The Goodness of Lego-like products

[deltarex101]

I have been a collector of lego from 2008

then on March 2012 ( summer break ) I made a interesting discovery

First. I was just then surfing the net for some cool lego creation when suddenly a huge file of lego-like products began to appear which for me is just a low quality plastic dangerously selling in the market, but at that time I was very curious at the military section I discovered they have many

sets that was cheap and very interesting design.

And so I began my Adventure

to the "underworld" of the legoworld and so I went to the flea market and purchase a few of them. the company's name 1. KAZI 2. Enligthen and so I was not so surprised about the condition of the Kazi set that proves to be a JUNK

but to the enlighten set it was near to lego like 80-90%

that have some little troubles like there copying of lego sets ( ferrari I even bought it )

and so this continued my "hobby" of purchasing the best of them and using their designs I would use them to create my own version

and then I discovered a trouble between the two the real fake lego's and the hard working fake lego's

Real Fake legos

- this guys are the real trouble maker their the ones who are destroying Lego and the company sets and making a fortune in their hidden scam the example of these are ( Kazi, Ligo, some I cannot understand chinese logos)

Hard working fake legos

- well this guys main motive is 1. Get rich 2. Give the best quality like 80-90% of the bricks there are few in the market that you can really depend on and most of their sets have still mishaps but still you can use them on your lego bricks ex. ( Enlighten, Star Diamond etc..) these two have been tested by me and I found that they have okay/ good quality but still lego has still the best bricks out there

Now I have told my story on how I have been participating on these "knock-offs " sets.Now I have gathered a good and bad points to the use of these bricks:

Bad

1. They have low QUALITY AND THEY WILL CHEAT ON YOU AND FAKE YOU!!!

2. They can be Dangerous for the Health

3. You will waste some good earned money and get some bad quality plastic

Good

1. The third-world kids can have own lego-like bricks

2. You can find pieces that are rare to those who can't afford the set or on bricklink

3. There good for displaying

4. They (good company) can be use on lego too

Plz could you tell me about the ideas on your mind about the knock-offs and tell me did you like it or not about the sets that you bought.

Cheers!!! :laugh: :sweet:

Pictures:

[Fugazi]

The clone brand discussion on Eurobricks happens in the Community forum. I will move your thoughts there where you can carry on.

[RaincloudDustbin]

Umm,no I find them insulting to LEGO

[Lyichir]

On the one hand, yes, it does allow those without access to real Lego to experience some of the same joy.

But it's far more complicated than that. Because part of the reason why Lego has trouble expanding their market in these countries is that knockoffs like these are already readily available, often at a far lower price than Lego can afford to sell their own products at.

I have little against brands like Mega Bloks, which suffers only from lower quality in both materials and set design. But Enlighten is far worse than that. Enlighten has a history of copying Lego all the way down to copying the molds of specialized parts (not just the basic bricks, like with most clone brands) and even copying entire sets (which has gotten them into serious legal trouble with Lego in the past). Moreover, while some AFOLs champion the notion that competition from clone brands breeds success for Lego, I would argue that the kind of success it would result in would be against fans' interests; after all, the only way Lego could compete with clone brands like this in the markets they dominate would be to lower their prices, and by extension, their quality. In those markets, there's little room for a premium toy brand like Lego as long as cheaper options remain available.

[deltarex101]

"would be to lower their prices"

Yup that's the best option that will be left for Lego to win the battle

[HawkLord]

Lego lowering their prices almost feels like they would be stooping to the knock-off company's level. These days, almost everything gets knocked-off. Sure, companies can spend alot getting their legal teams to pursue the knock-off artists or they could just ignore them entirely.

Look at other toys like Transformers - those get knocked-off the time and yet Hasbro and TakTomy don't really pursue the knock-off companies to the fullest extent they could. It's not worth their time and they know they make a superior product. Lego should feel confident in the same position.

[Hrw-Amen]

Well, on a personal level I would not buy the knock offs. I have heard good things about the Enlighten train sets, but they are such obvious copies as to make it a pirate act to own one.

I understand what you are saying about the price in developing markets and I have some experience of that. Although I live in the UK my wife's family are from Indonesia. When we have visited Jakarta to see our relatives and i have gone shopping with my nephew to buy him some real LEGO, I have found it to be about three times the price I pay for it at home. This in a country where most people earn and survive on about a quarter of my wages. (At least based on my brotherinlaw's salary.)

So I do wonder who can actually afford to buy real LEGO in these countries? Certainly not those people bringing up children. Even the knock off brands were about the same price I would pay for a real LEGO set at home.

As a result i guess the sales in those countries must be pretty poor.

But the joy LEGO can bring is so much. My nephew was really pleased even with the tiny set we bought for him as he could see it was a quality product. But unfortunately he is not likely to ever get another one.

