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Back in 1998 a line of LEGO-compatible military construction sets hit the market
under the name Block-Men. I was generally pleased with this brand, as I
revealed
here, but it must be admitted that the sets were somewhat overpriced. Still,
as a source for basic bricks in military tan and dark green, they weren’t bad.
They were especially good if you could score them at deep discount, as I was
fortunate enough to do. The bricks themselves were 100% compatible with LEGO,
and the quality of the plastic was very good. The figures were a little weird,
but that’s how it goes.
Anyway, in the years since then, I’ve noticed that the brand has vanished, and
even the old website is defunct. More recently Cobi
bricks have hit the scene with similar military themes (and more,) and a number
of the distinctive elements of the Block-Men have popped up in the Cobi sets
that are viewable online.
Block-Men were produced by DSI Toys, and while searching for info on what might
have become of them, I learned that they
filed for
bankruptcy in October 2003 after receiving
a buyout
offer in January of that year. Well, that explains why they haven’t returned
my calls lately.
I’ve done some minor additional digging, but the only pages that might give
clear info about a Cobi/DSI link (i.e., “did Cobi buy DSI?”) are in Russian, and
I’m not up on my Cyrillic languages.
I don’t know if anyone else cares about this, but it’s of some interest to me if
only for its historical trivia.
Any additional info is much appreciated, and I’ll post anything else I find.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Some info about Block-Men
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| (...) If this webpage is believable (URL) is owned by Meccano - but I can't get confirmation on that from the Meccano homepage, and I honestly doubt it. This Malvina page says: "These toys (Cobi) are distributed only in Belarus and Russia". This (...) (19 years ago, 23-Aug-05, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, FTX)
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