Mega Brands is a children’s toy manufacturer that is based out of Quebec, Canada.  They also have a European headquarters that is based out of Belgium.  Some of their products include popular brands like MEGA BLOKS, ROSE ART, MAGNEXT, and BOARD DUDES.  This is a company that really seems to have everything in order and the right priorities.  The reason I say this is because while looking at their website I ran across a couple of pages that really impressed me.  The first page that I ran across was titled “Play Safe”.  On this site it talks about the companies relationship with Intertek, which is one of the world’s leading safety testing authorities.  The other page was titled “Promise to Parents”.  I do not even want to summarize what they have on this page because I do not want to do a disservice to them so go check it out for yourself.  These 2 things on top of great products are what make this company absolutely wonderful and at the top of the game in my opinion.  With all of the nervousness these days about toy safety and child safety I believe that this company is one that is headed in the right direction.

Outside of their products and promises, the awesome thing about this company is that SolidWorks plays a major role in the design process of their products.  On top of that, a lot of their designers are either CSWP certified or are in the process of getting certified.  What all this boils down to is great products designed with great software by great designers.  The NEO Shifter is one of Mega Brands products that was designed if SolidWorks.  On the main stage at the Tuesday morning General Session at SolidWorks WORLD 2009 some images were shown.  The first one you see below is the SolidWorks part file of the NEO Shifter in the “ball” state and after that you see some of the marketing images of the resulting toys.

This year at SolidWorks WORLD Mega Brands was a part of the CSWP event as well that was held on Monday night.  It all began at the event registration desk where each person that signed up to attend the members only CSWP event were given a MAGNEXT block.  It was funny to see engineers immediately start dissecting the block’s and then end up chasing their magnetic balls around the floor of the Dolphin hotel.  Once everyone got to the CSWP event their was more gifts for everyone.  Everyone there received one of the NEO Shifters that you see above (I got the 1st one shown, the red one).  All I can say is boxes upon boxes of NEO Shifters were floating around that night.  On top of all that there was a couple of competition’s that were held for the attendees.  One was held in the weeks leading up to SolidWorks WORLD 2009.  It was a contest on who could design the coolest iCoaster.  Rob Walkers walked away with the win in this contest with a very cool design and an even cooler animation of the ball on the iCoaster.  Here are a couple of images of some features in his iCoaster.

To check out the awesome animations that Rob did you can download the birds eye view video here and his other video here.

The other contest that was held that night was a timed iCoaster design between some of the different tables at the event.  This was a lot of fun to see as engineers were forced to work together in a timed environment to come up with the coolest and wildest design.  Unfortunately I do not have any images of this for you.

This company is a very cool company with great SolidWorks designed products.  If you are looking for a kid’s gift and see any of the Mega Brands products in the store, check them out and support the SolidWorks design community.