, looked better, and cost 10c to make ten pounds.
There is not European Department of Justice. The correct translation is European Court of Justice.
However, that's the correct translation but still wrong. The judgement was not made by the Court of Justice but by the Court of First Instance. Lego can still appeal to the Court of Justice.
Claus
I think you're splitting hairs. If the tolerance is measured in microns, then the OP was close enough. We're talking about orders of magnitude here. And if the OP said one micron, and you think its two microns... seriously, that's close enough.
> After all, the basic blocks haven't changed for probably 50 years. It can't cost much to make plastic blocks from standard dies.
This is not true. Lego bricks changed for the better until the 80's, then stayed at constant quality. 3 or 4 years ago, Lego opened new factories (moved to cheaper countries), and bricks quality went down (most visible thing is color differences between bricks, but the feel of the plastic, the quality, and the tolerance went down too). New bricks don't fit as firmly as old ones.
I stopped buy Lego due to that, so I can't comment if they fixed that or not. It lasted at least a couple of years, until I gave up buying sets for my children.
Does this mean we will see some mass produced cheap a$$ lead impregnated plastic crap coming from chiner?
Carlsberg?
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
I remember going through the Great MegaBlocks Purge as a child. My brother and I had each received a fairly neat looking set for the holidays, but were quickly disappointed with not only the quality of the plastic, but the inability of the block to properly fit with Legos, let alone themselves. Our parents contacted MegaBlocks with these concerns and they made it up to us by sending us a ton more of their product. Well, eventually my brother and I decided to go through our tubs and tubs of blocks and sort out all of the MegaBlocks so as to be cast aside. There was much rejoicing in Lego Land.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Probably too late for a proper reply. An old roommate of mine used to occasionally make dies. Like anything in manufacturing, pick two of three: accurate, hard-wearing, cheap. For high-speed production you need to make especially costly dies; even a cheap die for something the size of one Lego brick would set you back several hundred dollars, and you couldn't expect to use a very dense/high-quality plastic with it (due to injection pressures), nor expect it to last much beyond a few dozen or scores of casts for any sort of reasonable accuracy. I suppose for very high tolerances, sharp narrow edges (which Lego have), high speed, and hard plastics you would be paying many thousands (or more?) for the die; the costs grow enormously if you want a die for large pieces, i.e., more than a few square cm. And you would have to replace the die fairly often. The cost of the plastic is trivial compared to the capital cost of the die.
As for technological advances... well, there's only so much you can do to make tooling steel better; basically, it is a materials-science question, and the advances there are not quick. For instance, except for CAD/CAM there have not been significant advances in tooling that would help in the manufacture of the die, that I know of, for probably the last 50 years.
Oh, we're well below the diameter of human hair, which is ~20um even for the finest flaxen hair :)
Maybe it's because I do nanometer-scale semiconductor design, but claiming something is 1um when it's really "as low as 2um" is significant to me. (Especially when the "as low as 2um" is as specified by the LEGO company itself, in a list of trivia designed to show how awesome LEGO are.)
everything in moderation
And we were the first country in the world to legalize porn - I'm sure that's quite an achievement in the eyes of the /. crowd.
mega blocks have been selling thier products (which are IMO probablly the best of the clones but still inferior to real lego) for many years accross the world.
While i'm sure lego would love to kill mega blocks thier failure to do so does not seem to have killed them so far and I somewhat doubt it will going forward.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The problem is also that, since Lego has been the only game in town for many years, the average Joe will think that everything that fits Lego blocks *is* made by Lego even if it really is a cheap knockoff. That will dilute the Lego brand itself, which is probably one of the things Lego wanted to avoid by taking these guys to court.
Too bad, so sad. I don't know European trademark law, but in the US, the Lego trademark is not the actual bits of the brick that make it compatible with the other bricks. That's functional anyway, so trademarks would never protect it. You'd want patents instead, and they are no longer available in this case. Using the functional parts of the brick in a dilutive way is perfectly okay. Now, when they use the word LEGO in some fashion, since that's actually a trademark, then we can begin to discuss dilution. Although saying "LEGO-compatible" is a nominative use, so that's also okay, if it's true.
Incidentally, what you were describing is actually customer confusion, which goes to trademark infringement; dilution is when there is no confusion, which is why it's kind of bullshit.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I agree that he should cite a source, but you say that as though manufacturing plastic bricks within tolerances the size of a single bacterium is so much less accurate than doing so within tolerances of half a bacterium. Either way it's amazing (at least to me, with no knowledge of plastic molding, let alone the different methods).
No existe.
The rest of the world speaks in orders of magnitude. I'm glad you've got your language, but when speaking with the rest of us, it helps if you understand ours.
That explains so much about Boston....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
A brand of bricks we had in NZ in the 1970s-80s, before import restrictions were relaxed and when Lego was insanely expensive.
They weren't plug-compatible. The standard brick had 8 studs on top and 8 matching tubes underneath. The plastic was softer and often a stud would warp and get stuck in a tube.
But they sure were fun.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I've seen Mega Bloks for sale alongside Legos for years. However, Mega Bloks suck. They wear out faster and don't fit together as well because they use a lower-grade plastic. I got Tyco blocks for Christmas back in 1984, and they didn't kill Lego either. If Lego dies, it won't be because of shoddy imitations from Mega Brands.
but it's still mind boggling that, after all this time, despite how precise their molds are, that it costs so much for a molded piece of plastic.
You mean ten or more pieces of molded plastic? Lego minifigs have a fair number of moving parts, not to mention the faces and other designs painted on. I'm impressed that it's as cheap as $1.
