papataz

For what it's worth, I have a few Enlighten Bionicle (or Invincibility Robot, as they call it) sets that I bought as far back as 2001. As for the Pirate knockoffs, if only their yellow as more like Lego original, I'd be completely happy with them.

I'd say the Flash as well, esp. the way he was portrayed in the JLA/JLU cartoon.

When I was a kid, my mother couldn't tell one brand of building blocks from another... Also, consider the fact that in communist Yugoslavia (that was the country I was born in, later, after some pretty nasty stuff it got broken into several smaller countries) LEGO was considered some sort of exotic plaything - only a few of mu relatives and friends had authentic LEGO bricks, those with relatives working in West Germany or Iraq - and you'll see why I got my first ever LEGO set at the tender age of 19, back in 1997. It was a Castle set, Bat Lords Catapult. That was the year I started attending University in the capital city, so money was pretty tight. Still, I managed to collect all the small Castle sets that and the next year, and several Ninja sets the year after.... And then I got married! Aaaaand, the money got even tighter! :-D So, to cut a long story short, all I have now are some knockoff Enlighten sets - 1696, 1733, 1747, 6236 and 6237 to be exact. So, not only am I once again collecting only the smallest sets, this time around they're fake! :-D However, I still buy genuine LEGO stuff whenever I can afford it - Castle stuff for me and City and Tiny Turbos for my son... And I'm looking forward to the day when I'll be able to buy original LEGO pirates again - even if it'll be the tiniest sets again! :-)

Here's my silly mutt, a dog named Pretty (never ask a two years old to name family dog or you'll end up with a weird name like that :-))

Great stuff altogether (I have downloaded and read first two parts while I was still lurking)! Many thanks to everyone involved in making this.

Thanks for your replies, everyone! I have updated the first post with several more scans.

When I was a kid, LEGO was a rare sight around these parts of the world. Only those kids who had some relative working abroad (Germany was a popular destination) had a LEGO set or two brought to them. As fate would have it, one of those kids was my first cousin - his aunt brought him a huge bucket of generic LEGO parts and bricks and for a few painful years when we all lived in the same house, I was forced to watch him play with his precious LEGO bricks... I can not even begin describing that agony! :'-) Fast forward a decade or so... During my high school years, I met this guy who had loads of toys from the time of our childhood (Burago cars, G. I. Joe figures, Kinder Surprise toys, etc) and among all that stuff, a few dozens LEGO sets. Problem was, he was extremely... anal about his toys: all the stuff he had was neatly displayed, not to be touched. As for LEGO, all the sets were in their original boxes, not to be played with. That was both very odd to me at the time, and it drove me nuts! For my 19th birthday, back in 1997, that very friend bought me a LEGO set. It was 6027, Bat Lord's Catapult. Isn't it a thing of beauty? *wub* Since that was the year I started attending the University as well, for a while I was spending all the extra cash for new LEGO sets (hurray for lack of parental supervision! :-)), ending with Ninjas and set 3050, Shanghai Surprise. However, 1999. was a year of a great political unrest here (Serbia), and as soon as things became stabilized again - in 2001. - I got a son, so LEGO was out of the picture for a few years. And this ends my essay :-).

In my teenage years, people around me called me Taz, since my appetite, voice, energy and temper match that of the animated Tasmanian Devil. I became a father when I was rather young - 23 years old - and the folks on a message board I was posting at back then talked one of the admins into changing my user name to "Papa Taz", to point out the fact that I'm a dad... And it stuck :-).

Those are Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, I think :-). These sets look neat, too bad I'm yet to find a single SB set here!

Thank you for moving this topic to the appropriate spot! Yes, I was curious if these were original designs since it seems to me that bootleggers have started going beyond just copying LEGO sets. I have already introduced myself, but thanks (both to you and [b[uniqueBuilder[/b]) for welcoming me! :-)

First of all, I apologize to the mods if I have posted this in the wrong part of the forum, but since these sets seemed rather... City- ish... my guess was this is the place to post them. Once again, sorry if I posted at the wrong place! So! While it's rather easy for me to find names and pictures for the original counterparts of most Enlighten bootleg sets, I'm drawing a blank on these two. The first one represents a small plane, I'm guessing for some sort of VIP, since the soldier (?) minifig seems to be greeting someone important and welcoming him to the plane, judging by the boxart (slick on the pic to see larger version): Here's the back of the box: The other one seems to be some sort of rescue team: Sadly, my camera is out of batteries at the moment. I could post some low - quality pictures taken with my phone, if anyone's interested. Though, there's not much need for that - unlike most Enlighten sets I have seen, what's inside the box is exactly the same as the stuff pictured. So, if those are copied from original sets, could someone point me to pictures of the originals? Thanks! :-) Edit: here's a few more. One of them is a Castle knockoff: These two seem to be heavily inspired by Exo Force: Then there's this repair shop: and another example of the infamous military line:

Thank you, everyone, for the warm welcome! :-)

Ahhh, Transformers! Along with Masters of the Universe, the hottest property of my childhood! Currently, I have a bunch of Energon bootlegs, that can be seen here, and here,, some Cybertron originals as well as bootlegs (pics here and here), and assorted other toys (pics here and here.) I'm truly excited about TFs: Animated, which, IMO, is the best TF show in a long time. Well, that's about it for my first post on this topic. Will post more later! :)

Hi, everyone! I'm Papa Taz, posting from Serbia :). LEGO - wise, I was a bit of a... late bloomer - I got my first set when I was 17, twelve years ago (this was mostly due to my family's poor financial situation, then the country's poor financial situation an so on...). Anyway, here I am, more than a decade later, and though money is still a bit tight for me (forcing me to buy much more of that bootleg "Enlighten" stuff than I'd like) I am happy to be able to join this community :). Once again, hello everyone!