Just a neat little story for you.

I was doing my regular shift at the LEGO store when a man comes up with the 3 series 2 mixels, the green Minecraft set, and a Simpson's CMF.

I ask for his VIP card, and he had one. Turns out the guy is from out west and is in the area (Midwest).

I ask him who is getting the LEGO he is buying and he says he works for Mattel and is going to Montreal to meet with Mega Brands for some play testing.

I tell my manager about this during downtime and he replies, "So they finally want to try to compete with us? At least they bought directly from us and not eBay or something."

There always is a small chance the customer was pulling strings but I want to believe.

Edited May 29, 201410 yr by legoman19892

Ha-ha! A funny story! I want to believe too!

Well, they decided to learn from the best.

It would be nice if, some day, we had competition on price and quality.

I admit I would segregate my LEGO from other bricks, but I wouldn't be adverse to buying it if it were good quality.

Nothing like a little market research. At least the guy was honest!

Some of the "off" brands make good basic bricks... Cobi's are nearly as good as LEGO in my opinion, and even duplicate the tiny italic letters on the studs. The ones in common colors like black and white are hard to tell apart... :-)

I think their play test will show that Lego is pretty awesome! I doubt that even Mattel will be able to gain any of Lego's market at this point, even if they do Barbie bricks I don't think they will get a significant portion of the Friends people.

I, too, decided to do a little market research today. Picked up three MegaBlocks Moshi Monsters sets at Tuesday Morning for a total of less than 10US. The look adorable and have stickers that I can put on LEGO models of these little creatures once I find the LEGO parts in similar shapes. They are 80651 (Katsuma), 80652 (Poppet), and 80653 (Diavlo.) Will see what I can do with LEGO and their instructions. Anyone familiar with the Moshis? Was it a cartoon show? Wish LEGO had something like these.

I, too, decided to do a little market research today. Picked up three MegaBlocks Moshi Monsters sets at Tuesday Morning for a total of less than 10US. The look adorable and have stickers that I can put on LEGO models of these little creatures once I find the LEGO parts in similar shapes. They are 80651 (Katsuma), 80652 (Poppet), and 80653 (Diavlo.) Will see what I can do with LEGO and their instructions. Anyone familiar with the Moshis? Was it a cartoon show? Wish LEGO had something like these.

For the first time ever I was just on the megabucks website to check out those Moshi's. They do look adorable, like some sort of pokemon clones. So I guess you bought clone figures of a clone cartoon And I guess they already do Barbie bricks... I guess we just don't ever here about those clone brands over here in the Land of the Lego

I just checked on eBay, and it looks like Moshi Monsters is/was an entire theme. Really cute builds, too. If I like the three monsters above, I may try finding plans for and building some of the other sets with LEGO, which is the only kind of bricks I own besides these three little kits which say Belgium on the boxes and have piece counts listed on the boxes of 70 to 77 parts each.

Well, all three Moshi Monsters are built. The most difficult was the red and black one because I could not see the black bricks clearly in the instructions, which are poor quality compared to what LEGO usually provides. So it took a while to figure it out. Fortunately there are not 800 pieces, or this would take all night.

There were a lot of bricks with major boo boos on the sides....lines, humps, indentations, etc. Not a pretty sight. And it was hard putting many of the bricks together. They tend not to fit as well as LEGO. Also the colors do not appear as uniform and solid as with LEGO bricks; it has more of a transparency than LEGO bricks. And the other major difference between Mega Bloks and LEGO is that the MB cost about half as much or even less than half of the price for LEGO.

The designs were cute and do merit building again in LEGO. They remind me a bit of the furry bunny introduced by Creator a few months ago. And of Totoro, the delightful Japanese animated film star. I still have the stickers for use on LEGO versions if I decide to apply them. This wraps up my mini-review of the Mega Bloks Moshi Monsters.

You act as if it isn't already competition. Well, if it wasn't before, it will be soon since Mattel bought MEGA. I've already got my fair share of Mega Bloks and they're as good as any Lego set.

Early 2000 MB and their knight line was good. Then they went to crap. Their big transformer kits were flimsy as heck.

The CoD stuff looks nice.

You act as if it isn't already competition. Well, if it wasn't before, it will be soon since Mattel bought MEGA. I've already got my fair share of Mega Bloks and they're as good as any Lego set.

Good for you, I hope you are happy with them, I am not going to get any, so there are more for you to buy:)

In the big picture I still don't think even Mattel will be able to compete seriously with Lego. MB has had licenses for some really popular games for years and that was what they sold, and what I think they will keep selling. If mega blocks had the potential to beat Lego on anything else we would have seen it happening already.

I agree with emilstorm.

Only thing Mattel can bring in is a better distribution for Megablocks. LEGO has earned it place and I'm sure they will keep up their good work.

Mattel may be able to bring Mega up to compete with Lego. But it's not going to happen soon, and will require some massive recapitalization. Above and beyond the core thing that matters to us, product quality, they have three huge hurdles to overcome. And these will take years.

1. Product distribution and retailer penetration. Let's be honest Megabrands has been pretty awful at this. They don't manage their product well on store shelves. They have no feedback loops in place out to the retail level. Many major retailers are getting more than a bit sick of the products. They announce stuff that stores will never see. Non moving stuff sits forever. They have almost no penetration outside a North America. This is the problem that Mattel is best positioned to help solve, by leveraging their existing networks. But at this stage they may need to be burning a lot of Barbie goodwill. Of course this will be pointless if they cannot resolve the other two problems.