...as a young lad in the 50s I disliked cheap $#!t. A rainy Saturday with a large Erector set, building 3 foot Howe trusses, then sitting in the center. Yowza!
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
This ruling means there will soon be lead-tainted Lego-compatible pieces made in a certain Asian country and sold mostly through Walmart. Yeah, they'll break, discolor, and not fit together all that well, but they'll be significantly cheaper than genuine Legos, because Lego can't get away with paying its employees $2500 a year. And these new parts will soon outsell Lego.
I can't say I disagree with this assessment I'm afraid. The biggest problem Lego will face is that the people buying most of the cheap knock-offs won't be the ones who will be building with them, unfortunately. I recall buying some of those Mega brisks for my daughters, and realized after helping them put together one model that they were useless junk. Never bought any more of them because they simply do not hold up like real Lego when building things. The only reason I know how bad they were is because I was down there building with them myself and saw how bad it was.
I'd imagine that most parents wouldn't get the hands-on experience to know the difference.
This is an ex-parrot!
I wonder why lack of continued trademark-ability was used to say the design is now open. Did Lego not patent the design? Maybe they did, so long ago that it fell back out again?
Get off my launchpad!
And, ndobody else said it the way i did. pathetic bunch...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
...Nazis you shall have!
Check out these "specialised" sets:
Creator holding the main set
All available sets
Main compound
Four prisoners behind the wire
Scientific experiments
Beatdown!
Enjoy!
Political language
While I agree with you about the silly megapixel race, I think there are plenty of decent cameras out there with manual control, including compact cameras.
WTF! Capitalism does not imply competition! Capitalism without competition is not an inconceivable idea. And monopoly is any capitalist's wet dream.
There are no red light district in Denmark though. While prostitution is legal, pimping is not, and this prohibits most types of brothels.
Heh, when I was 15-16 working on something with Legos, I'd use my teeth to separate blocks I couldn't pry apart with my hands. Welcome to Legos =)
I was going to mod this funny... but I rather share the joke with others...
Go ahead and read parent post with the voice of Comic Book Guy.
Fantastic!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
More importantly, Wal-Mart already carries compatible blocks. This is a non-issue in the US market - The toys already exist.
Tuborg/Carlsberg (beer), Novo (insuline), Maersk (shipping), Rockwool (insulation), Novozymes (enzymes for your washing powder), Vestas (windmills), Velux (windows), GN Resound (hearing aid), Coloplast (compeed plasters),...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Could have sworn the coin was spelled differently than the element.
Ah well. In the grand scheme of the internet, a single typo isn't even a statistical anomaly...
I always knew lego was 1337
1337 billion is uber-1337!
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
What the hell is this? Just because Lego doesn't have a patent for it, does it mean that everyone can now make their own Loge just because of that? Seriously, this is ridiculous...
Slashdot user since
It is not socially responsible to trademark functional aspects of a product, as it is not socialy responsible to trademark-troll companies out of the market.
Does it matter how a company spend its money when it was illegaly gained to start with?
Rethinking email
That wouldn't really surprise me (unfortunately that link doesn't name a price... I tried to find one that does and I couldn't, probably because it depends on so many factors).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Greedy fuckers. Enough said.
Best. Non-moderation. Ever.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
By the cup? At the Baltimore Science Center, there is currently a K'nex exhibit along with tables where you can build your own models. If you want to take it home, you pay by the pound. Makes much more sense than selling by volume.
Yup... while I still have some megablocks, there is strict block apartheid in my house.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
What does this legal judgement mean, as far as how things will be different? There've already been copycat brands like Mega Bloks, Best-Lock, and perhaps any number of others I'm forgetting or never heard of, and they've been around for years, even decades. Is this legal decision just putting a capper on the previous litigation? IANAL, naturally...
It's been quoted as anything from one to five microns for moulds, depending on the source. Generally speaking, newer sources quote around the one micron figure, so I think they update the press materials as they improve the manufacturing process. It's not clear how this translates into the tolerances for bricks. They could buy molds with a tolerance of +/-2 microns and produce bricks with a tolerance of +/-1 micron. It's probably cheaper to manufacture inaccurate moulds and recycle 5% of your bricks, after all. Still, he had the right order of magnitude.
As for that source you quote, I wouldn't trust something which supposes a tolerance can be quoted as "no better than" a certain value, which is surely the exact opposite of a manufacturing tolerance. I suspect a marketing copyeditor got their hands in there.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Alas, I have yet to be able to visit a LEGO Store anywhere (though I hope to soon!), but as I understand it, the US stores have the cups, but European LEGO Stores have bags, and one pays by weight.
Duplo sets are still easy to find, though, in my experience. That line's been around a lot longer than Quatro, too, and doesn't seem to be slowing down. I think Duplo will be around a long time to come.
Well, duh. You don't lack a sense of humor, right? :)
I am not devoid of humor.
You don't speak for the rest of the world, nitwit. You may not have noticed that your previously 100-lb. wife had gained weight until she was 1000lbs., or until her diameter or waist size was 10x previously, but the "rest of the world" would surely pick up on the change even before 2x.
I suggest you see someone about your inability to resolve differences of less than 10x. Or just shut up and stop embarrassing yourself.
I must admit I've always been confused as to why "order of magnitude" assumes we're speaking in terms of log(10).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
is not just that we - as a society - have become more greedy, more obsessed with consumption? When I had a lego kit, it was my main - indeed sometimes only (in the case of the fabulous Technic Car Chassis) Christmas/birthday present, and I prized it. In our rush to own more, it seems we don't cherish anything.