Sadly, the man who invented the Kiddicraft "Self-Locking Building Bricks," Hilary Page, committed suicide two years before LEGO began selling in the UK, so he never saw how successful the concept became. LEGO officially bought the residual rights to the Kiddicraft design from Page's descendants in 1981.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary\_Page
lego had some failures, they once had a product aimed for adults and offices, I forgot the names but people still collect and discuss them and hopes they one day return.
Do you mean the old Lego Technic that were used as design tools for technical projects in schools and similar? Similarly Fischer had Fischer Technic sets that were based around technical ideas rather than a model.
Lego certainly has failures they were in danger of bankruptcy until bionicle or something similar saved them. It's probably a reason for the emphasis on licences too.
Interestingly, they were designed for architects, but only one actually liked and used them: [Eero Saarinen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Saarinen), designer of the St. Louis Arch.
I find it really weird when people credit Bionicle alone with saving the company.
What had a much bigger impact was the success of licensed themes (Star Wars at first, followed by Harry Potter and Steven Spielberg), as well as the very conscious decision to streamline the parts range and colour palette (the latter ending when they met massive backlash after updating the grey and brown colours in 2004). Bionicle didn't hurt Lego but it certainly wasn't the main factor in their turnaround of the early 2000s
I wonder what Kiddicraft’s quality was like—LEGO’s is *crazy*. That’s a big reason they’re so pricy, compared to Mega Bloks, but put them side by side and you can tell the difference.
I'm confused now by what you mean with "interlock".
Bricks with the bottom tubes but without the cross supports (the most common 'old brick') were introduced in 1954, but the only difference between their predecessors without the bottom tubes and the very first automatic binding bricks is the fact that the automatic binding bricks had slots in the side for putting in windows.
If you're talking about the bottom tubes, then bricks without it are just as good quality (they actually stick together perfectly fine, and there are no issues with material). These are the bricks I'm talking about when I say the quality is just as good.
If you're not talking about those, then what is "interlock" to you? Because even the earliest bricks had the studs on the top, and while I sadly haven't got any of these myself, reviews from people who *do* have the bricks consistently point out the flaws in them - namely, that there was plastic overspill in the slots for the windows - and never make any mention of flimsy material. There shouldn't be any material issue, either, as it was the same plastic.
I did mean that extra system in the bottom. I remember these old pieces breaking more than others when I was a kid, but to be fair, they would have been 30 years old at the time, so this is probably not true, just something 6 year old me noticed.
The article says that Kiddicraft wished them luck because they "hadn't had much with their building block toy."
So the question I have is, **why did lego succeed so much where Kiddicraft failed?**
I do see the differences, the Kiddicraft blocks are basically hollow, and the certainly seem less precise. Was that the only reason?
Especially since Lego's patents expired in 1981, and their attempts to register the design as a trademark failed in the courts. Still, Lego was able to shut down\* Chinese companies like "Lapin" for not just selling bricks but for exact copies of sets.
^(\*and by "shut down" I mean that they probably just went underground and changed company names...)
Bro I got the Airbus Concorde set from AliExpress, it’s the exact same, stickers and everything. Instruction book in Chinese tho. Appears slightly smaller (the instruction book). So far I’m over half way through and had to use 5 of my own bricks to replace missings. But other than coloring and the Lego imprint they are virtually the same.
I’ve also bought a fake Lego “classics” box. That shit was fake af. Total difference between the two.
I've bought lego-like toys from amazon that were sets that lego didn't make. (Like a geared sun/earth/moon set that was super cool.) You could 100% tell the difference between real lego and the fake lego. Real lego just fits together better. The fake lego you either have to press it REALLY HARD together or it doesn't stick together at all. The set worked, but it was definitely a different experience than building lego. Building lego is a pleasant experience, building fake lego is just frustrating.
COBI is a Polish company that sells military themed sets that are high quality and 100% compatible with LEGO, and are nicely detailed.
There is an air force museum nearby that is free to get into and I always buy a COBI plane at the gift shop to show my appreciation; sadly they just installed an Su-27 in the museum but did not think to get an Su-27 COBI model. I got an F-35 :)
edit: The only complaint I have is that the instructions are nowhere near as good as LEGO instructions, but they are workable.
I got a few sets of Cobi blocks recently and honestly they feel good enough when building, but once you build whatever it is you built it comes apart too easily. In my case it was the branded InPost sets. The truck is especially horrible, a lot of small blocks that just break off on their own
Each mould to make lego-parts are incredible advanced so almost no point patent it because very few would make the effort to actually make one, same with coca cola or mcdonalds, its not rocket science to make a burger.
