I am a recovering Lego Purist

[MKJoshA]

Chapter 1

I have been playing with Legos since I was 3. 35 years later I'm still playing with them  I discovered Eurobricks when I was at university and have a part of the Lego community in various ways for my entire adult life. I have been part of a LUG, presented at Brickworld, and been a moderator here on EB. I say all this to point out that I have the credentials to back up what I'm about to share.

From the beginning I considered myself a Lego brand purist. I had a bucket of Tyco bricks when I was a kid and even child-me could tell they weren't as good as the Lego brand. I was later given a Megablocks western set and while some of the unique pieces and accessories were cool, they weren't as well made as Lego. So my loyalty to Lego continued to grow. This continued until about 3 years ago. I received and reviewed the Viking Village, a set designed by one of EB's own members. It was my first set where I noticed how bad the quality of Lego elements had gotten. Here is the letter I sent to TLG Customer Service:

Spoiler

And here was their response:

I knew my one email conversation wasn't going to do much. But 3 years later I have seen Lego's quality get worse, not better. I find this behavior appalling as their company motto is "Only the best is good enough." To me it seems clear the best is no longer what they are striving for.

Chapter 2

This realization opened my eyes to the reality that being a Lego purist didn't hold any value. In the past other companies like Lepin stole MOC instructions and Lego sets and sold them for profit. So there used to be a moral high-ground to being a Purist. And quality kept me from legitimate brands like Megablocks. But with my new-found realization that TLG wasn't worth staying loyal to simply by past efforts alone, I began to think about alternative options. 

I started with something simple. I bought a BRICKSMAX light kit. This is not a brick alternative, but rather an alternative to Lego lights. As a purist I had bought a number of Technic lights. But those are expensive and limited in their use. These lights are cheap and easy to use in my MOCs. I dipped my toe in the waters of non-Lego and now I want to know what else is out there.

I currently have a Lumibricks set waiting for me to build it. Lumibricks uses BRICKSMAX lights in their kits. After I build it I may find out I still don't like the quality of bricks from other brands. But I already know I'm going to love the lights  And who knows, maybe I'll even be open to mixing my Lego with Lumibricks.

And with the floodgates opened I'm also looking at non-Lego accessories. If Lego doesn't make it, why can't I buy them from someone who will?

Chapter 3

And that leads to my closing thoughts. I am convinced that my Lego Purist position may have been the right one in the past, but it's not needed today. Gone are the days of Lepin stealing IP. I have yet to test it out, but I've heard from many people that the quality of other brands today is on par with Lego. I have been impressed with the selection of sets from Lumibricks and Pantasy. These companies are making sets that interest me. They show creativity and rely on storytelling instead of name-brand IPs to interest you. They feel like Lego used to when they had me drooling over magazines wanting to tell my own Alpha Team story. I'm ready to give them a chance. And I hope you will too.

There are also companies like Barweer who selling unique designs, but are closer to the moral edge. I bought (on Vinted sealed, but used) a Barweer Star Wars set, The Trailblazer. I'm planning to build it right after the Lumibricks set. But I'm still not sure how I feel about buying something Star Wars when I know Lego has the IP rights. Obviously Barweer has their legal bases covered and uses no trademarked names. So the set is called The Pathfinder Freighter and has no reference to Star Wars. But if you've played the Star Wars Outlaws video game then you would immediately recognize it. Other companies do the same.

And what about re-colors of existing Lego parts? Lego has never released a Rodian head in red. But I can buy one from another company. It's not that company's IP, but Lego has never made it before. Same with the castle armor and weapons. Just because Lego has never made it before, is it okay for other companies to use the same design like the raven shield and put it on a breastplate? And then there's the discussion about retired parts that go for crazy prices on Bricklink but can be bought for a small amount from a different brand. 

I don't have all the answers. But I'm ready to explore these uncharted territories. And I look forward to seeing what others discover and how they feel about it too.

[General Magma]

Congratulations on your recovery from this limiting ailment!

Your experiences line up with mine in multiple ways, though I've always gone beyond just Lego to fill the gaps. As a kid, when I didn't have a certain figure, I just drew it. Later on I began experimenting with customization using clay, which later expanded into more. I've always been interested in expanding the existing world of bricks, though I did usually separate customization work (where I cut up certain parts or painted them) and brickbuilding. That was for minifigures mostly, however. But now, with a wider array of bricks to choose from from different brands, the possibilities have grown for brickbuilds as well.

The problem back in the day was quality, but that no longer seems to be an issue. They're about on par with the main brand. And that same emergence of quality among several different alt brands is actually what brought back my interest in the hobby after a handful of years. Seeing all these new possibilities has really sparked new ideas and given me the chance to expand my horizon a lot. As such, I'm currently working on a project that I'm looking forward to sharing in the near future.

Edited August 4 by General Magma

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, MKJoshA said:

I don't have all the answers. But I'm ready to explore these uncharted territories. And I look forward to seeing what others discover and how they feel about it too.

Thank you for that nice story, @MKJoshA!

