Thrund

I'm fairly sure it was established that that particular one was nothing to do with the plastic or moulding, just the stress put on the hands by having them packed holding the weapons. Remove the weapons and let them sit for a while and the hand returns to its proper shape.

Actually, the latest Enlighten pirate sets do seem to be original designs. They have also recently released a couple of high-detail collector's models (grand piano and handgun) which are not only original, but seem to be really nice designs. So it looks as though they have employed an actual set designer and are starting to move from bootleg to clone.

Most of the clone/bootleg brands, even the ones who copy LEGO set designs, have different minifigures. The only one I can think of that directly copied any of the LEGO figures is Enlighten, and their bootlegs tend to be of older set designs. As far as I know, though, none of them do minifigure packs, and by the time you've paid shipping charges the Chinese sets don't work out that much cheaper than LEGO, so I can't see anyone stockpiling fake minifigs that way. I have seen sellers with lots such as '9 of the same minifig hair', or several copies of a custom figure using standard parts, and in those cases I can only assume they buy the parts directly from LEGO and mark them up enough to make a small profit on each one.

This is entirely possible; when Games Workshop discontinued Epic 40K, a seller popped up selling the troop sprues in brand new condition, and the quantities he had made it obvious that these were the leftover stock (also he was based in Nottingham near the GW factory). I never knew whether he had permission to resell them, but since GW are as well-known for legal action as TLG, he was either doing so with their blessing, or had bought the stock legitimately and was therefore within his rights to resell them regardless of GW's opinion.

That set looks a lot like the old-style Construblock sets, which in turn may have been based on old Oxford sets. The yellow faces and hands with curve-over hips and shaped legs are the Oxford minifig design, and the colour choices and vehicle designs resemble the ones in the Construblock sets. Examples If it's the same factory that is now doing the current Construblock sets, then the plastic quality is quite good but I had some issues with the clutch/tolerance on the larger pieces. Edit: I think WOMA are a distributor rather than a manufacturer, because their ranges don't all have the same kind of minifigs. Their military sets (and the minifigs marching across the top of the webpage) are the straight-armed ones that Coko Bloko used to do. So the actual sets are probably all bootlegs from anonymous manufacturers in China and the quality may vary a lot between ranges.

The recent Mega Bloks figures are incredibly detailed and well-proportioned for their size, but somehow they seem too realistic and don't have the charm of Lego minifigs. Although the parts are technically interchangeable, the ranges are so individual that it would look weird if you actually did so. Having said that, it's an example of one thing I've always respected MB for, they may be based on Lego-compatible blocks but they've always gone out of their way to develop their lines in different ways to Lego.

I think it is better - or at least, I think the clutch is at '90s Lego levels. I've had two Next Generation sets sitting around for a couple of weeks and decided it was time to disassemble them, and found it much harder work than with any recent Lego set.

I too would like to see something like this, especially as I'm sure I could contribute; I recently posted something similar in the Lego thread on SomethingAwful. I have picked up several odd brands but I don't have a camera so I haven't really felt qualified to post any full reviews.

I'm keen on the action themes because they fit what I'm using Lego for - character models and settings for tabletop roleplaying games. My next campaign is set in 1928 so I've been grabbing everything I can find from the Adventurers line. I now have enough options to let my players build custom minifigs for their character models, but I'm still short of enough tan bricks to complete the Egyptian tomb they'll be exploring. The campaign after that will be classic Fantasy so I'm also getting a lot of Castle/Viking stuff - but I've tracked down all the hairpieces from the Exo-Force line because all my players are Anime fans and one of them is bound to want to give his character green or purple hair

My best bargains so far have been the original 7140 X-Wing for £1 in a charity shop (it wasn't complete, was missing most of the utility cart and the Biggs minifig, but the ship, Luke and R2 were all there. My guess is it was left made up and the bits that weren't attached got lost) and the Titan XP creator set for 99p on Ebay (although the £9 shipping charge turned that from a stupid bargain into merely a good deal).

The only pieces which might not be direct clones are the main body and pincers, I'm pretty sure I recognise all the other parts. I only ever bought a couple of second-hand Bionicle sets to steal the ball-joints for a wargame modelling project, long before I really got back into Lego, so I'm not that familiar with the range but I've seen a lot of the smaller parts in bulk lots. The €2 price is pretty silly, I've paid more than that for real Bionicle in charity shops, but it does look really rough.

