Best "Lego"-like Building Set
My son received these as a gift for Christmas from my best friend.  He has the 80 piece set and I thought it would be great to expand and create bigger houses and sky scrapers.  I don't know what I was waiting on because this is the first set you buy of Mega Bloks!<br /><br />They are basically large &#34;Legos&#34;, but not Legos because clearly Duplo is the toddler version of the Lego brand.  However, these are much more affordable than Duplo and in my opinion much better.  I grew up in a time when you had Legos YOU created the scene and your own imagination/creativity was your only limit.  Whereas with Duplo and Legos now, you buy a set and you can only build the set that is pictured.  Don't lose a piece or lose the instruction or the box.  Not Mega Bloks!  Mega Bloks steps in where Legos left off.<br /><br />Pros:<br /><br />1.  No limits on creativity!  You have 150 pieces to make whatever you want.  There are example things you can make pictured right on the bag, but for the most part there are more than enough pieces to create and build to your heart's desire.  There are a range of 1 to 4 space pieces.  There are flat pieces and pieces that curve to make the perfect roof of a house or hood/trunk of a car.<br /><br />2.  Ease of putting together and taking apart.  Because these are meant for toddlers/preschoolers they are the perfect size for their little hands.  They fit together easily and come apart with ease, so there's no struggling either way.  Sometimes they will slip out as the plastic is really smooth, but I'd rather deal with that than trying to find pliers to take them apart.<br /><br />3.  The bag is a great place to store them!  The bag is sturdy enough to keep so that you have a place for all your blocks.  The bag is roomy so you can add a more Mega Bloks into the bag if need be.  For example there are few Mega Blok trucks that my son already had.  There's enough room in the bag to add to those bag.  As those sets are compatible with this one, once the magic in the truck as worn out (the trucks are geared more towards 1-2 year olds whereas my 3 year old has moved on to other types of trucks) you can get rid of the truck, but keep the Bloks, and thus, keep building your Mega Bloks collection for a few more years until he/she is ready for actual Legos or traditional Lego sized Mega Bloks.<br /><br />4.  Stepping on a Mega Blok in comparison to a regular sized Lego does not induce as much pain!<br /><br />Cons:<br /><br />1.  Really big and take up space.  Because they are so big, the bag is huge and takes up a lot space.  They also be a bit noisy because of the hallowed out plastic and how big they are.  The noisy reverberates when they crash together.<br /><br />2.  Does not comes with a car base.  In the 80 piece set, there is a car base so that if you wanted to, you could build a car that actually rolls.  There is nothing in this set that allows you roll a car you might create and so you would need the 80 piece set in order to that.  It would be nice if he had two cars to build and roll back and forth together, but you can't have everything.  [[ASIN:B007GE75HY Mega Bloks First Builders Big Building Bag, 80-Piece (Classic)]]<br /><br />I give this set five stars because I know that in conjunction with my son's other sets he will have these for several years.  He really enjoys playing with them and building skyscrapers and making them crash down and building them back up.  The cons I listed are really minor issues that I can live with, especially since my son enjoys them so much.  Happy building!