Well, I started at my LEGO building career at age 3 too. 61 years later I am also still playing with them. I discovered Eurobricks 16 years ago, when I was teaching summer school classes at UC Irvine. After awakening from my dark ages about 30 years ago, there still was only LEGO. I never heard about being a purist or not.

However, during my long dark ages, TLC (they were TLC back then, weren't they?) made a lot of new pieces I had never seen. And back then I wished for to become reality. And that thought was my first step towards an alternative, a free world, without knowing it at that time. Why should I be restricted by a company not making the pieces I desperately need? But years later they did? I began filing and cutting existing LEGO pieces, because none of them allowed reasonable wiring ... for my computer controlled stuff. That included the entire Mindstorms palette including the NXT. I also love PF, PUp, but that is all gone now. The Smart Brick feels like ... no I don't want to go into that. It is way too dark in that region.

Well and eventually I even considered (and did) buying the Flying Dutchman from Mould King. Well, I asked for it as a Christmas present ... And was BLOWN AWAY. I never saw any of that in LEGO sets: Breathtaking details, no color vomit, ABS pieces of same or superior quality (later learned they were GoBricks elements) ... then I decided to buy (not camouflaged as present anymore) the Steampunk suspended train set from Pantasy - they sold as Steampunk Train Station. And guess what: I was BLOWN AWAY again. Same thing: Lovely details, etc. I had to motorize it (of course not with LEGO gear, they don't sell the things I needed, no, with Tenka Circuit Cubes and motors) ... and then I completely lost it with TLG: Insane prices, degrading quality, far less inspiring, no love to detail anymore, always cost savings everywhere, and so on and so on. The other side just throws in ever more pieces, tile up every floor in a house ... 

I am now free to choose from whatever I see fit since about a decade. It feels fantastic.

Best wishes
Thorsten

[icm]

I am also a recovering Lego purist: that is, I'm sober after overdosing on alt-bricks and I'm back to Lego.

TLDR, I tried a bunch of other brick brands and I decided Lego is best after all.

Childhood experiences

When I was a little kid first becoming aware of things, my brother and I had a few small Lego sets from Town, Castle, and Technic, plus a big Technic robot, a big Mega Bloks spaceship made of enormous specialized parts, a Mega Bloks moonbase made of mostly basic bricks on a shaped baseplate, and a couple big buckets of basic Mega Bloks bricks. We broke apart everything but the big Technic robot and built stuff out of the "junkyard", but later when we were a bit older and started to get somewhat larger Lego sets based on things we liked (X-wing, Naboo fighter, Island Hopper, Harry Potter) we kept the Lego sets together because we didn't want to mix them with the inferior Mega Bloks parts. That really limited our moccing potential from the junkyard, until we got an infusion of genuine Lego from our grad-student older sister, who bought Star Wars and Harry Potter for a few years until she decided to stop, keep the minifigs, and give us the mixed bricks.

Another childhood experience related to Lego was visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum with my family; I asked my dad for a crappy knockoff-bricks fighter jet from the gift shop and he got me a Revell snaptite kit instead. Later he gave me a Mega Bloks fighter jet that was vaguely inspired by the Harrier, and a couple of years after that a couple of larger kits that were explicitly an A-10 Warthog and a Blue Angels Hornet. Those kits partially satisfied my desire for fighter jets made out of Lego, but not completely. They were very basic builds from bricks and plates, except where the Warthog cheated by using big out-of-system molds for the nose cone, windscreen, and engine fans and exhausts, and the Hornet cheated by using big clumsy specialized wing and empennage plates. Also, the Warthog and the Hornet were huge, while the Harrier was a smaller swooshable size that played well with minifigs. And the part quality was still notably worse than Lego. So, as a kid, I was happy to have these, and I was also jealous of Mega for making the other military kits I saw advertised in the back of the instruction manual, but I also knew that I didn't really want those kits because the builds were crap and the parts were crap.

Mega, Cobi, and Bluebrixx

From those childhood experiences and from online awareness of the dodgy ethics and crappy quality of dupe sets by Lepin, I began my post-college AFOL era pretty firmly in the Lego-purist camp. I was still curious about alt-brick brands that made military vehicles, but I chose to stay away from them. That began to change in 2015, when my brother gave me P-51D Mustang and AV-8B Harrier kits from Mega Construx, sold with a license from the Call of Duty video game. I was impressed by Mega's transformation from Mega Bloks to Mega Construx. The parts still didn't fit together quite as well as Lego, but the use of all prints instead of stickers impressed me, the kits were well-designed with features I wanted (retractable landing gear and moving control surfaces) and minimal, understandable use of unique molds (just the propeller spinner and windscreen for the Mustang, though the Harrier had some regrettably large, clumsy wing plates and mounts for them), and I could see that Mega had invested some real time and thought into developing its own family of SNOTs and wedges that overlapped with Lego capabilities without actually cloning any Lego parts. That, plus the acquisition of a video game license to somehow "legitimize" the selling of real-world military kits, helped me stop thinking of Mega as a crappy clone brand and think of it more as a legitimate peer competitor that was sadly hampered by its failure to bring its part quality up to spec, and its inability to use a decent minifig design. But I still wasn't interested in the rest of Mega's product line, so I didn't think much more of it.