Nice job, given you were missing a couple of the exact parts. I believe you need to add a 2x2 round plate on top of that turntable to make it compatible with the accessories (that turntable was exactly what I would have used to reproduce it in Lego, so I gave this some thought).

Construblock. They're Spanish, and although I recognise some of the elements (the motorbikes are the same design as Best-Lock, and obviously most of the basic bricks and plates are similar to Lego) a lot seem to be original. The figures are weird, about the size of Jack Stone and look more like Playmobil figures than anything. Edit: Ended up winning the Police Station, £4.99 plus £2.95 shipping for 334 parts. A bit big for a sample set, but I will try to post a review (though I still don't have a camera).

So, since the Space sets are the new ones, and appear to be original (if not necessarily better quality), it looks like Toyrific are another brand that started off importing bootlegs and then switched to their own designs. Incidentally, I've just found yet another compatible brand on eBay (and this time they appear to be mostly original elements, so I hesitate to even call them a clone) and am debating whether to order a set - the auction ends in an hour or so. This clone hunting business gets addictive!

Okay, while I'm still sure that the Space range uses Best-Lock components, the Castle, Pirates and possibly the Construction range are Cogo. I couldn't find an exact match for this set, but some of the other castles and most of the pirate sets are identical to Cogo sets as seen on A2Z Toys

Now you know how I felt, especially as I was expecting to be confronted with a Best-Lock equivalent. The tile-with-pin and plate-with-circular-hole are Oxford elements, by the way, although Lego used to do a similar pin as a propeller mounting.

I emailed FIA toys and actually got an answer on this. They started off importing Sluban sets, then decided they weren't happy with the quality and sourced a different factory to produce original designs. So the ones still being sold with the logo on Sluban boxes are very old stock, and the original designs and updated logos are more recent.

I'm just disappointed that the face is so bland. I would pay for a set like that just to get another variety of female face - there are precious few amongst Lego minifigs - but not for that one.

It is entirely possible. FIA Toys originally sold only their own designs, but FIA has been taken over by an import company, so they now own the brand name and may be using it to rebrand other sets. That would explain the confusion, and may also explain why they're clearing out stock of the 'real' Click Brick. If that's the case, it will be worth picking some up while they're cheap as the 'real' brand may disappear. Even if the new owners keep the set designs, I can see them switching manufacture to a cheaper factory.

I do have an email address for FIA toys, and I was considering dropping them a line. As I've said, FIA aren't exactly blameless, relying on Lego part designs, but they don't deserve to be associated with complete bootleg sets, especially as I know Sluban aren't as high quality. On the other hand, very few people import Sluban into the UK - I wonder if they get stopped by Customs and that's why these ones have the sticker on them - so for selfish reasons I wouldn't want this seller to get shut down. Sluban are the only way to get some of the old Oxford designs.

That's one of the Sluban sets with the Click Brick logo pasted on top of it that I was talking about before. You can clearly see the Sluban-format set number, whereas real Click Brick set numbers all start with FIA. Edit - Did this image come from www.xs-stock.co.uk? Their EBay store is where I saw them. All the sets listed as Click Brick are Sluban sets with either the Click Brick or FIA Toys logo pasted over the Sluban logo.

The Duplo scaled sets were the only ones I'd seen in The Works until very recently. I don't know if they're deliberate copies, or just that Duplo models are so simple that it's hard to vary them, but the figures are certainly exact copies of Duplo figures. They are certainly a bootleg brand to some extent, in as much as their parts are very exact copies of Lego and Oxford designs, but I think most of their set designs are original. Between the quality of the plastic and the accuracy of the part reproduction, I do wonder if the factory they use is the same one that Lego outsourced to in China!

As far as I know, their only stolen design is the Oxford K1 tank in the Ultimate Warfare set. Don't believe what you see on EBay auctions, for some reason there are sellers on there pasting the Click Brick logo on Sluban boxes.

The set design is definitely not their strong point. I only bought the Service Station because I managed to find an opened box on EBay and ended up paying the equivalent of 1p per piece including postage charges. Then when I saw the quality of the components, I went back for more. I'm not a purist and have bought Best-Lock sets for spares before, these work out at about the same price, but if Mega Bloks quality is an 8 to Lego's 10, then Best-Lock are about a 5 or 6 and Click Brick are at least a 9 if not 9.5. What I'd really like is one of the clones with more imaginative set designs to start using this factory for their components!

