Lego is maybe the most well-known brick building system in the world, but when the patents expired, the clones came to market and lawsuits would follow.
I don't remember the LEGO battle with Tyco, but I do remember receiving Tente blocks from a well-meaning relative. They were smaller and incompatible with LEGO. I think I had a battleship and maybe an aircraft carrier. They were fun, but you had to be careful not to mix them into your LEGO stash.
Dollar General, Big Lots, and a few other discount stores have knock-off LEGO-but-not-LEGO sets. I don't know what the quality is like, but they are always priced 1/3 the cost of official LEGO sets which I'm sure makes them very appealing to parents and grandparents.
I have played with some knock offs and the quality was surprisingly good. They weren't a fancy play set. Just the bricks, but they seemed to work just like Lego.
I'm going to combine my Tyco military set with my Lego Titanic model and make a really cool naval battleship scene.
I don't remember the LEGO battle with Tyco, but I do remember receiving Tente blocks from a well-meaning relative. They were smaller and incompatible with LEGO. I think I had a battleship and maybe an aircraft carrier. They were fun, but you had to be careful not to mix them into your LEGO stash.
Dollar General, Big Lots, and a few other discount stores have knock-off LEGO-but-not-LEGO sets. I don't know what the quality is like, but they are always priced 1/3 the cost of official LEGO sets which I'm sure makes them very appealing to parents and grandparents.
I have played with some knock offs and the quality was surprisingly good. They weren't a fancy play set. Just the bricks, but they seemed to work just like Lego.