Brick900 Posted January 29 Posted January 29 (edited) Mattel has announced a new building block similar to Lego. Edited January 29 by Brick900 Quote
Brickbuilder0937 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 While I don't see myself buying them, I'm glad that this may help reduce the amount that LEGO is gouging us by. Quote
SpacePolice89 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Why? They already make a Lego copy (Megablocks, which they have owned since 2014). Quote
MAB Posted January 30 Posted January 30 They've done it before with Barbie brick sets too. I wonder if their offerings will be based on their own licenses or other IP or if they will try to take some of the brick market with generic City type sets or Creator type sets. Quote
shroomzofdoom Posted January 30 Posted January 30 If Mattel is doing this they must have firm legal ground to stand on. Competition is good, it provides downward price pressure and disrupts the status quo. https://shop.mattel.com/pages/about-mattel-brick-shop Quote
Autumn Posted January 30 Posted January 30 I agree about competition being good. As much as I like Lego, I feel like they are slowly becoming complacent with their status. Still, a bit odd seeing as Mattel already have Mega, and I am curious to know how they are going to "bend the rules of construction with innovative features and materials". Quote
JohnTPT17 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Scrolling through a list of brands Mattel owns, I'm not seeing much that would interest me in terms of Lego-like sets. Looks like anything that comes out of there will skew towards a younger audience. Quote
SAM1626 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 1 hour ago, Autumn said: I am curious to know how they are going to "bend the rules of construction with innovative features and materials". In my opinion lego really holds the top of building block brands so I don't think mattel's new line will become more than a simple maybe cheaper alternetive to lego as lego kinda already did "bend the rules of construction with innovative features and materials" with technic. (In my opinion.) Quote
icm Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Mega has a GI Joe Skystriker set out right now, which is close enough to a playscale Tomcat for me. I have it on my desk right now, actually. I'm intrigued to see what Mattel will bring to the market with this announcement. Quote
shroomzofdoom Posted January 31 Posted January 31 Always good to remember that Lego was, technically, not the first. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Page Quote
Toastie Posted January 31 Posted January 31 30 minutes ago, shroomzofdoom said: Always good to remember that Lego was, technically, not the first. It really is. I like this sentence he most in that Wikipedia article you referenced: "Realising their potential, Ole copied the Kiddicraft brick and in 1949 marketed his own version, The Automatic Binding Brick, that became the Lego brick in 1953" Yes, they obtained all the rights later but should always reference the original ... Best Thorsten Quote
aFrInaTi0n Posted January 31 Posted January 31 I like the discontinued Star Trek line of MegaBlocks - their figures are very detail-printed and you can really create a TNG scene with it.. other aestethics than with minifigs, but in (my very personal) opinion they are great.. Spoiler I would hope they gather themself a new license from CBS... 🫡🙄 (@mods, it is original LEGO bricks shown + Mattel license covered non-minifig figures, so hope the pictures are ok in the spoiler box - if not, please moderate me!) (And yes, Riker was never with the away team to save Picard from the borg - but that one head from a Call of Duty set was just having the 1:1 fit to create a Riker figure, could not resist to it.. ) Quote
MAB Posted January 31 Posted January 31 13 hours ago, JohnTPT17 said: Scrolling through a list of brands Mattel owns, I'm not seeing much that would interest me in terms of Lego-like sets. Looks like anything that comes out of there will skew towards a younger audience. Yes a lot might interest kids. Barbie - rival to minidoll (both Friends and licensed). They have done Barbie building sets before but with much larger pieces. Hot Wheels - buildable and customisable Hot Wheels, rival to LEGO's various toy car offerings. And large Hot Wheels - scaled up version of their classics for the adult market. American Girl, Angelina Ballerina, Barney, Bob the Builder, and so on - all brands that could have building sets with miniature figures whether minifigure style or DUPLO style. That is just up to B. There are plenty of others - Fireman Sam, Thomas the Tank Engine, Hello Kitty, and so on. They have existing tie-ins with WWE. I can imagine a series of minifigures selling small building sets well with a big ring set. I've not watched it for years, but I could see them doing things like Eddie Guerrero's low rider being popular with nostalgic adults or similar for any of the current roster. That is licensed stuff. No doubt they could do rivals to things like Creator and City and so on. Many adults don't care about the LEGO branding especially when buying for kids but I think also themselves now LEGO is tending to go more and more expensive. But the big one could be - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. I reckon that could be huge for the adult market. A Mattel owned brand. The series was originally developed as a way to market toys. Kids that grew up with it are now nostalgic rich adults. Castle Greyskull and the Royal Palace as flagship sets, loads of smaller sets to include one or two of the characters. 2 hours ago, aFrInaTi0n said: I like the discontinued Star Trek line of MegaBlocks - their figures are very detail-printed and you can really create a TNG scene with it.. other aestethics than with minifigs, but in (my very personal) opinion they are great.. And similar with HALO. They were a big step up from figures they were doing before such as the Marvel minifigures before LEGO go that deal back from Mega. I reckon there is plenty of room for licensed sets of much more screen accurate and articulated minifigures that can interact with brick-built scenes. Especially with licensed characters, the ability to mix and match figure parts is not so important, so they can do much more realstic versions of characters looks, outfits, size / height, etc. And have them articulated for posing too. There are probably lots of ways they could take it if they want to take a bigger share of the brick building market. Quote
Peppermint_M Posted January 31 Posted January 31 Considering that Hot Wheels and Barbie Mega sets already exist, I am wondering if this new brand might be a way to create distance from the "Megablocks are cheap LEGO knockoffs" by making something that can immediately be positioned as Premium Product without the baggage of MEGA printed on the boxes/bricks. I have personally enjoyed building the different Hot Wheels sets, on two scale points and the diecast based Blok Cars. With no real issues with quailty. However, I could see this new brand taking some of the popular IP and licences they have to market to those TLG are targeting with Icons and other "black box" sets. Maybe adding their own lines of Adult Market items that are generic enough TLG can't object. Even the teaser poster looks something of a match to Icons, with the black background. Something I will keep an eye out for. Quote
Kit Figsto Posted February 11 Posted February 11 On 1/31/2025 at 5:03 PM, Peppermint_M said: Considering that Hot Wheels and Barbie Mega sets already exist, I am wondering if this new brand might be a way to create distance from the "Megablocks are cheap LEGO knockoffs" by making something that can immediately be positioned as Premium Product without the baggage of MEGA printed on the boxes/bricks. I have personally enjoyed building the different Hot Wheels sets, on two scale points and the diecast based Blok Cars. With no real issues with quailty. However, I could see this new brand taking some of the popular IP and licences they have to market to those TLG are targeting with Icons and other "black box" sets. Maybe adding their own lines of Adult Market items that are generic enough TLG can't object. Even the teaser poster looks something of a match to Icons, with the black background. Something I will keep an eye out for. This is something that I think the brand Brick Craft has sort of done. AFAIK, they're only at Walmart in the US, but they have sort of taken the LEGO flowers line and buildable objects line, thrown in some licenses, and reduced the price dramatically. I bought one of the MTV licensed sets the other day, a little 100-piece boombox, and it was $5. The last time I owned a LEGO-adjacent brand were some Mega Bloks from like 20 years ago, which clearly felt different from LEGO. I was surprised at how similar this was to LEGO. Every single piece was also an existing LEGO piece, and the quality felt pretty solid. The main difference that I could tell was in the "Technic" pins - the handle assembly for the radio has a lot more play in it than LEGO pieces would if you push down on it, and the friction of the pins themselves were very different from piece to piece, which I've never encountered with LEGO. I assume that the molds are just a bit cheaper, so there's less precision in the dimensions of the pieces. Anyway, these seem to be decently popular, especially since they have some major licenses, so I wouldn't be surprised to see other companies jump on board, since it's much easier to do what LEGO is doing if you take stuff like minifigures out of the equation. Quote
