Would it be legal to make compatible bricks which are called differently? If so, why is nobody doing it? If not, there is your answer why LEGO is expensive; to quote the dude from Idiocracy, "ohhh, I like money".
Nice! But note Lego tried their best to fight them.. instead of welcoming friends and competition in this huge undertaking of measuring bricks correctly. Those Lego guys must really have figured out some hi-tech stuff there, so much is obvious; and it must weigh hard on their shoulders to not be able to share that with the world through a medium other than selling colored plastic blocks :(
> Nice! But note Lego tried their best to fight them..
They did, and this was actually pretty hypocritical of lego because lego started out copying a UK design, the "Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks".
On another note, the lego brand is usually explained as 'play well' in Danish, but this is much more along the lines of 'goods to play with' (like in the German spielzeug or the Dutch speelgoed). Of course that doesn't isn't nearly as good marketingwise hence the 'play well' myth.
Do you speak Danish? I do, and "leg godt" (which is what LEGO stands for) cannot be translated into "goods to play with". "Play well" is an accurate translation.
> the lego brand is usually explained as 'play well' in Danish, but this is much more along the lines of 'goods to play with' (like in the German spielzeug or the Dutch speelgoed). Of course that doesn't isn't nearly as good marketingwise hence the 'play well' myth.
Source?
While I don't speak Dutch, speelgoed literally translates to "toys". Several google searches on the etymology of leg godt didn't turn up any alternative definitions or connotations.
Yes, it literally translates to toys, but it is also a combination of "speel" which literally translates to "play" and "goed" which translates to either "goods" (most likely candidate here as origin for the combination that means "toys") or "good" (as in, well).
IOW, the parent is correct that "speelgoed" pretty much means "goods to play with". I have no knowledge about the Danish leg godt story, though.
I started the Bitbeam project because I was prototyping some things in LEGO, but when it came time to figure out how to make many of them, I wasn't too excited about the cost of LEGO... but I was happy with my LEGO design. So I decided to port LEGO dimensions to materials that are easier and cheapier to source myself.
I don't know about your specific examples but see http://www.brickarms.com for one. Lego doesn't make guns so they filled that void. I believe it was originally just a guy in his home/garage.
They're also made of a different kind of plastic - they don't look or feel as smooth and shiny. There are a number of Lego knockoff brands, but I don't think any of them measure up to Lego.
