Some companies that make knockoffs of Lego are actually pretty cool. For instance, I believe it is Mega Bloks that makes fairly accurate replicas of various cars, jets and military hardware, which rely more on generic, simply-shaped bricks and not so much on the specially designed bricks that Lego so loves nowadays. They're filling a building block niche Lego doesn't provide, models of real things. Where Lego's stimulation of the imagination lately is more geared to what kids can do with the little men (I think their alternate models have been really going down in coolness, except in the Star Wars segment of the Technic line), Mega Bloks' simpler pieces make their sets easier to build into a model that doesn't look like what the directions say.
Damn, the original hate-filled, judgmental writeup ("DIE all accursed imitators of the one true Lego brick!"), which caused this one, is gone. I don't get to look more reasonable and intelligent by comparison anymore.