Sometimes it pays to spend a little extra money on name brand toys for kids rather than go for a cheap imitation. In this episode of Gear Daddy, Daddy Troy explores some knock off products to watch out for. How do Legos stack up against other construction toys when it comes to building blocks? Are Crayola crayons the best crayon for your dollar? What about first aid bandages? Is the Band Aid brand better? DadLabs ep. 400.

DADDY TROY: Welcome back to Gear Daddy. I’m your host, Daddy Troy. These two building blocks may look the same but they’re not and today we’re going to talk about what differentiates between this little block that works with little fingers and helps to build civil engineers of the future and this plastic piece of junk.

All joking aside, today’s episode is all about off brands that don’t work as opposed to brands that are tried, tested and true.

This is a Lego brand. This is called Duplo. These are made for kids with smaller hands, developing kids, and these Duplos stick together so nicely. They hold up to repeated use and when you pull them apart they have a little bit of stick and they come apart. They’re great for building with. I love this product.

This is a knock off of the Duplos and you can see the difference immediately and feel the difference. They’re soft and squishy and when I bounce them on a table, here’s the Lego – a nice high sound and here is the knock off – it has a dull sound to it, not as nice of a plastic.

When you use these over and over again they don’t stick together anymore. Kids get frustrated with these and in my family they don’t even want to use them anymore. The problem is they get mixed up with these so I’ve separated them in my family and these are going away never to be seen again. We’re a Duplos only family.

The next product I want to talk about are crayons. I like Crayola. They make really funky colors. You’ve used them as a kid. But more importantly they don’t break as easily. Here’s a knock off brand. It looks almost like the Crayola brand. This knock off you get in cheap coloring books or at restaurants. These break really easily and they don’t go on as smoothly as well.

You don’t have to ditch these. You can melt them down and use them as wax in some sort of creative project. But use the Crayolas for coloring.

The last thing I want to talk about is not a toy but they are these adhesive bandages. These are by 3M you’ve also got Bandaids. They stick well on kids and they come off easily with less pain. Last week my wife and I decided to buy these off brand band aids because my daughter liked the rainbow coloring but when you put these on your finger, check this out, I put them on my kid’s finger and after two or three flexes, look, boom, they’re already coming off. They’re not worth the price of buying.

That’s all this week for Gear Daddy if you have some ideas of off brands that don’t work go over to DadLabs.com in the community. We’ve already got a discussion going. Figure out when you should not buy an off brand and when can you save a few bucks by buying an off brand.

This week’s shout out goes to Sean one of our viewers in D.C. Thanks Sean for all the positive comments. We’ll see you next time on Gear Daddy and all week long at DadLabs.com.