Lego vs. Mega Bloks; An Engineering Approach

I just graduated in spring 2013 with a mechanical engineering degree, and the sole purpose of this blog post is to weigh in on the famous Lego vs. Mega Bloks debate with my "professional" opinion.

I remember recieving a Mega Bloks monster truck as a child. About half way through the build, a few pieces would pop off when I pressed a piece on. It was very frustrating, and I put it away. When I was a little older, I tried to put it together again. This time i only needed to place one or two more pieces and the thing would have been complete. However, random pieces started popping off again when I would press a different piece into place.

Therefore, I "maturely" remedied the situation by "zooming" the truck off the top of the stairs and watching it flip over and over, crashing, smashing, and tumbling its way down. It was a glorious sight as the beast dissapeared into a haze of purple bloks that were flung off during its first and last journey. At last the pathetic excuse for a toy came to busted halt at the bottom of the stairs. Barley recognizable. It was missing a wheel or two and shed most of it's body on the way down. Meanwhile, I was standing at the top of the stairs with an evil laugh thinking to myself, "If you're going to radomly lose bloks, then I'm going to give you a reason to lose them!" Watching that set explode was definitely the most fun I had with it.

That pretty much ended my interest in ever getting another megabloks set. In fact, I even asked my aunt and uncle for the reciept on a mega bloks skate park set they bought me one year for my birthday so that I could buy a lego set. I wound up getting 4950 Loader-Dozer from the Rock Raiders theme so it was a great trade in my opinion.

Many people (such as parents looking for a cheaper alternative) think that it is just a personal preference. These people believe that since Mega Bloks are "compatible" with Lego, that means they are just as good. I am here to tell them that they are wrong.

When I was younger, my opinion was the following: "Lego bricks are better than Mega Bloks because they stick together better." Even though I have gained a great deal of technical background and understanding since those days, my opinion has largley remain unchanged. This brings us to our first point.

Quality

Even at a really young age, I was able to tell the difference in the plastic quality between Lego and Mega Bloks.
-Color: Lego bricks are always so rich in color and shine, and Mega Bloks always looked like they have sat out in the sun too long.
-Density: Lego bricks are more dense than Mega Bloks. Density is the unit of mass per volume. If you take a 1X4 Lego Brick and compare it to a 1X4 Mega Block, they have roughly the same volume, but the Lego brick weighs more, therefore it has more mass per volume and is more dense. At any rate it is made of a stronger plastic. This higher density and stronger plastic ensures less flexing when pieces are pressed together. This results in a tighter fit and the Lego pieces do not randomly pop off like Mega Bloks do.
-Control: This is just a guess, but I also figure that the quality control for Lego is more strict than for Mega Bloks.

Tolerances

My final semester in school, I took a class called Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerances (GD&T). It has everything to do with the actual manufactre of a part. Take a lego brick for example. Lets say that a certain lego brick has to be 1 inch* in length. Well in the real world, that lego brick will likely never be exactly 1 inch. In fact 3 different bricks can be 1.011", 0.996", and 1.009". Very close to 1 inch, but not. I believe that Lego has strict tolerances. For this particular part the dimension may be 1+/-0.01". This means that the lego brick can be between 0.990" and 1.010" and pass quality control. Since the first brick fell out of this tolerance by 0.001", it would be discarded. (Probably thrown back into the oven and re-melted to try again). Mega Blok's tolerances are probably less strict. In this made up example, they'd be closer to 1+/-0.05" with a range of 0.95" to 1.05" so all three Mega Bloks of the same lengths mentioned before would pass quality control making it easier to get a piece that doesn't hold strong. Holding dimensions to a higher tolerance is more expensive on the company's end, Lego puts more money into quality control. because they have a brand name associated with high quality. This allows them to charge more for retail compared to Mega Bloks.

These tolerances would apply to every dimension on a brick. Take a 1X4 brick for example. There are height, depth, and width dimensions that must fall within tolerances, 8 diamter dimensions of the studs on top, 3 diameter dimensions of the tubes underneath. And probably a whole lot more. Also the studs have to be the right distance away from each other so that they are small enough to fit inside the bottom of another brick, but large enough so they press fit in tightly and do not allow the brick on top to slip off. Incredible design work when you think about it.

To recap: From my youthful experiences and recently gained technical understanding, my "professional" and largley biased opinion is as follows;

"Lego bricks are better than Mega Bloks because they are held to a higher tolerance." which...simply put...means...THEY STICK TOGETHER BETTER!

Keep Laughing! (This one's a cheap shot) From a literature standpoint, Lego is still better. It's name has foreign language roots. All Mega Bloks does is teaches kids how to spell blocks wrong....

I will leave you with a great quote from Family Guy.

Peter: You got Legos? Aw, sweet! Lois only buys me Mega Bloks.
Lois: They're the same thing, Peter.
Peter: You know what, Lois? They are not the same thing. And the sooner you get that through your thick skull, the sooner we can get this marriage back on track.

*Even though I'm from the USA, to all my UK or other country readers out there, I love the
metric system and I really wish America would switch...