larry marak

The patent, which TLG filed years ago, has been public domain in most countries for decades, though the life of a patent tends to vary with each nation's laws. It was only when TLG was sueing Tyco for their bricks and the use of the word Lego in their advertising that TLG discovered that they were violating the patent to the brick for over 20 years, as Kiddiekraft toys and its founders heirs actually owned the patent to bricks connecting by studs on top. After purching the rights to the patent from the heirs, Lego became the unchallenged patent holder of a by then expired patent. For nearly a decade TLG has fought to treat their 2x4 brick as a trademark, and they've been shot down in almost every court on earth. But with deep pockets they can keep on sueing forever.

Finally Lego feels the power of the Dark Side! To me this series is the re-imagination of the classic board game Car Wars combined with the best of Death Race 2000 and its remake Deathrace. I don't know about fish bombs, but dynamite is effective at stoping other vehicles. Give the minifigs passengers some Tompson sub machine guns from the Indy sets and you've got it made.

Good question Kenneth. I haven't seen such a site, probably because 1. You'd need something like LDD to produce graphic instructions and 2. You'd be incorporating elements of copywrite protected Lego instructions as part of what you are modifying. A verbal discussion of mods with a parts list and photos might be both legal and workable.

Thanks for correcting me on the earlier appearance of Duplo scale. As I rapidly approach senescence (I'll be 60 August 5) there seems to be more and more fuzz accumulating between the crevasses of my cerebrum!!!! Larry the Elder

At the request of eminent personages here at Eurobricks I present a brief review of my first 1Toy set, ordered from Voronezh 17 days ago and delivered to my desk today. Lego has a new competitor for sales in Russia and the CIS in the form of 1toy website address www.onetoy.ru. It has burst on the scene with 12 themes of brick sets, along with many other toys. How does one do this you ask? by subcontracting out. Their source is undoubted the Coko Bloko Toy Co. Ltd of Shenghai, who made the bricks for Best Lock during the first ten years of that company. CB bricks are designed to work with the two major systems of bricks in the world today, Lego, which uses tubes to clutch studs, and Kadawa of Japan, which uses channels half the depth of the brick to clutch extra tall studs. CB bricks had channels that ran all the way to the base of the brick, so that they could engage either Lego or Kadawa or both. In the years since Best Lock switched over to Lego metrics CB continued to develope their line for domestic sales in China, and now they are supplying the Russians. I can't supply photos here because I am using webtv, which is just and internet browser, but by going to the website above and clicking on the line beneath the Hermitage set you can go to the Great Russia Series and see the Cathedral. This is a 600 brick set, duplicating the many curves peaks and domes of the famous Kremlin house of worship. The set brings back the classic triangular bricks that Best Lock used in their castle sets ten years ago, as well as tall pyramidions, marcaroni bricks and mararoni plates, 4x4 round bricks that are open in the center (like 4 small macaroni pieces), an innovative use of the old windshield panel (here done in solid read, to recreate a curved buttress in the church), bricks spheres, used here for the very first time and clutched by a type of technic pin, and last but not least 8 beautiful golden Russian Orthodox church spire crosses (a cross above an orb). The colorful painting of the the onion domes of this church is up to the builder. The set includes 2 full pages of stickers which must be applied to the finished model. The church is not built on a baseplate; rather you connect a series of large plates in an odd pattern to support the cathedral. When finished it is one of the most beautiful building sets I've ever worked, capturing the central Asian architectural and decorative features of the church, somewhat remniscent of St. Stephen's on castle hill in Budapest. The large instruction book is 27 pages long, showing how to build in large scale images making construction easy. I recommend using babelfish to explore the company's website and explore their brick lines. The one clans set looks like a continuation of the clans of Enloc series, a Warhammer-like storyline. The Starry way is a realistic space vehicle line, as they say not inspired by Star Wars or fantasy but by the actual space programs of the U.S. Russia and now China. The Last Warrior series will look incredibly familiar to Bionicle fans. Some of the language of the website is rather stilted. Construction machine sets like bulldozers are called Heroes of Labor. Historical note: for those unfamiliar with Best Lock's old metrics, the bricks had taller studs than Lego (to engage Kadawa's halfdepth channels under the bricks and plates) and the height of the basic brick was shorter than a Lego brick. 6 Best Lock bricks stack exactly as high as 5 Lego bricks. The taller elements in this set are to be measured in increments of the shorter Best Lock brick.