After building the Mega Construx P-51, I started to look at other brands that made military kits (mainly Cobi and Oxford), but I didn't buy any of them because they still looked dodgy in terms of quality, and there weren't convenient ways to buy them in the United States yet. It wasn't until early 2022 that I decided to actually give them a try, because I saw Cobi's Top Gun: Maverick kits on Amazon and I'd always wanted an F-14 made out of Lego. By that time I'd watched enough Cobi builds on YouTube to respect Cobi as a peer competitor with its own distinct parts library, and again the movie license helped legitimize the kit in my view, somehow. So I bought the F-14 and F-18 kits on Amazon, and I was quite impressed by the quality of the parts and prints. This was the moment that really legitimized competing brands for me. The clutch power of Cobi parts was different than Lego, but the quality and fine detail of the molding was equal if not superior, especially when considering the declining quality of Lego molds and prints. 

Also in early 2022, Bluebrixx released their Star Trek line. Again, I'd been wanting Star Trek ships made out of Lego since I was a kid, and I regretted missing out on the big TOS Enterprise by Mega when it was on EOL clearance for $80. The parts quality of Bluebrixx looked dodgy, but the line was officially licensed, had all prints, and had a couple of minifig-scale shuttlecraft. There was a licensed minifig-scale TOS shuttlecraft on the market, why wouldn't I get it? Well, shipping from Germany was super expensive. I took the risk and bought the TOS and TNG shuttles from Bluebrixx. I found the quality of the parts, prints, and building experience all distinctly subpar compared to Lego, but it was still licensed Star Trek building blocks so I wanted more. After that, I continued to buy Cobi airplanes and Bluebrixx Star Trek sets, but I still stayed away from other alt-brick brands because I still thought of them as mostly ethically dodgy crap with bad parts quality - CaDa excepted, given the enthusiastic conversation about CaDa kits on the Eurobricks Technic forum. I continued to always find Cobi kits to be of the highest quality, and I was pleased to see the parts quality and design quality of Bluebrixx kits improving with every Star Trek release wave.

Trying all the alt-bricks!

I didn't really get into alt-bricks in general until late 2022, when I saw Sluban kits (marketed as Dahonpa) for the F4U Corsair and A6M Zero on Amazon. I ordered the Corsair and was pleasantly surprised by the parts quality and instructions quality. The stickers weren't very good and the parts still weren't quite up to Lego or Cobi standards, but they were a lot better than Bluebrixx parts, and Sluban, like Cobi, had a fair amount of its own parts that made it distinct from a mere Lego clone. I bought several more Sluban airplane kits and enjoyed them. Today, I continue to think of Sluban as a quality manufacturer, and I continue to enjoy their minifig-scale (1:35-1:44) airplanes and helicopters.

After I tried Sluban, I decided to try at least one kit from all the other major alt-brick brands. I got two 1:35 fighter jets from Letbricks, reasoning that they were licensed from the MOC designer even though they weren't licensed from the aircraft manufacturers. Those were terrible, in the kit design and especially in the parts quality. I got two highly bespoke CNSA rover kits from Keeppley, a Shenzhou space capsule from Sembo, a Western stagecoach from Funwhole/Lumibricks, a few airplanes from Jie Star, some Pokemon kits from Mega, some WWII fighters from Quanguan, some more airplanes from Toptoy and Xingbao, and even a couple of dupe sets (dupes of the 75021 Republic Gunship and the 10210 Imperial Flagship) and some pirated MOCs from AliExpress. I had varied experiences with these. I haven't had time to build the Keeppley kits yet. The Sembo kit had a high-quality build, minifigs, and prints, and the parts were finely molded, but the tight clutch power made it a real chore to put together and later take apart. The Funwhole stagecoach had parts that went together very smoothly, but the prints were distinctly worse than even Lego prints, and I didn't like the Funwhole minifig at all. The Jie Star airplanes had bad parts quality, and left a bad taste in my mouth as most of them could be seen to be pirated MOCs. The mini Pokemon builds in Pokeballs were cute and fun, and the ~200-part Charizard had splendid parts quality and a good build with parts that are mostly of Mega's own design, while the motion-build Geodude's motion feature was disappointingly janky and unreliable. The Quanguan fighters had excellent designs and pretty good parts and instructions, but the parts quality was still less than that of Cobi, who they intended to compete with, and the sets were let down by reliance on large STAMPS for markings instead of prints. The dupes and the pirated MOCs were amazing instant gratification for builds I'd wanted for years but had never been able to put together, but they were unreliable. Sometimes they had parts of excellent quality that went together smoothly and came apart easily, and sometimes they had awful parts that either had way too much clutch or way too little; mostly they were the bad parts, not the good parts.