Peppermint_M Posted February 12 Posted February 12 On 2/11/2025 at 11:01 PM, Kit Figsto said: they're only at Walmart in the US Yes, I spotted those when I went on a snacks'n'beer run during Brickworld Chicago last year. The flower designs look a lot like some that Block Tech brand releases here in the UK. The boxes are re-coloured according to how they are being marketed (I saw them in sky blue boxes for Mother's day and currently Pink for Valentine's day). The MTV branded stuff hasn't appeared yet, not even as generic builds without the IP. Quote
Lyichir Posted February 13 Posted February 13 Really without pictures of any sets it's hard to judge the merits of this new brand (we don't even know what sets it apart from Mega Blox/Construx apart from name). Quote
AmperZand Posted February 14 Posted February 14 (edited) On 1/31/2025 at 11:03 PM, Peppermint_M said: Considering that Hot Wheels and Barbie Mega sets already exist, I am wondering if this new brand might be a way to create distance from the "Megablocks are cheap LEGO knockoffs" by making something that can immediately be positioned as Premium Product without the baggage of MEGA printed on the boxes/bricks. I have personally enjoyed building the different Hot Wheels sets, on two scale points and the diecast based Blok Cars. With no real issues with quailty. However, I could see this new brand taking some of the popular IP and licences they have to market to those TLG are targeting with Icons and other "black box" sets. Maybe adding their own lines of Adult Market items that are generic enough TLG can't object. Even the teaser poster looks something of a match to Icons, with the black background. Something I will keep an eye out for. I was also wondering about the positioning and suspect it will be a play for the premium end of the market. If so, it won't be competing with LEGO on price which will be a shame for many AFOLS, myself included. I'm not sure that it will be porting existing licences over to Mattel Brick Shop. Those IPs may already be too strongly associated with Mega Blocks/Construx. It may seek new IPs. It may compete with LEGO by being more innovative and varied in its products such as parts or materials that LEGO doesn't do or doesn't do much of. Parts with studs (or anti-studs) facing in opposite directions, elastomer (silicone) parts that flex, or sets with elaborate lighting systems (not just single light-up bricks) are a few possibilities. I wonder also about the segments Mattel will target. Will it go after the 18+ segment (architecture, plants, art) or particular geographies (China)? It could also compete with LEGO in certain non-IP themes either targeting kids or adults or both. Castle is ripe for development as are trains, pirates, western and modern warfare. I'm hoping for quite a lot from Mattel Brick Shop because there are so many ways in which LEGO could be improved. Ultimately though, Brick Shop may turn out to be quite disappointing. We'll have to wait and see. Edited March 5 by AmperZand Typo Quote
hikouki Posted February 16 Posted February 16 Now I found the reason why we won't have Lego Pokemon any time soon. :( Quote
Brick900 Posted Thursday at 04:03 PM Author Posted Thursday at 04:03 PM The first seven sets have been announced: ] Quote
icm Posted Thursday at 04:13 PM Posted Thursday at 04:13 PM Seven? I can only find five on the Mattel Brick Shop website. Quote
SpacePolice89 Posted Thursday at 07:50 PM Posted Thursday at 07:50 PM they don't even look like building block construction toys (except the green one). Quote
Murdoch17 Posted Thursday at 08:08 PM Posted Thursday at 08:08 PM These looks awful... absolutely awful. I concur with @SpacePolice89: they don't look like construction toys at all. Quote
MAB Posted Thursday at 08:20 PM Posted Thursday at 08:20 PM They look similar to Airfix Quickbuild kits, brick built sets that look like realistic models. Quote
Black Falcon Posted Thursday at 09:07 PM Posted Thursday at 09:07 PM I don´t care much about Lego cars, so those sets wouldn´t interest me anyways, but I have to say, after the big announcement they made I expected something better. No idea what they thought when they designed the bonnet of the red one especially. Quote
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