If you're in the UK and you've been into The Entertainer or The Works recently, you may have spotted sets from a clone brand called Click Brick. They've been around for a while, I remember seeing one of their sets in a charity shop last year, but they seem to be everywhere at the moment. This isn't a set review so much as a brand overview - I've bought several of the sets and I'm not going into them in detail, especially as I don't have a decent camera at the moment - so I'll let Peppermint Mecha decide whether to add this post to the Clone Review Index. Click Brick are designed by FIA Toys, a UK company, and manufactured in China. I'd like to know where in China, so we could convince the other clone makers to use the same factory. Because these are quite simply the best quality clone bricks I've ever seen. The plastic is maybe slightly less dense than Lego, but it's a hard proper ABS plastic and the moulding is sharp. The studs are embossed similarly to Lego studs, with the name 'STAR'. Injection marks on the studs are slightly more prominent than Lego, but not nearly as bad as Best-Lock or Mega Bloks. The colours are strong and consistent; the grey is similar to Lego Dark Blue-Grey, and the black, white, red, blue and yellow are identical to their Lego counterparts. However, you will have noticed that list only covers the classic Lego colours, and that's because with the exception of orange bodies for the Construction minifigs and the odd trans colour, the entire range is limited to those colours. Nothing exotic like tan, and not even any green. 95% of the parts are direct copies of Lego components, and the ones I didn't recognise as Lego are most likely Oxford designs, as I have seen them in other clone sets. You know that satisfying click you get when assembling Lego, that none of the clone brands can match? These bricks have it. I was actually quite surprised, because the pictures on the boxes don't really do the quality justice, some of the models look like they're falling apart. But whoever put them together for the photoshoot must have done so in a hurry, the actual models were much more solid when assembled. Speaking of the boxes, the packaging is quite good. Each box has a cardboard spacer to protect the contents, but the boxes aren't drastically oversized for what's in them. The components come in bags, and they're divided by model rather than by component type - for example, the Service Station has a car, tanker, forecourt and main building, and the parts for those are bags A,B,C and D respectively. These codes also carry through to the instructions, which are very pretty in full colour, but a bit confusing. There are too many parts added in some steps, and while the parts for each step and any sub-assemblies are called out in separate boxes, some bits of the construction are skimmed over or otherwise unclear. Models I've seen so far are: Four large sets (Service Station, Police Headquarters, Construction Vehicles and Ultimate Warfare) which each have 500-600 parts and four minifigs, currently selling for £12.50 each in The Entertainer. Four minifig-scale vehicle sets (4x4 with Horse Box, Car with Caravan, Heavy Duty Wrecker and TelePorter 300 Crane). Not sure of the part count on these, and they don't appear to actually include a minifig. £5 each in The Entertainer. A farm tractor and separate accessories. About 50 pieces each, the tractor comes with a minifig. £1.99 each in The Works. Three Next Generation sets, futuristic vehicles in mostly red and grey which are smaller than minifig scale. All three are based on the same chassis, around 200 parts each, £3 each in The Entertainer. Three micro-vehicles which match the Next Generation styling, probably 30-50 parts each, £1.25 each in The Entertainer. I've bought the Service Station and two of the Next Generation sets, and here are some thoughts specific to them. - The vehicles in the service station set are really poorly designed. The buildings are much better but still uninspired. - The Next Generation sets are much better set designs and really feel like Lego designs. Shame they're not minifig scale. - The service station comes with minifigs, and they are identical to Lego minifigs but slightly poorer quality. The legs don't sit as straight on the hips, and the faces are only a single-colour print, though the torsos have three-colour printing including metallic zips. The arms and hands click in firmly, and Lego accessories fit properly on the head and in the hands. - The faces and torsos on the minifigs are the only printed components I've seen. Everything else is stickers, and not very good ones at that. So, to summarise: Pros: - Parts are almost indistinguishable from real Lego in both design and quality - Sensible packaging - Ridiculously good value for money Cons: - Limited range of colours - Limited range of themes and uninspired set design - Stickers - Instructions could be better FIA have recently been taken over by another company, and I don't know whether they're pumping out all this stock to rekindle the brand or to get rid of it. I'm hoping it's the former and that they're planning to come out with some new set designs, but if so, I also hope they can afford to stick with the same factory.