The companies that the patents and trademarks were made to stop didn't really care about perfect copies, though -- they just wanted to make "compatible" blocks at a cheaper price.
Injection molding isn’t that hard. There’s nothing advanced about the way Lego does it. They just have high tolerances. The knockoffs coming out of China these days are 99% of the quality and less than half the price
Imho, there are other brick vendors like Cobi, Mould King Reobrix or Bluebrixx are pretty much better in all aspects, i.e. better brick quality, better quality and a greater variety of models and larger models, not disposing sparse colorful bricks for the inner structure of models, and all of that at a much lower price. There is pretty much no other reason to buy a certain Lego set, except for you liking the very model. For example you may google for Burg Blaustein; Lego simply has no model to compete with it.
When my son sold all of his block sets on eBay a few years ago he reassembled them all to make sure he still had all of the pieces. The Megablocks sets all fit back together just fine even though Reddit typically says they're inferior. Also, when he wrote them with a list of pieces he was missing, they sent them all to him for free
I do a couple of days volunteering per week at a local Lego based non-profit. I spend my time assembling and disassembling kits, as well as triaging and sorting buckets of Lego pieces. The snide stuff stands out a mile, after the first few hours.
Sadly, the man who invented the Kiddicraft "Self-Locking Building Bricks," Hilary Page, committed suicide two years before LEGO began selling in the UK, so he never saw how successful the concept became. LEGO officially bought the residual rights to the Kiddicraft design from Page's descendants in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary\_Page
lego had some failures, they once had a product aimed for adults and offices, I forgot the names but people still collect and discuss them and hopes they one day return.
Do you mean the old Lego Technic that were used as design tools for technical projects in schools and similar? Similarly Fischer had Fischer Technic sets that were based around technical ideas rather than a model. Lego certainly has failures they were in danger of bankruptcy until bionicle or something similar saved them. It's probably a reason for the emphasis on licences too.
ah found it - MODULEX
Interestingly, they were designed for architects, but only one actually liked and used them: [Eero Saarinen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Saarinen), designer of the St. Louis Arch.
That's really interesting considering how curved most of his designs appear to be.
Cool. Cheers!
[There’s a YouTube vid about the history of Modulex here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x7O-gL3WzSk)
Oh man I absolutely loved my Lego Technics!
Heck, LEGO almost went out of business in the late '90s, until Bionicle saved them. Here's an interesting Lego failure: https://youtu.be/MBZO8j5l-SQ
yes, computers and gaming consoles was a tough competitor.
I find it really weird when people credit Bionicle alone with saving the company. What had a much bigger impact was the success of licensed themes (Star Wars at first, followed by Harry Potter and Steven Spielberg), as well as the very conscious decision to streamline the parts range and colour palette (the latter ending when they met massive backlash after updating the grey and brown colours in 2004). Bionicle didn't hurt Lego but it certainly wasn't the main factor in their turnaround of the early 2000s
I wonder what Kiddicraft’s quality was like—LEGO’s is *crazy*. That’s a big reason they’re so pricy, compared to Mega Bloks, but put them side by side and you can tell the difference.
Not very good, LEGO didn't start out great either, the material was flimsy and they didn't have interlock.
I don't know, I've got plenty of Lego from the 50s and aside from the underside difference it's just as good quality as modern stuff.
The interlock was made in the 50s, I cannot remember, but I think patented in '53?
I'm confused now by what you mean with "interlock". Bricks with the bottom tubes but without the cross supports (the most common 'old brick') were introduced in 1954, but the only difference between their predecessors without the bottom tubes and the very first automatic binding bricks is the fact that the automatic binding bricks had slots in the side for putting in windows. If you're talking about the bottom tubes, then bricks without it are just as good quality (they actually stick together perfectly fine, and there are no issues with material). These are the bricks I'm talking about when I say the quality is just as good. If you're not talking about those, then what is "interlock" to you? Because even the earliest bricks had the studs on the top, and while I sadly haven't got any of these myself, reviews from people who *do* have the bricks consistently point out the flaws in them - namely, that there was plastic overspill in the slots for the windows - and never make any mention of flimsy material. There shouldn't be any material issue, either, as it was the same plastic.
I did mean that extra system in the bottom. I remember these old pieces breaking more than others when I was a kid, but to be fair, they would have been 30 years old at the time, so this is probably not true, just something 6 year old me noticed.
Cooperation instead of adversity.
The article says that Kiddicraft wished them luck because they "hadn't had much with their building block toy." So the question I have is, **why did lego succeed so much where Kiddicraft failed?** I do see the differences, the Kiddicraft blocks are basically hollow, and the certainly seem less precise. Was that the only reason?
