The original patent expired in 2011, after all: https://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-lego.html
Article I found on the topic, with a list of brands: https://brickfact.com/blog/bricks/lego-alternatives-the-big-guide
I’d like to know too. I’d love to use Lego style bricks for robotics, etc, but the price… 😬
Yes, the prices now are quite insane. And the fact that Lego had a monopoly on the bricks for such a long time doesn’t ring too good nowadays.
But I like that they just let the patent expire instead of going all Disney and trying to extend it for another century. I imagine Lego survives based on the manufacturing quality of their bricks, and their licensing (Star Wars, Marvel, etc).
I just want some plain old bricks I can put together and hook up motors and sensors to.
going all Disney and trying to extend it for another century.
They still do somehow: https://www.politico.eu/article/lego-win-design-case-german-company-delta-sport-handelskontor-eu-court/
Wow, I didn’t know about that. Shame. Oh well, I like a lot of the sets I saw in your other comment, especially the dune buggy.
My sister got a mega blocks set in the mid-late 80s and while they fit with each other well enough, their compatibility with LEGO was abhorrent. As time went on her collection was rolled into mine, and I spent the next decade purging mega blocks from my LEGO, and on occasion I still find one.
In 2005 or so there was a very cool ork castle from an off brand we decided to get for my oldest daughter. It looked amazing, but had the structural integrity of rotted Lincoln logs. There were a lot of misshapen pieces and even the perfect ones did not quite fit.
I have never tried another knockoff since.
I’ve built some Blue Brixx sets (Star Trek!) and the piece quality was great except for one or two bad molds out of a thousand or two pieces.
I’ve also built a gifted Pacific Rim Jaeger set from Amazon where the color came off on my hands in a really upsetting way. The pieces themselves were of ok quality except for the color.
My kid have bought some micro brick sets at touristy sites, and they aren’t great.
Kinda?
But only for generic blocks. There’s been copycats as far back as I can recall, with varying degrees of compatibility. They all more or less have fit, but that more or less could be pretty damn far apart. I can’t recall brand names though; and the only box I have of them is shoved in the back corner of the attic since I don’t currently have anyone in my that’s into the standard old school lego blocks. The Lego fans I know are into specific kits rather than freeform building in primary colors lol.
Never ran into any that you couldn’t make work with actual Legos, but some that wouldn’t work with each other.