Eventually the tariff scare mostly put a stop to my buying of alt-bricks. I got in one last big order of sailing ships from Bluebrixx before the first, biggest tariffs went into place, the de minimis exemption was revoked, and countries around the world mostly stopped shipping to the United States. I was eager to build the Queen Anne's Revenge from Bluebrixx, because this was a genuine minifig-scale model of a historic sailing frigate, with a full interior over two decks, and with a complete complement of shooting cannons. It was, let's say, a frustrating model. Some of the parts were very good, and some were very bad. Some of the build was well-designed, but much of it was unstable and difficult to access. Despite the pull-out sections of the hull, the model still didn't really have much playability to speak of because it was just so big. (I haven't had time to build the other, smaller Bluebrixx sailing ships yet.)

Back to Lego

The tariff scare has subsided and it's about as possible to buy alt-bricks off Ali and other online storefronts as it was before, but after my two-three-year dalliance with alt bricks I'm back to the position of being mostly a Lego purist. I respect most alt-brick brands and I consider them legitimate competitors, producing their own designs of genuine interest, using a lot of parts of their own design. (Indeed, Bluebrixx is currently redesigning many of its sets to use its own protected parts after a trademark dispute.) But I'm also aware of their limitations, and I still consider Lego to be generally the better product. 

The fit and finish of Lego parts is still, in my opinion, enough better than the best competitors (GoBricks) that I'd rather build something with Lego parts than Gobricks parts. The protected Lego minifig, in its simplicity, is still a better toy and a better resident of the brick-built ecosystem than any of the legally-distinct alt-minifigs from other brands. I also appreciate the fact that when Lego makes a unique new part, they generally try to make it fit within the system of bricks, plates, wedges, slopes, and bows rather than tailoring it specifically to the intended model. That means most specialized new Lego parts (apart from minifig parts and accessories, and molded animals/creatures/etc) are still versatile enough for use in MOCs outside their original applications, while specialized parts from other manufacturers can often only be used in a mix-and-match kind of way because they're optimized for the application, not for the system. For example, you can build airplane MOCs with Cobi but you'll end up with mix-and-match wingtips and empennage. Just because you can build a frankenfighter with the wingtips of a Messerschmitt and the nose of a Spitfire doesn't mean you have any particular reason to want to, unless of course you're replicating the specific captured Messerschmitt that was fitted with a Merlin engine for testing. I like the all-prints approach of other brands, but prints from other brands are often coarser and less detailed, though more opaque, than Lego prints, and at least half the time I leave the stickers off of Lego sets because I prefer the less-decorated look. Also, I keep looking at pictures and builds of Lumibricks castles and Modular buildings and I keep wanting to want them, but I just don't really like the style, you know?

Lego sets generally have an easier, more colorful, build flow than sets from other brands, and Lego instructions are much easier to read than those of any competing brand. In direct 1:1 comparisons of the same object at nearly the same scale, I've always preferred the Lego build. The Icons version of the little yellow Fiat 500 looks clunkier than the 1:12 scale Cobi version, but it's a much more enjoyable build and it's better for moccing because it doesn't use a bespoke individualized windscreen. The Lego version of the display-size Enterprise-D is a much more entertaining, complex build than the boring brick-stacking of the Bluebrixx version, and it's much more structurally stable and swooshable while also including the saucer separation feature. The GWP shuttlecraft, while not exactly the same type of shuttle as the minifig-scale shuttles from Bluebrixx, is also a more interesting build, and more swooshable. Given the choice between the same subject represented in Cobi, Sluban, and Lego, the Lego version will be more structurally stable and more entertaining than the Cobi and Sluban versions, even if slightly less accurate sculpturally. I have the 1:48 Cobi C-47 and the 1:44 Sluban C-47, while I don't have the 1:38 Lego DC-3 yet. I haven't built the Cobi or Sluban versions yet, but whenever I get the Lego version it's the one I'm going to build first - before Cobi or Sluban.

Then, from the geopolitical angle, as an American I'm already embarassed by how much China outproduces America and Europe in green energy, shipbuilding, aircraft, cars, etc., and I don't want to contribute to China swamping the rest of the world in the low-stakes segment of toy building blocks as much as it's already swamped the rest of the world in every other industry. I mean no disrespect to China, and I have enormous respect for the talented scientists, engineers, technicians, and factory workers who power Chinese industry, but I'm willing to pay higher prices for what I think is, all things considered, a better product if it also has the benefit of protecting, to some small extent, supply chains outside of China.

What I buy now

Mostly Lego. My Lego wanted list is hundreds of sets long. Also Cobi. My Cobi wanted list is dozens of sets long. Some Sluban. I still buy new kits of Sluban minifig-scale military aircraft when they become available for a good price in the United States; I built their AH-64 Apache a few days ago and I have their V-22 Osprey sealed by my desk. I still keep an eye on Afobrick for the occasional extraordinarily good kit by another manufacturer, like the CaDa Space Shuttle Discovery or the Lumibricks Red Brick Row House. (I bought the former, and have had my eye on the latter for a while but haven't bought it yet.) But I'm not actively searching the world of alt-bricks anymore to find the latest wonders, nor do I feel the need to point out the superiority of alt-bricks in price/prints/etc at every opportunity, like some people on the forums do. I don't buy Bluebrixx anymore because I largely lost interest after they lost the Star Trek license, and they no longer ship to the United States, and the building experience of the Queen Anne's Revenge was so bad.