[seahorsy]

I don't like them I like lego better

[LEGO Guy Bri]

I can't say I'd ever buy any of it, but as a young teen I liked and held onto a few of my brother's Megablok sets (only because they did a better job than LEGO at a skate park; still flimsy sh*t). I don't like the look of Enlighten, they blatantly copied LEGO, even down to their figures faces, and the "Frisco Fe"??? That really angered me... Nothing seems original to them. The part I do like and agree on, is the fact that many more can afford these sets. Every kid should be able to explore their imagination through building

Edited November 2, 2012 by LEGO Guy Bri

[Snark]

I've always thought brand loyalty to be a rather stupid concept as far as the consumer is concerned, so I just buy whatever appeals to me regardless of brand. As a result, my collection of bricks is roughly made out of 50% Lego, 30% Kreo and 20% Mega.

And yeah, as Hrw-Amen mentioned, Lego is prohibitively expensive in some countries. If Lego wants to have a shot at generating greater market share, they're just going to have to bite the bullet and reduce prices.

[Locomotive Annie]

I'm. a woman of slender means who likes building with Lego, but with surviving on just an Invalid's pension I can very rarely afford genuine Lego unless it's either cheap second hand or if new heavily discounted. I'm really keen on modelling railways in bricks, but the only way I can do this is by buying Enlighten's train series, - though just recently I've put a couple of Banbao's trainsets on layby with the intention of mining them for their trackwork, motor blocks and control systems as I'm only interested in steam era railways. The rest of the Banbao bricks will go into my storage bins for future projects; - and yes I do know that Banbao uses a different brick sizing to Lego, but it's easy enough to work around that.

The main reason I buy Enlighten's train series is that they sell individual coaches, goods wagons, locos and track packs and I can easily purchase them locally at a price I can afford. Yes I know they are frank copies of Lego's past train series, but the simple fact is I can't buy any of the Lego originals now unless I go chasing around on Bricklink buying them brick by brick and most probably spending far too much money doing it. Actually it might surpise some Lego zealots that some of their passenger coaches are Enlighten originals and not clones/copies at all and they are extremely good value too.

Sluban make a train series too which is an Oxford copy. I don't care much for any of the rolling stock designs Sluban offers, but I do like their steam loco. I have two on the water at the moment that I ordered directly from China.

I used to be heavily into wargaming at one time until I made the personal decision that I didn't want to be involved with anything that even resembled warfare. And yes I played Brikwars and found it to be better and cheaper than buying proper 'serious' wargaming models and then having to individually handpaint them all. Something the clone brands do very well is military models and military minifigs. Most of my military trucks and armor were by Cogo, though I did have a Banbao tank and two Kazi armored cars as well. Banbao's helicopters are better than anything any of the other makers do and that includes Lego, I ended up with three Marine helicopters, an Attack helicopter and a Medivac helicopter before I flagged wargaming away. All my brick military models are broken down back into bricks again, but I kept my Banbao Medivac helicopter assembled and on display because it's just such a nice model.

Yes I will admit that some of the copy/clone makers don't make very good bricks, but I quickly found out which makers to avoid. Ligo should be avoided, misshapen bricks are commonplace, the clutch is rubbish and the plastic used is variable in quality. Their minifigs are poor quality as well, the plastic is brittle and they can fall apart just standing around.

Kazi can be a mixed bag, - the two armored car sets I purchased were actually very good, but a battleship set I purchased when I was considering trying some naval warfare rules could only be completed by substituting a good few of the Kazi bricks with Cogo ones.

I find Enlighten to be generally pretty good. On the railway series models I've been building lately the clutch has been really good and once put together there's no problems with anything falling apart. Their minifigs are Ok, but tend to lack variety. Their detail printing is good though and they go together well and stay together once assembled.

Cogo make good bricks, but the design of some of their models can be a bit strange at times. I will still buy certain Cogo sets just to mine for their bricks. Generally I used Cogo's military vehicles as a basis for customisation because their sets contained some really useful parts not found in Lego sets. Cogo copies other makers Minfig details and designs. Cogo military minifgs have equipment that looks very Bestlock like as an example and one of their jeep sets has a minifig who has a nose (He's the only one mind you out of all their military set minifigs. I used to use him as an officer). Their horses are very nice and look much better than Lego ones. Most of my cavalry ended up with Cogo horses.

Sluban I find can be good in parts, but can be strangely inconsistent in the general design of their sets. Occasionally I've found miscast bricks in their sets and parts can can be oddly distorted sometimes. Sometime ago I purchased a large Sluban pirate ship set and was only able to complete it so it wouldn't fall apart by building in a lot more support pieces into the hull than were called for in the instructions. Their minifigs aren't anything great to write home about either, but the detail printing is usually alright.

