ACT Museum

“So if you can’t tell the difference, why pay the difference?” – Tyco Super Blocks

After LEGO’s last major patents covering its building blocks expired in 1978, several companies jumped on the opportunity to produce similar bricks. Tyco Toys, a toy train and car company, released Super Blocks in 1984. Super Blocks were compatible and nearly identical to LEGO bricks. Tyco heavily campaigned their bricks as an equal but cheaper alternative (even to the point of declaring war). 

In 1984, LEGO initiated a lawsuit against Tyco in Hong Kong, where molds of the bricks were made. They contended that the designs were derived from copied drawings. LEGO won the case, however in the same year Tyco preemptively filed a lawsuit in the US, fighting for the rights to manufacture similar interlocking bricks. The case was filed in New Jersey, a strategy to prevent LEGO from commonly filing in a location inconvenient for defendants.

While the lawsuit continued in the US District Court, by 1986 Super Blocks accounted for almost 25% of Tyco’s $87.7 million in sales. Though it was just a fraction of LEGO’s $600 million in global sales, Super Blocks accounted for nearly 20% of the US interlocking brick market. 

In 1987, the US District Court ruled that Tyco could continue producing Super Blocks, however the company had to stop advertising its interlocking bricks as LEGO. Hours after the ruling, Tyco President Richard Grey called the ruling “Simply good news. The fact of the matter is we will be able to continue to make blocks exactly the same without having to change one bit… I don’t consider that a victory for LEGO.”

Allan Zellnick, the attorney for LEGO, stated, “We’re delighted with the outcome. We believe Tyco has gotten the sales because it has been fooling the public into believing the blocks are the same and cheaper. In fact, only six of the Tyco blocks are identical to Lego’s; the rest are totally different. If Tyco is forced to market its blocks honestly and truthfully, we believe we’ll beat the pants off them.” Both Tyco and LEGO saw this lawsuit as a win, and ultimately this outcome benefited consumers.

A few months before the ruling Tyco released a military line of Super Blocks set. LEGO discourages kids from playing with modern weapons, and avoids modern militaristic sets. Grey stated, “Lego really believes that Legoland is this fairyland where only good things happen. This is not the real world. There are no bad guys in Legoland… If they choose to ignore military toys, that doesn’t mean they can exclude them from kids.” Despite success from rigorous marketing, Tyco produced its last Super Blocks sets in 1991.