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Subject: 
Re: New Quatro bricks
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.quatro, lugnet.general
Followup-To: 
lugnet.quatro
Date: 
Fri, 13 Aug 2004 08:14:45 GMT
Viewed: 
116 times
  
In lugnet.quatro, Arne Lykke Nielsen wrote:
   Hi,

Just got set 5356, the medium sized Quatro bucket.

And it’s correct, the bricks are made of softer plastic (and they look VERY MUCH like MB’s pre-school bricks!).

I don’t see the resemblance at all. The Mega Bloks “Maxi” bricks, which are the same scale as QUATRO, look to me like a QUATRO-sized brick with PRIMO-style studs. Here’s a photo:

Perhaps you are thinking of the Mega Bloks “Mini” bricks, which are DUPLO-sized, and difficult to tell apart from DUPLO at first glance:

   In fact, the plastic is so soft, that the bricks have very little gripping power. That may be good for little hands to seperate them, but any average developed butterfly can get two bricks to seperate by a flick of its wing.

In other words, they are designed to be used by the target demographic.

   I must admit, I have a hard time imaging why TLC would think they needed something in between the PRIMO and the DUPLO ranges; if thet want to compete with MB, I don’t think this kind of mirroring the MB set-up is the right way to go.

Well, with Mega Bloks holding 50% of the preschool market, compared with LEGO’s 10% (according to a recent news article), it seems to me that PRIMO is not really performing as well as it might. Mega Bloks markets the Maxi bricks with the slogan “Build as big as me!” suggesting that preschoolers like to build tall towers. Neither PRIMO nor DUPLO is really suited to building tall towers. QUATRO is.

Also, while QUATRO is technically “in between” the PRIMO and DUPLO systems, a 1x1 Primo brick is actually the same size as a 3x3 DUPLO brick. This makes PRIMO problematic to interconnect with DUPLO. There is only one way to stack a DUPLO brick on top of a PRIMO brick, using the relatively rare PRIMO/DUPLO interface brick.

A QUATRO 1x1, on the other hand, would be the same size as a 2x2 DUPLO brick, and can interface easily with any 2x2 DUPLO brick, which is the most common DUPLO part. I would prefer that 2x4, 2x6, and 2x8 DUPLO bricks interfaced as well, but perhaps they will change the molds going forward (it’s a pretty easy fix).

Also, for the record, Mega Bloks Maxi bricks do not interface with any other scale Mega Bloks bricks, as far as I know.

   For AFOL’s thinking about using QUATRO as filler in Lego System MOC’s, forget it. Softer plastic, a little difference in colors, low gripping power, it’s just not going to work. Keep with DUPLO for filling.

Well, as a train builder, I plan to use lots of QUATRO bricks as filler under the mountains on my layout. They have a huge advantage over DUPLO in both price and weight. I can lay down DUPLO baseplates, sketch out the landscape in QUATRO, fill it over in DUPLO, then skin the whole thing in System brick.

And I think (hope) we’ll be surprised at other uses AFOLs find for it.

Rick Clark

FUT lugnet.quatro



Message is in Reply To:
  New Quatro bricks
 
Hi, Just got set 5356, the medium sized Quatro bucket. And it's correct, the bricks are made of softer plastic (and they look VERY MUCH like MB's pre-school bricks!). In fact, the plastic is so soft, that the bricks have very little gripping power. (...) (20 years ago, 10-Jun-04, to lugnet.quatro, lugnet.general)

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