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LEGO TECHNIC KITS ARE AWESOME BUT PRICEY - DO THE KNOCK-OFFS COMPARE?

Published: 2025-01-01 15:09:32 Last Updated: 2025-01-01 15:25:17

LEGO, one of the world’s most beloved toy brands, traces its origins to 1932 in the small town of Billund, Denmark. It was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter who initially made wooden household items like ironing boards and stools. Amid the Great Depression, Christiansen pivoted to crafting wooden toys to keep his business running. In 1934, the company adopted the name LEGO, derived from the Danish phrase “leg godt,” meaning “play well.” Coincidentally, LEGO also means “I put together” in Latin. In 1947, LEGO became the first company in Denmark to buy an injection moulding machine, allowing it to produce plastic toys. By 1949, LEGO introduced its first Automatic Binding Bricks, inspired by the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks created by British inventor Hilary Fisher Page. These early bricks were rudimentary but laid the foundation for the modern LEGO system. In 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, Ole’s son, patented the design of the modern LEGO brick. The new design featured interlocking studs and tubes, providing a more stable connection, and this design remains largely unchanged to this day, ensuring compatibility across generations of LEGO sets. These days, LEGO produces around 100 billion bricks per year - about 1,900 bricks per second, and as of 2023, LEGO can be bought in more than 140 countries. LEGO has now produced over 700 billion bricks since 1949. The bricks are made up of around 3,700 unique elements in over 60 colours, ranging from basic bricks to highly specialized pieces for the Technic sets. These bricks are combined into proper sets ranging from basic builds of a hundred or so pieces to advanced-level kits comprising a few thousand pieces. There is a drawback though - the cost.

LEGO’s high cost can be attributed to several factors. There’s precision manufacturing that sees strict tolerances and high-quality materials to ensure durability and compatibility, these increase production costs. On the R&D side, the company spends millions on developing new themes, moulds, and technologies. This works hand-in-hand with licensing fees, there are hefty costs involved when designing kits that represent actual products like with the McLaren P1 and the Mercedes-AMG Formula One cars and all the other awesome car kits. sing costs, which are passed on to consumers. Another addition to the costs is the way the company has needed to keep up with the times, transitioning to eco-friendly materials and packaging adds to operational expenses. These days though, you may have noticed that you can buy knock-off LEGO kits that are the same size and brick count as the original, and they can even be built with using the same instruction manuals or videos. Being a cheap version, there are some differences, sometimes the fake bricks don’t click together as well as they should and some colours are not exact. On the finer details like the sticker kits, you can usually notice a distinct difference, but the only way you’d really see the difference is if you have an original LEGO build parked alongside one of the rip-off kits. The cost difference is mad, you can buy a few fake kits for the same price as an original one, but is that something you’d consider doing? Many people are against fakes, they wouldn’t be caught dead in flea market Nikes, but for some reason when it comes to products like this, that sorta goes out the window. There are loads of dedicated LEGO build and review channels, and lately some of them have compared the quality of the kits to each other. Check it out - will this influence your decision to buy a knock-off kit or not?

Take a look at the YouTube video that shows off the difference between the original LEGO Technic kit versus a "cheap knock-off" kit available from the likes of Shein and Temu. Is the quality difference enough to dissuade you from buying the fakes, or would you rather spend the same amount as yu would on LEGO as you would for four dodgy kits?: I didn't expect that! Lego McLaren P1 42172 vs Cheap Chinese copy comparison | Mr.BricksTeen

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Article Tags: News Versus Knock-off Fake SXdrv Comparison LEGO Technic LEGO