As a child, I was thrilled by the LEGO Technics sets. Especially 2-in-1 or 3-in-1 sets. While looking for Technic sets for my son, I found that this range went in a direction I didn’t like at all.
- Either it’s way too simple and has little to do with Technics (one, or two small technic functions).
- Or LEGO technics is way too expensive, only for the showcase and without a B-Model (no 2-in-1).
As an alternative, the name “CADA Master” or “Mould King” often comes up.
- Does anyone have positive experience with these alternatives?
- And is it allowed to write about it here?
@ Here a small mousetrap tinkering, which I built last week with my son. And the first test, if I can share a moving *.gif here in lemmy.world.
There was some discussion about this in another post some time ago: https://lemmy.world/post/238970
To me it seems there’s not really a consensus either way on Lego competitors at the moment. I for one am of the opinion that splitting off into multiple communities would not be a great idea for now, seeing how little content there is so far overall anyway. Having a community simply called “Lego” makes for the best discoverability right now, and allowing compatible brands as well just increases the chances of growing the community healthily. We can always change the rules if it becomes a problem.
Edit to add an answer to the other question: I do have quite some experience with alternative brands by now, I’ve written a little about that here. Not so much with technic-specific alternatives, but from what I’m hearing, that generally positive experience seems to extrapolate to technic offerings as well.
Nice Summary. Thanks!
In your thread-link Admin Lux wrote: “Offbrand bricks are just fine. The reason I picked the Lego name is because everyone knows it…”Oh yeah, good catch!
Cada and mould King are very reputable Brands, their parts are equal if not better quality Thank Lego bricks
I would also like to know
I just found out these exist:
- ELEGOO Building Block Car Kit, Intelligent and Educational Building Block Toy Car Robot Kit 3 in 1 for Fun and STEM Learning Toy https://a.co/d/btz03Rq
- Mini Drone with Creative DIY Building Blocks Sets for Childs Beginners and Adults, 5-in-1 toy for Educational STEM Science Experiment, Family Activity, Birthday Gift Christmas, Small RC Drone Quadcopter with Altitude Hold,3D Flip, Headless Mode,Stress Relief Toy, Gift Toys for Boys Girls Teens https://a.co/d/hJY3vuE
- ELECFREAKS microbit 32 in 1 Wonder Building Bricks Coding Kit, Programmable STEM Educational Learning Kit with 400+ Building Blocks/Sensors/Wukong Expansion Board(Without Micro:bit) https://a.co/d/ehTvbza
There’s a bunch of these kits that are based around easy-to-use microcontrollers like Arduino, and it looks like most of them support graphical programming tools like Makecode.
Personally I would like this community to be LEGO-only, as the name implies. As an example, Reddit had alternative communities for non-LEGO bricks like mould king and lepin.
I would sub to an alternative community about other brick types, but I think it’s important to keep them separate.
I feel like there’s a difference between “lego compatible alternatives” and Lepin-like companies that just take advantage of countries that don’t enforce IP laws to explicitly sell stolen designs
I am on the same boat, Brands who do their own stuff=good. Knockoffs =Bad. This elitist Attitude on reddit Was the reason i left this community
Reddit is different though in that there was much more activity. At our current scale, I don’t think splintering off into sub-groups would be great. As long as there’s a post just about every day here, maybe, I would not want to restrict what can be posted too much. We can always course-correct if off-brand takes up too much space and drowns out the actual Lego stuff, but I don’t see that happening for the near future.
I might have the wrong name, but MegaBlocks were totally compatible with Legos. But something about them was always just… Weird. They weren’t smooth like Lego. They didn’t have the weight of Lego. They snapped together just fine and yet the Mega Block bricks seemed thinner somehow.
They’re the only competitor I even know of that had regular bricks and technic style bricks. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, though.
What looks promising to me is the following model: “CaDA C51026 RC Megalithic Robot + Excavator”
I found 3 sets in this series: C51026 / C51029 / C51030
For my son, this one would probably be the best. (or the white one with the plane)
