Mega Bloks Micro Bloks Tub (1000) Review

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It's virtually impossible to review this product without referencing "you know who", the big Danish toy company whose patented building blocks or "bricks" dominate the market. The maker and my supplier of this product is the loyal oppposition, Megabrands, a Montreal-based company that has numerous toys and play items on the market, including their Mega Bloks Mini (the same scale as Duplo), and this product, Mega Blocks Micro (always specify "Micro").
And these bricks do interchange wonderfully for regular-sized Lego's -- the red is a little deeper but the construction looks identical except that this brand doesn't have the name of product tattoo'ed on each "hub." Who cares? It seems to me that there is a slightly more abundant proportion of the larger play building bricks -- that is, the same scale, but relatively more two-by-four hubs (a mainstay of Boomer-era Lego sets) or fewer "one by ones" and such that I've checked compared to similar-sized competitor sets. I checked, and this Mega Bloks 1000 piece ensemble includes 120 of the coveted two-by-four building bricks: that's 20 each of blue, yellow, white, red, black and green.
But the main point is, more for the money. Even after paying the not-inconsiderable shipping fee*, I got a thousand blocks in a tub and they averaged about $0.03-1/3 per brick. The tub is amply sized, with easily two-thirds of the available interior room left for adding whatever. They're cheaper, too: starter sets from Big Danish Toy Co. I have researched (I also bought one) seem generally run to about five to seven cents per brick, and ordering pieces "a la carte" thru the manufacturer's USA online sales division will almost certainly exceed that. This matters because costs mount up quickly: ask anyone with experience with this genre of building blocks and they'll probably tell you that the need for more building bricks usually blooms with the child's (or adult's) blooming creativity; and cubic volume being what it is, the number of new bricks needed can shoot up exponentially.
*In all fairness I should say that this product was fulfilled from an East Coast source and took no longer to get to me than any other ground UPS from the Northeast to Chicago.
By comparison, a smaller, 405-piece tub I just now reviewed from [big Toy Co.] will let you make one of three separate houses at a time, but the possibilities of creative play are left open. This thousand-piece product gives a bigger, slightly sturdier-feeling tub and almost two and-a-half times the blocks. There are enough pieces in this set to do several rudimentary structures at a time, or some pretend vehicles.
To go with the Mega Bloks Micro line, unless you switch-hit you'll forego the competitor's profusion of movie tie-ins, infrastructure projects like jet airports and jet airplanes, and idealized Danish suburbs and farms (Danish roofs really are hipped that steeply). This product is not without tie-ins, including one sci-fi compatible line that seem very space opera, not unlike 'Star Wars' but not 'Star Wars'. But mostly it's for people who want to, or want their children to, just dig in and build creatively. I did notice one tendency for Mega Bloks Micro bricks to stick together perhaps a little too well at times. But I don't want to blow this out of proportion as I am a notorious klutz with small objects, perhaps even more than as a child. Hence the overall five rating, and I don't know why the star-counts below didn't tot up properly. Four for fun, five for the other attributes, I'd say.
As a starter -- why not? As an "adder," especially for open-ended building -- I recommend this thousand-piece box of Mega Bloks Micro highly. I should also say that Mega Brands the manufacturer makes several other lines of bricks that are all compatible one to another the way Lego+Duplo can be married = the same-sized equivalent of Duplos being the Mega Bloks "Mini" line. You'll find sets of them in abundance at this site, too.
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A note: Mega Blok products are manufactured in Canada. Any LEGO product I've seen (and I've seen a few) indicate provenence either in one of several European countries, or in Mexico. Neither contains Chinese components that I can tell. - a.s.
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BIG BOX OF CONSTRUCTION BLOCKS. USE YOU IMAGINATION TO CREATE WHAT EVERY YOU WANT. COMPATIBLE WITH MOST MAJOR BRANDS. CHOCKING HAZARD - CONTAINS SMALL PARTS - NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3

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