Banbao is generally pretty good, but sometimes a brick will be found in a set that has little or no clutch at all. Mostly substitution will solve the problem, but I have had it happen with a special or unique brick that's essential to keeping the model together in one piece. Banbao bricks are slightly taller than Lego bricks and the studs are taller as well. Banbao bricks work ok with the old style Bestlock bricks, but need a little creative technique to get them to work with Lego and Lego clone bricks. Banbao minifigs are ok and I've never had any problems with them.

Lego is very expensive here in New Zealand and there are no dedicated Lego stores. Toy shops and chain stores in the main centres will carry a range of sets, but often without any great sense of imagination in the selection they offer. Local shops around where I live will buy in Lego around Christmas and the unsold leftovers remain on the shelves for the rest of the year with no more being ordered in until Christmas comes around again.

At the moment I can readily buy both Enlighten and Banbao from traders here in NZ who keep a good stock and range of sets on the shelves. The prices are really good too and after placing an order I usually have it within a couple of days. As I'm starting on building a town I've just purchased a couple of Wange villa sets to see how they will work out. I fully intend to modify these to suit my needs, but the way I see it getting 755 bricks and a large baseplate for $NZ36.00 is a darn good deal even if I might have to throw one or two bricks away because they don't fit right.

I will comment though that most clone/copy makers of bricks operating out of China aren't too clever about getting the brick count in the box correct. Once or twice I've had a surprising amount of left over bricks including some that are plainly not meant to be a part of the set. Two or three left over is fairly comon as is being one or two bricks short, but I can't say it's been a big problem as I own a considerable amount of bricks already and can normally find replacements fairly quickly in my storage boxes. The way I see it I'd much rather pay a quarter to a third of the Lego price for brick construction sets and risk the odd misshapen or missing brick than pay the Lego price and end up with a lot less bricks for my money. It's not a difficult decision to make really.

[Laura Beinbrech]

My only issues with non-LEGO building block sets are thus:

#1: Quality... Most clones I've seen have really cheap plastic that is completely off-color and does not fit in well with my existing LEGO bricks at all! As a matter of fact, my burning hatred towards Mega Bloks comes from a time in the 1990's when I bought a Mega Bloks military set (and it was Mega, since it used their trademark mini-action figures), and half the bricks looked like they were melted and/or had significant flashing around the edge where the mold came together, making it difficult to build anything properly.

#2: Knock-off brands: I don't care if someone else wants to come out with their own compatible brick system, but blatantly ripping off LEGO sets, up to and including using official LEGO artwork on the boxes is a big No-No for me.

That said, there are a FEW clone brands that I have had good experience with and will swear by anytime.

The first is Tyco.... My parents got my brother and I one of those HUGE Tyco Brick Buckets for Christmas in 1988 (along with the Cosmic Laser Launcher for me and a large-ish Town set for my brother), and I still have a FEW of those Tyco bricks. Even after 20+ years, those bricks have held up as well as, and are virtually indistinguishable from LEGO bricks without looking at the top of the studs. Pity they don't make them anymore.

The second is Oxford. Oxford's bricks are on par with current LEGO quality, but are much cheaper (fairly cheaper if you are outside of Korea and have to use GMarket or similar international trading sites to buy them), and getting a new Oxford set is like getting a LEGO time capsule: The large Ship set I got last year had the opening flap like all the old large LEGO sets used to, with windows into the box showing off all the goodies inside (my brother and I would lift up the flaps and stare longingly at the contents of the big sets we couldn't afford back in the day). In addition to this, Oxford also makes old-school 4x4 hinge plates (the ones with the 4 "fingers") that are 100% compatible with LEGO's old-school 4x4 hinge plates (and aircraft canopies that used them), not to mention that Oxford's gray and dark gray are spot-on matches for LEGO's OLD gray and dark gray. Finally, most parts of Oxford minifigs are compatible with LEGO minifigs: You can easily swap arms and hands (although Oxford hand fit REALLY loose) as well as heads (as a matter of fact, I've recycled most of my Oxford figure heads into my LEGO minifig population, along with quite a few of their arms).

The third brand that I'll buy, by extension is Kre-O, since most of its bricks are, in fact, made by Oxford. The main down sides to Kre-O are the price, which in some cases is even higher than LEGO, and the fugly Kreon minifigs, which are mostly incompatible with LEGO minifigs. The heads are interchangeable, however (I used two Kreon heads on the ADU troops in my Earth Defense HQ mod), and I actually LIKE the Battleship series Aliens (I used 3 in my ADU squad).

Finally, in addition to a few of the clones, I make fairly extensive use of Custom items (i.e. Brickarms, Brick Forge, etc), but all in an effort to ENHANCE my LEGO builds, rather than replace them.

So yeah, I admit that I dabble with the Dark Side of the Brick.