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Mr L F Braun <braunli1@pilot.msu.edu> writes:
> That's an excellent set of pictures and a good overview, but I'm still
> lamenting the end of Tente's naval ship offerings--the Mega Bloks ships
> still look far too pixellated in terms of hull curvature. Better to have no
> curvature at all, dagnabit! But the deck looks pretty good and I do like
> the new crane piece as well as the incorporation of moving elevators. The
> Kittyhawk is far better looking than that battleship (which really doesn't
> look anything like any battleship ever constructed), but IMHO there's still
> a ways left to go. On the other hand, they *are* bricks and therefore can
> be easily MOCed. ;) Chris, how's the brick quality compared to those in
> the "Battleship"?
The elevators don't actually work very well. Megabloks don't have any
pieces with slots like Lego does, so the designer had to fake it using
plates and some of their 2 x 2 double-sided pieces (plate with lugs on
both sides).
There are a bigger variety of pieces with the newer sets, however. This
includes 1 x 3 x 1/3 plate and 1 x 6 x 1 bricks. Still no sign of any
1 x 3 x 1 bricks or 2 x 3 pieces (except the reverse slopes).
I *think* that the quality of pieces is on the rise. Its kind of hard
to tell, really. A piece that was a problem is the 2 x 2 x 1 roof bricks.
It looks like there were two moulds, because the bricks aren't all quite
the same. A row of them, side-by-side, will often have problems, with
a couple of neighbours being very tight, and the other neighbours not
as tight. Also, the gems (1 x 1 x 1/3 round) have had two distinct moulds.
In one, the join point is on the side of the piece, and often leaves a
small piece of material. The other has the join point on top of the stud,
and those pieces are better (although there will occasionally be a strand
of stray plastic up there, too).
In general the pieces are slightly smaller than the equivalent Lego
pieces. If you put a line of 1 x 2 x 1 bricks on the large Lego baseplate,
you will find it bending up as the bricks force it to be a bit smaller.
Similarly, there is often a visible gap between bricks in a large wall.
Some of the smaller bricks (typically 1 x 2 x 1) are occasionally very
hard to seat, again suggesting non-uniform production.
I'm not an expert on plastics, but I recall someone saying in one of
the newsgroups that the material that Ritvik uses for Megabloks goes
through more shrinkage than the ABS that Lego uses. That in itself could
explain most of the things I see, and would suggest it could be quite
hard to avoid the problems.
There are some interesting pieces that Megabloks has that Lego doesn't.
I should take some pictures one day and put up a page of just those.
Right now, I'm working on the missing inventories for the ProBuilder line.
Then, I have to do a bunch of disassembly and putting-away, getting ready
for some guests for fireworks-watching (Canada Day coming up).
--
Don't design inefficiency in - it'll happen in the implementation.
Chris Gray cg@ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA
http://www.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA/cg/
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: new Megabloks ProBuilder pages
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| (...) That's an excellent set of pictures and a good overview, but I'm still lamenting the end of Tente's naval ship offerings--the Mega Bloks ships still look far too pixellated in terms of hull curvature. Better to have no curvature at all, (...) (24 years ago, 27-Jun-00, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)
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