Tyco vs Lego: “If you can’t tell the difference, why pay more?”
An advertisement in this 1986 issue of Working Mother sets us off on a fun rabbit hole. Tyco Super Blocks, Lego-compatible bricks, were released in the eighties shortly after the Lego patent expired, and this is just one ad in a series in which Tyco tried to take a bite out of the Lego market.
Where things get especially exciting for us is when we trace the history of Tyco and find that Mattel now owns Tyco (see this 1997 New York Times article), meaning that when Mattel bought Mega last year the company was getting into a market its corporate family tree had visited before.
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I didn’t realize Mattel bought Tyco — so that means that Dino Riders Classics really is a possibility (or explains how they could do that Dinosaur Imaginext line and not get their pants sued)!!!
Dino Riders Classics would be awesome and terrible! Terrible in that it would be so freaking expensive.
I remember having a couple of “not-Lego” sets back in the early 1990s…it was definitely not up to par, haha!
I love Lego, and habe always been a bit of a brick snob. Though I bought a bunch of Transformers Micro-Changers, I am still devastated that the D&D license went to Kre-O. And I am no fan of Mega Bloks.
@Wolf – Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast owns D&D.
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Hasbro owns D&D. They didn’t even need a license.
I know…I just wish they’d outsourced it to Lego instead, though the chances were never high 🙁