The official bricks have a better feel than any of the off-brand versions I’ve encountered, though. Every other brand is usually too tight, or sometimes too loose. Lego spent a lot of time perfecting the clasping power, and it shows.
Good news: their patent expired, and offbrand lego now fits on Lego, at a third of the price.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 month ago
hikaru755@lemmy.world 1 month ago
When have you last tried? The competition has changed immensely during the last couple of years, and there are brands now that have it dialed in just as well as Lego. I highly recommend checking out Lumibricks or Pantasy, those are best in class at the moment, and actually better than Lego in many ways, imo. Or maybe Cada, if you’re more into the Technic side of things
bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 month ago
OK, I haven’t tried those. I am currently building the Pikachu from Mega Bloks with my young children, and they are having a noticeably harder time putting the pieces together than with similar complexity Lego sets. That being said, I love the design of the set, and the assembly instructions are arguably at least as good as Lego.
hikaru755@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t have any experience with Mega/Mattel stuff so far, so can’t really compare those. From what I hear, the quality of pieces is okay, but not on the same level as Lego and gobricks (the manufacturer that provides the bricks for both Lumibricks and Pantasy, among others).
If you actually want to give them a shot, just make sure you get relatively recent-ish sets (released within the last 2 years or so), as especially Lumibricks has very rapidly been refining the quality of their set designs, instructions etc, and gobricks pieces from before that time also tend to have quite strong clutch power which they’ve softened up by now. It’s really cool to see how quickly things are improving at the high end currently
tkohldesac@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Care to share some of these offbrand 1/3 the price lego brands?
Agosagror@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
We should push to add lego piracy to the piracy megathread.
Cheap deals and 3d print models
hikaru755@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My recommendation is Lumibricks or Pantasy. They’re not quite 1/3 of the price of Lego, more around 1/2 on average I think, but both offer the best brick quality that you’re going to get from any company at the moment (they use the same supplier, gobricks). They’re also both offering exclusively original designs, so no copied sets or anything like that, and doing a lot of stuff setting them apart from Lego. Lumibricks has light kits integrated seamlessly into every set and goes hard on printed pieces, no stickers anywhere. Pantasy likes using lots of metallic painted pieces, bigger custom molded pieces, and has a few interesting IPs.
If you’re into Technic, there’s also CaDa, and if you want very accurate display models you could look into Cobi. The later is a polish company that designs and produces entirely in Europe, in contrast to any other brand out there, but that also comes with a price tag that’s pretty similar to Lego at this point.
gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
for technic there’s CaDa
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Anything “Lego” sold on aliexpress.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 1 month ago
Dunno bout cheap ones but BlueBrixx is good quality
hikaru755@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Bluebrixx is definitely around that 1/3 of lego prices. They are hit or miss though when it comes to quality as they use different brick suppliers for different sets, and it’s not always easy to know what you’re getting beforehand.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What about the other colors, though?
Zwiebel@feddit.org 1 month ago
Well use your imagination
CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Bad news, their patent expired and they in turn, trademarked the bricks. They sue everyone under trademark now, instead of patent infringement.
FenrirIII@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I bought a bunch of minifigs off Amazon sold as “cake toppers” to escape notice.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Do those companies have DEI policies, or are we just indirectly dinging Lego for having had one in the first place?
golli@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Lego as a brand does imo substantially benefit from positive associations such as heritage, sentimentality, and other positive attributes. Otherwise how would they be able to demand such premium prices.
So I would see it less as them being “dinged” for this action, but them losing some of those privileges.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have a hard time reading this thread as anything other than suggestions for boycotting Lego based on them having removed their DEI policy, while suggesting alternatives which never had one.
And they still deserve credit for having invented the concept and designed the bulk of the bricks. I don’t see how that changes at all based on whether they have a DEI policy. They obviously should lose any benefit from having a better DEI policy, since they no longer have one, but that doesn’t change anything else.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s like this: if someone says ‘I won’t ever stab you’ and then later rescinds that statement, are you going to trust them more or less than someone who didn’t announce their stance on potentially stabbing you?
Yeah, I’d go with the other party, too.
golli@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
As always with debates on the internet nuances get lost and things get painted more black and white.
No idea if the other comment that they stole it is true, but looking at the wealth of the owner family I’d say they got more than enough credit. They are set for many generations to come. At some point ideas have to become common good for others to also build upon.
couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
*stole the original concept
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I get mine from weird Chinese sites, soooo…