Alt-bricks are pretty good. They're mostly legitimate near-peer competitors to Lego. Some of them are genuinely better in their own niches, like Cobi and Sluban. But, like Lego, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Lego is mostly better, so I mostly want to keep Eurobricks about Lego. That's my opinion. Thanks for reading!

Edited to add

It's still a crying shame that Lego won't get its act together and make some simple stud inverters like every other brick brand has. It can be fun to see what gonzo solutions Lego set designers have to use to invert studs, and Lego stud inversions have gotten easier over the years, but there's still some real not-invented-here syndrome going on with Lego's refusal to make a simple stud inverter plate like literally every single other brick brand has had for ages now.

Edited again to add

I don't have any experience with aftermarket accessories like BuWizz/SBrick, custom Technic parts, custom parts for trains, Bionicles, etc., or custom minifigs and minifig accessories. I respect the creativity there and I respect them as add-ons that don't try to compete with Lego on a set-for-set basis. In my mind, those kinds of aftermarket customs aren't competitors in the same way alt-brick brands are, and I have no problem with talking about them on a place like Eurobricks. 

In general, I've always thought it's silly of Lego to push fan sites to use the term "bricks" instead of "Lego", and to get Austrian Lego Fan to change his channel name to Austrian Brick Fan. Doing that doesn't let Lego claim complete ownership of the generic term "bricks", but it does legitimize fan sites talking more about other brands and reviewing other brands, because after all they're not a Lego site are they? Just a site for fans of building bricks in general. So, I voted for option 2 in the other thread: let's have a separate forum for talking about other brands, with pinned topics for each major manufacturer. Let's go ahead and talk freely about other bricks, but let's also keep this mostly a Lego site. If it organically develops into more discussion of alt-bricks elsewhere around the site, then that's ok. But let's start with option 2.

Edited August 4 by icm

[JesseNight]

I see a lot of myself in your story @MKJoshA.
I once was a purist, and I don't like buying cheap trash if it really is trash (which it often was at one point). With LEGO dropping quality while still charging premium, and other brands bringing quality up while still remaining cheaper, I've decided to give some a chance and I haven't been disappointed.
Yes, I do keep LEGO and other brands stored separately. No, I feel absolutely no need to separate them in discussions or in MOCs because it's all compatible anyway.

That being said, there are times I buy knockoff brand stuff purely out of principle. If I buy a LEGO premium display set that looks horrible because of very visible color vomit, I want to replace it. Do I wanna support LEGO buying extra parts on top of a premium price I've already paid? Not really. I keep giving feedback on every purchase that has it, and it feels it still gets worse every year (think of the 1:8 Koenigsegg that finally replaced grey frictionless pins by bright yellow ones).
 

5 hours ago, MKJoshA said:

I knew my one email conversation wasn't going to do much. But 3 years later I have seen Lego's quality get worse, not better. I find this behavior appalling as their company motto is "Only the best is good enough." To me it seems clear the best is no longer what they are striving for.

That's honestly the problem with the way western economy works. Profits are expected to grow every year, but the thought of realizing that endlessly is just an illusion. There comes a time when there's no room for growth anymore, only for cutting costs to keep the profit numbers going up (and basically F loyal customers in the behind, pardon my language). We see it with everything, unfortunately. Stuff's made to break.

[Slegengr]

So much more to read about a topic that I find quite interesting!

It really is disappointing to me to see the shift almost entirely to marketability/profit that LEGO has taken in the recent years.  "Only the best is good enough" seems a joke, at best, when applied to LEGO today even if they are still equal to or better than their competition; rather, the LEGO motto today seems more appropriately "just good enough to not lose completely to competition while gaining savings from cutting corners."

Having left, at least in my opinion, the foundation of what grew the company to what it is today, I do wonder if their current plan really is sustainable.  Probably so as a sideline adapter of new pop-culture, but will LEGO ever again have the categorical distinction they had for those like me that were children in the 90's with so many original themes to choose from and draw interest to LEGO itself rather than just to some other IP?  Thankfully, I have a large enough collection already that I can do what I want regardless of where the company is headed, but it is still disappointing that I can only realistically give my childhood nostalgia over to my nephews by giving them the sets from those childhood themes rather than having some modern offerings in some of those themes, at least broadly speaking.

It seems doubtful that licensed themes will allow for LEGO originals that come too close alongside, so Pirates, Castle, Space, Western, etc. themes seem to be stuck in related IP licenses, but I will still keep wishing for the day that LEGO upholds their motto of striving for the best and can give more offerings from the original big themes that are not locked behind BrickLink Designer Programs or Gifts-with-Purchase.

