I haven't heard the Tykes, but I don't see how they can possibly be worse than the Onkyos. I had the Onkyos for about a year, and they were terrible. The sub was decent, but the speakers were incredibly muddy sounding and lacked any detail.
Looking at the other side of David's comments ... We have the Tykes here, and they are an excellent system, especially when used with something like the Kenwood receiver it is bundled with ... It won't knock down walls, but it IS a nice, accurate system ...