MegaBloks got the license because 1. they were willing to pay more than Lego for it and 2. they are the most experienced manufacturer of "duplo" scale elements. Remember Ritvik toys (Rita and Vic Bertrand) invented the "Mega" scale building block system. It was only after Lego started cloning Mega with their Duplo sets that Mega Brands started issuing blocks on the "micro" (Lego system) scale. MB still dominates the young children's building block market world wide, and Lego is trying hard this year to acquire some of Mega's shelf space.

Lego set 30040, an Atlantis impulse set in the candy section at check-out from a store. Builds a nifty little octopus, and has one of the Atlantis keys of course. Also picked up Vertical Viper Vengeance, K'nex's newest coaster, but thats off topic here. Old Man Marak (I'll be 60 August 5th, everybody send me your unwanted clone elements).

The Russians still have Mirv nuke armed ballistic missles on their armoured trains today.

Has anyone done armored trains. The great powers all ran them in WWI and Germany and the Soviet Union used them in WW2. I'm working on mounting turrets and anti-aircraft guns for a WW2 era locomotive and wonder if anyone else has tried this.

Actually Mega Bloks and Lego split Nikelodeon down the middle. Some themes are now Lego, others are Megablock. On the Disney Parks sets front, Disney now has K'nex doing theme park rides, first releases are Dumbo the Flying Elephant and Space Mountain, these are both elaborate thousand plus piece sets, far and away more advanced than the Kadawa Disney Build-It brick sets.

Separate them into lego-compatible and non compatible. The non compatibles you'll probably have to throw away. The compatibles you can give to a neighborchild, a school, a church or a disabled vets store in a bag. Save unusual parts and colors as they will invariably provide the only solution to a building problem you're struggling with down the road.

I just think the Lego group doesn't want to pay Disney what they want for licensing. Latest construction toy licensing for Disneyland Parks. As already mentioned Diablok does the brick sets of the park. Now K'nex is doing the rides. Motorized and musical Dumbo the flying elephant and Space Mountain are out already!

This was a great idea Peppermint. Besides Cobi and MB, there are several Asian websites out there. Oxford and Kadawa both maintain an Afolish orientation to their builders including builder's club areas, while BenBao, Sluban and others maintain info sights for retailers only, offering sets in cartons of 24 to 50. Still these give us a window on how the rest of the world builds.

More Znap. especially the double-arches, the 9volt motor, and the extremely long flex axels. Incredbily useful in technic builds.

My wife Melissa, the Lego purist in the family, loves the band. After all if the Partridges were a hit in the 70's, why not the Ostriches in the Teens? Wonderful proof that the only limitation to creating new things with bricks is you imagination.

One one of the neater things about carrying out MB intelligence missions is that they are very free with instructions. They published part numbers years before Lego began the practice, and you can even get pdf's of sets in the Dragon's Universe that haven't been released yet. Try to download instructions for June's releases from Lego two months before they are available as sets!

You're probably underage to join the club, Awesome, Mega Blocks target audience is builders over 8 years old. :-}.

By the way, the big stir over at the Megoblox forum is the Dragon Universe series, to be released shortly. Dragons meets Halo from the looks of it. Does to Dragons what Warhammer 40K did to Warhammer (tho IIRC 40K came first). Incredible new parts and weapons coming up.

The series contains 4 versions of Iron Man armour, making the sets a collectible series. The flames do indeed fit well in the hands of the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four tin-boxed Reed Richard's lab set. Look pretty good in the Invisible Woman's hands too.

[ Also: Thanks Larry, I was wondering what had happened to Little White Dragon, not seen much by them around anymore. Their factory in in Chengdu, ground zero for the great quake of 2008. They just resumed production a few months ago.

No need to wait till next year. The Blocks Forum is quite well established, with set listings, parts catalogs, extensive MCAD renderings of exclusive Megabloks parts, and an international fan base. Quite a few Eurobricks members enjoy dual citizenship a s Bloks members. There is also an ask Mega column with direct access to the company.

Better has existed in the past. Tyco, Built to Rule, and today Oxford in South Korea. The problem with competing on the basis of better quality is that you must also have a lower price and extremely wide distribution and shelf-space commitments. About 50% of shelf space belongs to Lego in toy stores. The other brands (Uberstix, Erector, Best Lock, Knex, Trio, Megabloks and others). all struggle to be noticed on the shelves, if they can get space with retailers at all. Built to rules was imho superior to Lego, but had limited lines and a high price, which doomed it.

They aren't available too often in the year, but every so often its spring cleaning time then Melissa (my Lego purist wife) and I carefully examine the bags for useful combinations. Recently we bought 7 bags at the Glendale Ca store. Made a number of bricklink sellers happy with some of the surplus we mailed out for free. My favorite find was the Venetian chase boats virtually intact in two of the bags. Sometimes the bags are full of junk, other times they are worth ten times the purchase price.