Seeing how easy it was for me to share my nostalgia with my nephews so far culminating deep interest in those beloved childhood themes (especially with sharing LEGO Racers PC game which showcases so many of those themes!) still leaves me wondering if those really are things of the past that are not relevant enough to children today...

[JesseNight]

24 minutes ago, Slegengr said:

Having left, at least in my opinion, the foundation of what grew the company to what it is today, I do wonder if their current plan really is sustainable.

Seeing how many purists there are from what they've built up from being the first and the biggest, I dare to bet it's sustainable. Plenty of other businesses do the same without losing too many customers despite degraded quality. A name on its own is still a very strong selling point to warrant survival. People remember how good it once was and their faith isn't easily broken by a bad product or two. Premium prices still triggers an "expensive = better" response in people too.

It's both funny and sad how it all works. Funny because it is ironic in so many ways, sad because marketing people know how to take major advantage of it.

Edited Tuesday at 09:59 PM by JesseNight

[dr_spock]

Interesting timing, one of our new LUG members recently asked a question about building MOCs with clone parts, cutting, gluing etc.  Here is my reply to her:

For me it depends on what and how the MOC will be used for. Contests generally have rules regarding clone parts, cutting, painting, gluing, etc. AFOL conventions seem to have some unwritten rules and building conventions. It can be a fun challenge to be completely pure. It can be fun to be naughty too. Who are you looking to impress?  The general public may not even care. At the end of the day, it's your hobby and how you enjoy is really up to you.

 

I never had the need to buy non-LEGO sets. When I came out of the Dark Ages closet in 2008,  LEGO was readily available.  Discounts were good and deep. Not too many people were speculating on and hoarding LEGO for resale.  Being an attendee at an AFOL convention entitled you to something like 30% off at the LEGO Store. When buying LEGO, you told the cashier it's for your nephew or niece if asked.  LEGO was a much smaller company with fewer mouths to feed. Times have changed but I am still in the if LEGO didn't make it, I'd make it myself camp.  On the bright side, I don't get weird looks any more, when people asks what's my hobby. 

 

Regarding quality, increased production volumes may have an effect on quality.  They may have less down time for machine maintenance, etc.  It's the old quantity over quality.

 

 

[JesseNight]

6 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

I never had the need to buy non-LEGO sets.

I never had the need either. I just wanted to if a set impressed me enough. Or if I needed parts in bulk that would end up costing a small fortune when going for original LEGO.
 

7 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

Discounts were good and deep.

That's still the case when having the patience to wait for it rather than wanting to be a day 1 owner, and in most cases buying from third party toy stores. This may depend on where you live though.

[TeddytheSpoon]

This is an interesting thread! I never thought of myself as a LEGO purist, even though I would never mix my Mega Blox and LEGO parts in MOCs (unless I wanted Master Chief to meet a minifigure of mine!). But I guess that's what I am.

I've had a similar experience to @icm, albeit not quite diving in to the alt brands as deep. I have plenty of Mega Blox sets as holders of the Halo license, and I've tried Cobi and BlueBrixx as well. Of the three, BlueBrixx has impressed me the most, but I still favour LEGO.

I think it's important to separate quality of design from quality control of parts. For the design of the bricks themselves, LEGO set the standard IMO. I've never had persistent issues with clutch power, every part works as intended, and LEGO have been pumping out new moulds at quite a rate (even if it's not the ones people necessarily want!). The designs of the sets themselves is also to a good standard. I'm not talking about accuracy for those sets that represent real or 'real' things, but things like structural stability, build process, playability, etc. The only set I can think of that had anything close to that was the infamous Star Wars Juggernaut, and even then, I never had issues with it - I only saw them reported by others.

As for quality control, i.e. consistency between the same parts? I have noticed a dip. In my experience that's mostly colour inconsistencies or poor printing. I had a spate of parts errors within a few months of each other too, but have had none for a few years. (My theory there - and to be clear this is an educated guess - is that they were caused by the introduction of paper bags, that required tighter processes in production.) There may be an element of more being reported but the percentage remaining the same, as we seem to have more LEGO sets than ever these days. But even anecdotally I have noticed it.

But I think I will stick with LEGO. I just mentioned this in another thread, but limiting myself to building out of one brand is sort of the point, in a way. It's a creative limitation in a good sense. There may be a plate with studs on both sides that another company makes - great! But limiting myself to LEGO bricks requires me to find creative solutions to achieve the same result, and that's the bit I enjoy.

[General Magma]

I have never heard of a painter who made it the point to only use paintings from a single brand "because brand", so I wouldn't go as far as to say that that is "the point". It's not. It may be your unique challenge (even if to me it honestly just reads as an attempt at justification for brand loyalty), but the medium is not synonymous with the word Lego, even if it having been (largely) a monopoly of sorts for a long time may have made it seem as such.

The points about quality are also getting more and more outdated, I ordered plenty of bricks off of AE and there's virtually no difference from Lego's quality. You just gotta find the right brands and there are many of them out there nowadays.

