[eps]

Last year I bought two Autoblox cars, two months apart. First was of a very high manufacturing quality, it snapped together very tightly, everything aligned and it was just a pleasure to hold and play with. It was the reason why I bought another one. Got it from the same place, exact same packaging, authenticity label and what not. And what a wobbly piece of shit it was. Major quality problems. And what is strange, it left me far more pissed with the company than it wiuld've if the first toy were of a subpar quality.

I guess the point is that if you are going to differentiate by delivering high quality products, you just absolutely cannot let the quality slip. Ever. Otherwise it's an instant trip to the pile of "regular products" and a long a painful climb back up to gain back customers trust.

[mkramlich]

Yep. I've always loved how LEGO has such high precision standards. I once bought a LEGO set where the pieces fit together very poorly -- oh wait, no I didn't -- and realized it was MEGABloks, not LEGO. This was many years ago, so I can't speak as to MEGABloks quality today, but I put together a new LEGO kit recently and the fit/precision was still awesome.

LEGO's gone probably 20-30 years without letting me down in terms of physical quality of the pieces. I can't say that about any other vendor I've bought from over the same time period (not even Apple, for example). Well, not counting consumables like toothpaste. I've never had a bad experience with say Colgate.

[samlittlewood]

Megablox was still utter rubbish as of about six months ago. My 8yo Lego fanatic son was given a kit by his cousins - "It's just like Lego" - err, no - many of the parts would not stay attached.