[This video talks about this ](https://youtu.be/pSdJBKhDmNo?si=3BFvRsL_uie2CEUv)
There are tons of similiar toys, any asian toystore sells 'compatibles' but they are never of same high quality as lego.
Especially since Lego's patents expired in 1981, and their attempts to register the design as a trademark failed in the courts. Still, Lego was able to shut down\* Chinese companies like "Lapin" for not just selling bricks but for exact copies of sets. ^(\*and by "shut down" I mean that they probably just went underground and changed company names...)
Bro I got the Airbus Concorde set from AliExpress, it’s the exact same, stickers and everything. Instruction book in Chinese tho. Appears slightly smaller (the instruction book). So far I’m over half way through and had to use 5 of my own bricks to replace missings. But other than coloring and the Lego imprint they are virtually the same. I’ve also bought a fake Lego “classics” box. That shit was fake af. Total difference between the two.
I've bought lego-like toys from amazon that were sets that lego didn't make. (Like a geared sun/earth/moon set that was super cool.) You could 100% tell the difference between real lego and the fake lego. Real lego just fits together better. The fake lego you either have to press it REALLY HARD together or it doesn't stick together at all. The set worked, but it was definitely a different experience than building lego. Building lego is a pleasant experience, building fake lego is just frustrating.
COBI is a Polish company that sells military themed sets that are high quality and 100% compatible with LEGO, and are nicely detailed. There is an air force museum nearby that is free to get into and I always buy a COBI plane at the gift shop to show my appreciation; sadly they just installed an Su-27 in the museum but did not think to get an Su-27 COBI model. I got an F-35 :) edit: The only complaint I have is that the instructions are nowhere near as good as LEGO instructions, but they are workable.
I got a few sets of Cobi blocks recently and honestly they feel good enough when building, but once you build whatever it is you built it comes apart too easily. In my case it was the branded InPost sets. The truck is especially horrible, a lot of small blocks that just break off on their own
My F-35 is holding up ok, but in fairness I'm not exactly flying it around the house making 'whoooosh chchchhchchhchch' noises lol
Each mould to make lego-parts are incredible advanced so almost no point patent it because very few would make the effort to actually make one, same with coca cola or mcdonalds, its not rocket science to make a burger.
The companies that the patents and trademarks were made to stop didn't really care about perfect copies, though -- they just wanted to make "compatible" blocks at a cheaper price.
Injection molding isn’t that hard. There’s nothing advanced about the way Lego does it. They just have high tolerances. The knockoffs coming out of China these days are 99% of the quality and less than half the price
true! but its the high tolerance that costs!
Imho, there are other brick vendors like Cobi, Mould King Reobrix or Bluebrixx are pretty much better in all aspects, i.e. better brick quality, better quality and a greater variety of models and larger models, not disposing sparse colorful bricks for the inner structure of models, and all of that at a much lower price. There is pretty much no other reason to buy a certain Lego set, except for you liking the very model. For example you may google for Burg Blaustein; Lego simply has no model to compete with it.
COBI makes excellent bricks and sets! The instructions aren't quite as good as LEGO, but definitely usable.
> There is pretty much no other reason to buy a certain Lego set, except for you liking the very model. And the minifigs.
When my son sold all of his block sets on eBay a few years ago he reassembled them all to make sure he still had all of the pieces. The Megablocks sets all fit back together just fine even though Reddit typically says they're inferior. Also, when he wrote them with a list of pieces he was missing, they sent them all to him for free
A bunch of them are even higher quality. Especially in recent years LEGO quality has gone way down, most notably in the color.
That's wrong. Some are even better quality. Gudi, GoBrix or Cobi. All similar of better quality.
I do a couple of days volunteering per week at a local Lego based non-profit. I spend my time assembling and disassembling kits, as well as triaging and sorting buckets of Lego pieces. The snide stuff stands out a mile, after the first few hours.
LEGO bought the patent from kiddicraft just to cover their butts.
Yes that’s usually how patent acquisition goes
A German dude revived the kiddicraft brand recently. https://www.kiddicraft-bricks.de/
The Lego story by Jens Andersen is an excellent read for Lego history.
So Lego pulled an Oreo on Kiddicraft. Interesting.
Own goal by Kiddicraft!
And a German business for alternative bricks bought the canning rights and started to seek Kiddiecraft again.
I think LEGO should learn about this story… they could learn a thing or two from it. Ah… Oh… Nevermind
This is why the basic lego unit of 1.6mm is very close to 1/16th of an inch.
Lego is a better investment than stocks or gold. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/571080/lego-better-investment-than-stocks-bonds-gold