Some people [1] have linked the rise of Lego and the decline of Meccano [2] to the decline of manufacturing in the western world, as Lego doesn't teach Meccano's lessons about L section beams, diagonal braces, gantries in tension and compression, and so on.
While mostly reasonable, I think this is brushing over two large sections of Lego's products: Technic and Mindstorms.
The pieces from Technic are much more Meccano-like, in that they don't all have studs on top, and there are holes down the sides of the pieces with "bolts" to connect them together at arbitrary angles. (And there is cogs, axles, chains and motors.)
Mindstorms is an actual real robot, in the hands of kids, along with a fairly well defined progression of methods of programming it[3] (the Lego supplied methods have several stages of simple/easy to more complicated/powerful, and the third party languages include C/C++ and so on). It is actually one of the major factors in my learning to program. Having a programmable microcontroller so tightly integrated into a 3D-printer-like system gives so much power and flexibility for experimentation, especially in the hands of intelligent 10-15 year olds, who aren't being stimulated by school at all.
As someone who loved/loves both his Meccano and Lego, I think the normal Lego < Meccano < Lego Mindstorms, in terms of promoting technical thinking & experimentation.
Likewise, Mindstorms was one of the big reasons I got into "real" programming. Before Mindstorms, I played with a lot of web stuff (mostly HTML and some gaudy JS). But with Mindstorms, I started doing real programming work. First with their "block builder", then moving into Not-Quite-C. Programming the Mindstorms was super fun and super frustrating...nothing quite like working on an embedded device with limited memory and processing as a 12 year old. Plus the robot itself would typically tear itself apart from too much torque.
Mindstorms also propelled me into science fair, where several of my projects were Mindstorm-based robotics. And science fair is what propelled me into science in general, leading me to a career in biology and computer science.
And then there's the FIRST LEGO League competition [1], which takes middle- and junior high-level teams and these sets of MINDSTORMS and has them work together to build a robot for competitive play, teaching STEM principles on the way. There are thousands of teams all over the world, and it's a wonderful experience. The program is also a funnel into the high school-level FIRST Robotics Competition [2], which graduates into actual machining, CADing, programming, and so on, as well as community outreach and business skills from raising funds and structuring a sustainable team.
These Meccano constructors are similar to what we had in post-soviet Russia, although I've never heard that name. Then about the end of 90-s LEGO gained popularity, and indeed, 'soviet constructor', as we called these sets, stopped being sold.
I always wondered whether they were really suitable for smaller kids, considering smaller parts et al.
I was reminded of those too! I had the set in the 2nd photo, and remember building some of the things in the manual. Of course, as a kid, I quickly lost most of the bolts and nuts, so I can see the value of LEGO in the long run…
EDIT: Of course, in the spirit the typical ru-net, a lot of comments at that link are along the lines of "LEGO is for idiots, look at what we played with as kids".
I am Russian and moved to the states when I was 1 year old. My parents would always talk about how our constructor here in the states compared to what they had in Russia. This is the first time I have seen a picture of it, now it all makes sense. It's really a bit funny for me because when I think about it, those sets are exactly what I expect from Russia.
I'm not sure if I am the only one, but some of the ads/banners/images on the second link did not appear to be completely worksafe; I didn't see anything really offensive, but you might caution people in case they don't want pictures of girls in swimsuits on their screen at work.
For those in the US, Meccano's are what are now sold here as "Erector" sets. The older Erector sets were actually a slightly different design from the 1920s by Gilbert, but those are long gone and sorely missed by many.
I wonder how much research the marketing team did on setting up their brand with that name, considering their consumers are parents and young children.
Half the fun I had playing with Lego when I was young was unfolding plots between the minifigs - you'd build something, then have your minifigs interact with it. I'm not really familiar with Meccano, but as I understand it there's no 'human' in it with which you can project yourself. Meccano can let you build cool items, but Lego can let you build cool items, an environment to put them in, and people to interact with both of those things. Lego seems more versatile in satisfying a flexible imagination.
Also, suggesting that the decline in quality of modern engineers is Lego's fault is an interesting variant on the usual 'kids these days' crotchety-old-man talk.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1333215/Why-Britain-n... [2] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8Q-tdV67Suc/TfhcQxf63JI/AAAAAAAAAT...