I don't understand the points that keep being made about limitations either, with alt bricks, too, you are building within certain limitations and it's not like you're 3D printing specialized parts on demand. The moment Lego makes such a piece it's suddenly fair game, but otherwise it's "creative limitation". Again, totally fine if that's your unique challenge, but Lego designers have new parts made for themselves all the time, too.

Edited Wednesday at 08:39 AM by General Magma

[TeddytheSpoon]

52 minutes ago, General Magma said:

I have never heard of a painter who made it the point to only use paintings from a single brand "because brand", so I wouldn't go as far as to say that that is "the point". It's not. It may be your unique challenge (even if to me it honestly just reads as an attempt at justification for brand loyalty), but the medium is not synonymous with the word Lego, even if it having been (largely) a monopoly of sorts for a long time may have made it seem as such.

I'm aware it comes off as brand loyalty, and for sure there is an 'emotional' connection there having grown up when LEGO didn't really have any competition. But for me that's fine. I'm not a serial buyer of LEGO sets anyway.

Other brands may be no different, true, but they're not demonstrably better either, at least in my experience. I try and stay away from the sort of stuff found on these dropshipping sites for other reasons, and don't shop online much, so the better availability of LEGO also has an effect. The only other brand I've seen in stores near me is Mega or Cobi, and none of what they had particularly interested me.

Not trying to yuck anyone's yum of course - if you want to use other brands, great! There are some good options out there. (I know I keep mentioning BlueBrixx, but as a train fan their selection really is fantastic.) Just sharing my experience.

[anothergol]

21 hours ago, MKJoshA said:

And what about re-colors of existing Lego parts? Lego has never released a Rodian head in red. But I can buy one from another company. It's not that company's IP, but Lego has never made it before.

"counterfeit" might not be where you believe it is. I mean, legally-speaking.

I would agree that morally, those headsculpts would be considered IP (well, a SW IP before a LEGO IP). But if you take a look at what LEGO actually protects, through EUIPO (could be different in the US though), it's not such sculps no, it's mostly very generic parts. They most likely do this to ensure they can catch most of the competition through them, whereas through a very specific headsculpt, they would only be protecting one single set.

 

I used to think that it was fine to buy any set out there, that the problem was only Lepin & sets that have minifigs looking too much like LEGO's. But I was so wrong!
For years, about 30% of my purchases on Ali were seized/destroyed by customs (although they often don't tell you, the package just appears to be lost/not moving). I eventually managed to reach the lawfirm representing LEGO with customs, and yeah, most of the time they just use the apollo stud in order to claim a set is counterfeit. They don't have to look further, that part is in about every competitor's set.
They (LEGO) do however have brands they're fine with, like Sluban for some reason. But they don't disclose the list.

So, legally speaking, there's not much out there that looks like LEGO and isn't counterfeit. Except for the one or two brands that went as far as redesigning the apollo stud, and even there, you can't even be sure that they did enough (there's so much you can modify in an apollo stud) for that.
Considering that when you buy a set
-you can't know if LEGO is ok with the brand because they don't disclose a list
-you can't know if any part in the set is counterfeit, simply because you can't know which parts are in the set (plenty of databases & part lists for LEGO sets, but that doesn't exist for other brands)

...you just can't know when you buy a (legal) counterfeit. 
Worse, you're kinda responsible when you buy counterfeit. In Europe you're not really gonna get prosecuted for that, but the customs can totally pass costs to you (they never have for me though).

 

As for an officious list, here's what I know so far
-Sluban's ok
-Sembo/AreaX: LEGO HATES them. If one passes customs, it's mostly luck. It's sad because Sembo really has the best non-LEGO parts out there. But in order to get those parts you have to buy sets and there's generally an apollo stud in them.
-QuanGuan: no idea. I don't remember having any QG set seized yet, but I could be wrong
-Mattel: I can't imagine LEGO having the balls to seize their sets, besides they're probably friends after so much time in court. And Mattel sells everywhere directly in Europe. So Mattel 100% safe.
-Lumibricks: hard to say, they do sell directly in Europe so it's probably ok. But they've been changing some of their moulds recently, so it's most likely to avoid problems with LEGO in Europe
-Pantasy: same as for Lumibricks, I think that today's Pantasy is ok, and sold directly in Europe too. And I believe they're the only ones to have drasticly modified the apollo stud? (I've think I've seen that in a review, I don't have any recent Pantasy set)
-Cobi is obviously ok or it would already not exist anymore
-Mould King, Cada, Xingbao, Panlos & the miriad of other chinese brands: I have no idea. But LEGO can probably catch them all with just the almightly apollo stud, if they want to (so that's the only question, do they want to)

So you should be pretty safe with your SW headsculpt, probably more a problem with Disney than with LEGO. Providing you can buy it alone and not in a set that contains protected designs.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:02 PM by anothergol

[anothergol]

14 hours ago, dr_spock said:

For me it depends on what and how the MOC will be used for. Contests generally have rules regarding clone parts, cutting, painting, gluing, etc. AFOL conventions seem to have some unwritten rules and building conventions. It can be a fun challenge to be completely pure. It can be fun to be naughty too. Who are you looking to impress?  The general public may not even care. At the end of the day, it's your hobby and how you enjoy is really up to you.

yeah it's all about rules, even your own.