2. Corporate Culture. Let's be frank. mB's corporate culture is a bit lax and slipshod. I don't mean in the relaxed vaguely Apple/hippy way that Lego operates. I mean they are a mid sized set in their ways company with an entrenched workforce and leadership. While it is by all accounts a nice place to work, they aren't exactly on the cutting edge of competition. Mattel is going to hit them like a Tsunami. I hate to say it, but by the time it's all done I don't see any way that Mattel avoids all but gutting them wholesale. See above about product distribution and retailer relations. When those old methods hit Mattel there is no way that they or the staff practicing them survive. Which means Mattels first task will be basically rebuilding and relearning everything from the ground up. This alone will cripple them for a few years.

3. Factory capabilities and production. The biggest issue with MB, the thing that causes us to turn up our noses at them at times, and rail on about quality comes down to one thing. The plastic that they use. It is not the same as Lego's ABS. It is a more styrene based plastic common in other forms of injection molded products. (And yeah it is. Don't believe me, get a jar of Plastiweld. It can bond Megabloks but not Lego or KreO.) the thing is that Plastic choice now runs throughout MB's entire operation touching it on every level. The benefit is pricing. Ever wonder why MB is half the price of Lego? This plastic is why. Ever wonder why the sets don't stay together as well. They seem to slowly flex and warp? Same reason. But all of MB's machinery is designed around this plastic. (Which is not unusual. They set out as a common Injection Molded toy company. That is the common material to use. ) but to switch to ABS will probably take a total refit and recapitalization of their production capacity. At best we may start seeing some lines switched to ABS and their production sourced to some overseas factory. (More bad news for the Montreal crew.) but once again 3-5 years before we see any improvements there. Assuming Mattel simply throws money at the problem.

I wanna know why people assume MB doesn't use ABS. It feels the same as a lego brick to me. Even more so, where are people coming up with the whole "they use polystyrene" crap? Polystyrene is what is used to make foam peanuts and disposable cups and bottles.

Pretty much every major toy company, MB included, uses ABS plastic.

Edited June 9, 201410 yr by Jetrax99

I wanna know why people assume MB doesn't use ABS. It feels the same as a lego brick to me. Even more so, where are people coming up with the whole "they use polystyrene" crap? Polystyrene is what is used to make foam peanuts and disposable cups and bottles.

Pretty much every major toy company, MB included, uses ABS plastic.

Styrene is a chemical term that refers to the make-up of the plastic. Plastics have a huge variety of recipes and thus a lot of different resulting products.

Polystyrene is just one of these.

I wanna know why people assume MB doesn't use ABS. It feels the same as a lego brick to me. Even more so, where are people coming up with the whole "they use polystyrene" crap? Polystyrene is what is used to make foam peanuts and disposable cups and bottles.

Pretty much every major toy company, MB included, uses ABS plastic.

It appears MB uses trace amounts of PVC.

http://ecofriendlyus...comment-page-1/

Edited June 9, 201410 yr by legoman19892

It appears MB uses trace amounts of PVC.

http://ecofriendlyus...comment-page-1/

Or so this woman assumes.

As I understand, PVC is used for the soft or "rubberized" plastic

Or so this woman assumes.

As I understand, PVC is used for the soft or "rubberized" plastic

There were other sites as well. Also, she did ask MB directly.

I wanna know why people assume MB doesn't use ABS. It feels the same as a lego brick to me. Even more so, where are people coming up with the whole "they use polystyrene" crap? Polystyrene is what is used to make foam peanuts and disposable cups and bottles.

Pretty much every major toy company, MB included, uses ABS plastic.

The plastic Megablocks uses is closer in nature (or in many cases virtually the same as) that used in plastic injection molded scale model kits. The stuff from Revel, Tamiya etc. It is good plastic. It is a reasonable compromise between precision and price. It takes sharp crisp molding well. And it can be manufactured at moderately lower temperatures and pressure. Allowing for somewhat less expensive tooling. MB bricks can take paint something that ABS does not do well. MB bricks can also be chemically fused using common solvent glues (the same stuff you use to fuse PVC pipe together) as opposed to being simply glued together using CA glues (super glues like the Kragle which do not alter or fuse the plastic) . The Downside to IP styrene is it is softer than PVC, is more subject to warping from temperature issues both during production and long term over its life, and it is a bit more brittle.

Lego, KreO and Coby use ABS. Megablocks, Best Loc and a host of other clone brands use Polystyrenes. Megabloks figures are a solid Vinyl or PVC based.

We're not assuming anything, work with different plastics a bit either through job or hobby and you quickly learn to tell the difference. One isn't necessarily better than the other. It all depends on the application it is intended for. Plastic modelers hate ABS since it is hard to cut well and is extremely chemical resistant making it difficult to paint and glue. Whereas polystyrene is a dream to work with in those applications. For building bricks it flips around. The more impervious plastic works better and holds its precision better over long term use. Outside of Lego and similar brands ABS is fairly rare for toys to be made from. Most toys are either Polystyrene or some sort of Vinyl. (Action figures are often Vinyl).

It appears MB uses trace amounts of PVC.

http://ecofriendlyus...comment-page-1/

This blog is written by a woman trying to demonize all plastic toys and make a big thing out of nothing, and you are carrying it in. No where does it say that they 'use trace amounts of PVC'. It clearly says that they are under the limits if US law and they have stricter limits than that. If somebody has a problem with what's in toys, they should takes it up with the legislators in their respective country, not single out a specific manufacturer in public. I don't think I would ever buy MB, but please don't make it sound like it is dangerous. And by the way PVC is completely safe in itself, some of the stuff you put in it to make it soft can be dangerous, but there is a huge difference.

I can't see wanting to build with anything other than LEGO, their quality of parts production and prompt customer service when a problem does occur is next to none.