We are a Lego family. We were a megablocks family. Then a Duplo family and now a Lego family. Go in order please. Each set up blocks serve a purpose. With babies, the larger blocks are great. Motor skills don't need to be that developed. By the time my oldest was advanced enough to leave those, my youngest was a baby who was the right age to try to eat small blocks, so we had to hang on awhile longer. Then we went to Duplos. They are still large enough that no one's going to eat them, or if they do, they are willful enough to eat anything, so nothing's safe!
Duplos are great. But my sons are space obsessed. The first one naturally obsessed, the second one may have been indoctrinated by the first. As a matter of fact, the baby learned to count down (blast off) before counting up because we had to blast off every single day several times, and a few times before bed.
So we built rockets. Everything was rockets. My husband and I would build all these great things: cars, rabbits, houses, and then ask my so what it was and everything came out "rocket". If he were to have a Rorschach test, every ink blot would look like a different space vehicle. So we gave in. Rockets you want? Rockets you'll get.
But Duplos suck for rockets.
No rounded edges, no sharp corners. So I started slowly with a few ebay lots of lego cylinders, trying to keep a sustainable, planned growth, meant to protect my feet from sharp little pieces and my back from having to bend a pick them up. And I thought I was so smart. But it grew quickly. I had to buy double what I really wanted because if one kid wants a rocket, both kids will want rockets.
Thus was our slow conversion from Duplo to rocket. We still have the Duplos. They are excellent for building rocket garages. Buildings go up quicker, plates are larger. But all the rocket builds are done with legos.
And I was pleasantly surprised at the interoperability between all the various types of modular building blocks. Megablocks are the size of a single Duplo block squared. Megablocks has some poorly-named, poorly-branded Duplo blocks called Mega Mini bloks. They suck. My child first learned the word "cheap" when speaking about the Duplo knock-offs. They aren't engineered to much precision and the plastic is so soft that they often don't click together well and fall apart. Upsetting a 2-4 year old is possibly the worst idea ever. So even as cost-conscious as I am, it's no bargain to buy something that buys you no time away from your kid. Actually, it loses you time trying to either calm your child, or build things for him to avoid the caving in problem. So we ditched the Mega Minis whenever we found ones that had crept into the Ebay lots we'd buy. My oldest would yell out, "found a cheap one!" He'd hold it up high and I'd come and swoop down on it to escort it promptly to the trash can, or the backroom for the Goodwill bin, according to how salvageable it was. I even cleared out his preschool impostors. The teacher allowed me full reign to de-knock-off the Duplo bin.
So we kept the original, large megablocks, which are fine. Four duplos could be made into a square to go beneath a single Mega Blok (that's actually how it's properly spelled, but stay flexible: Craigslist and Ebay listings go with all different iterations of the spelling.) We could mix and match at will. Hopefully I have old photos of some hybrid creations we made to put in this post later when I find them.
We haven't tried the Mega brand Mega Micro Bloks yet. They ahve much better tie-ins with popular characters like Disney Cars or Jake and the Neverland Pirates, etc. So it's a much more dynamic and exciting line up, but scared off from the lack of quality control in the Mega Mini (Duplo knock off) department, I'm not trying it on my own dime.
Well, I'm off to go scavenge to see which older photos I can find to build our chronology!
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