I used to be a purist too, and it's not at all because I liked LEGO, I'm not married to a company, and certainly not LEGO who has itself stole the brick.
It was just my unwritten rule to limit myself to parts that LEGO has released, because that was the name of the game. Like, you don't use paint and then pretend it's a pencil drawing.

...but then I changed my rules, because life's too short, I don't wanna wait 10 years for LEGO to possibly release a part in a specific color. Even when they announce one, China will be willing to sell it to me before the part even appears on PAB (which will be 6 months later minimum) anyway. 
And then China has SO MUCH MORE to offer as for parts. Some that LEGO is slowly copying to catch on, some that LEGO will never produce because they're not kids-friendly. 
So that's my palette today, ALL BRANDS. While LEGO is slowly bringing 2x2 wedge tiles, I've been using them for years, as  well as 2x3, 2x4 and even 2x5 now. And if there's something LEGO is never gonna produce, it's a 2x5 anything.

 

[JesseNight]

4 hours ago, General Magma said:

The points about quality are also getting more and more outdated, I ordered plenty of bricks off of AE and there's virtually no difference from Lego's quality. You just gotta find the right brands and there are many of them out there nowadays.

I don't understand the points that keep being made about limitations either, with alt bricks, too, you are building within certain limitations and it's not like you're 3D printing specialized parts on demand. The moment Lego makes such a piece it's suddenly fair game, but otherwise it's "creative limitation". Again, totally fine if that's your unique challenge, but Lego designers have new parts made for themselves all the time, too.

Very true! Majority of the parts are the same ones LEGO has anyway, aside from a few exceptions. And sometimes one brand covers certain colors that another does not.
I totally recognize what you say about quality. Not all of AE is great but there's definitely good ones out there.
 

4 hours ago, General Magma said:

I have never heard of a painter who made it the point to only use paintings from a single brand "because brand", so I wouldn't go as far as to say that that is "the point".

I'm not so sure about that. Brand loyalty is a real thing for a lot of people. So is trust in a brand after good experiences. And this often goes further than it should, at the cost of rational thinking.
For example: Sony used to make great CRT TVs in the old times. So a lot of people stuck with the brand when buying LCD TVs, while in reality other brands were better there. Or they buy everything electronic from a single brand that only specializes in 1 type of device. I see it all the time. And people say I am crazy for doing research on every single thing I buy 

[Feuer Zug]

Welcome to the train world. Track geometry is what got me off being a LEGO purist about a decade ago. I wanted to make more realistic layouts and the lack of switch and curve radius options pushed me to 3rd party vendors shortly after the parts were announced. The motorization options are another sore spot for LEGO. They just don't have enough with a solid control system for multiple trains. While I still prefer LEGO, they aren't the only game in town. And don't get me started on baseplates!

[JesseNight]

1 hour ago, Feuer Zug said:

Welcome to the train world. Track geometry is what got me off being a LEGO purist about a decade ago. I wanted to make more realistic layouts and the lack of switch and curve radius options pushed me to 3rd party vendors shortly after the parts were announced. The motorization options are another sore spot for LEGO. They just don't have enough with a solid control system for multiple trains. While I still prefer LEGO, they aren't the only game in town. And don't get me started on baseplates!

While I love trains, these are the exact reasons I never got into LEGO trains. And I suppose the scale was a factor too, when desiring to make more realistic trains.
My dad always was into model trains in N scale (1:160). Seems very small but I started appreciating it more and more bc it allows for realistically long trains, or a big train station with a lot of tracks and platforms side by side.

(sorry for straying offtopic a bit...)

[Sven J]

Please excuse my ignorance if this is a stupid question, but what is an "apollo stud"?

[JesseNight]

4 minutes ago, Sven J said:

Please excuse my ignorance if this is a stupid question, but what is an "apollo stud"?

I think this was the 1x1 round plate with a hole in it, part 85861. I believe it originated from someone mishearing "hollow stud".

[Sven J]

Thank you @JesseNight!

[MAB]

7 minutes ago, Sven J said:

Please excuse my ignorance if this is a stupid question, but what is an "apollo stud"?

[Sven J]

Thank you too @MAB!

[Toastie]

9 minutes ago, Sven J said:

Thank you too

I had to ask Gemini about Apollo a couple of hours ago - he/she/it knew about it as well. Well, they're both from NASA.

  

Best
Thorsten

[Sven J]

1 minute ago, Toastie said:

Well, they're both from NASA.

[Feuer Zug]

7 minutes ago, Toastie said:

I had to ask Gemini about Apollo a couple of hours ago - he/she/it knew about it as well. Well, they're both from NASA.

  

Best
Thorsten

Good one.