Tatco Pirate

**Peppermint_M** · December 13, 2009

Tatco Pirate.

Well, this is another clone brand I found on holiday...

It essentially confirms every single negative thing anyone has ever said about clone brands, and then some.

The official website of Tatco (formerly Atco) Toys, a China based toy manufacturer. They have some interesting looking sets that I wish I could have found over this one.

I found it in a shop that sells cheap rubbish to tourists, plastic swords, beach toys cheap ornaments that only ever come from the Great British Holiday. You know the drill. A great place to get a few boxes of fudge for the office and some rock for the kids.

From the box it looked innocent enough. One polybag of parts later and that sinking feeling sets in.

Some parts were pre-stickered and pre-printed but there were some stickers to apply later.

The instructions were printed on the back of the box, they were very difficult to follow. I got there eventually but not after a fair few moments of backtracking.

There were some interesting parts included. These half arches look like they would be very useful in as rafters in a medieval MOC. The sword, gun and oars are different to their Lego counterparts. The clips are certainly good, seeing as for a similar effect Lego uses skeleton legs.

The sail assembly was nice and simple, the longer shaft was pushed in at the bottom, the medium sized and the top, I later found out that the smallest wasn’t used in the sail. The three parts (sail and two shafts) are then pushed down the central pole.

The boat was exactly the same mould as a Best-Lock boat (the one in blue).

Here is the built set. It wouldn’t work as the instructions intended so I had to sub in some parts from other brands in my clone box, it sprang apart shortly after the photo due to a mildly warped plate near the bottom of the construction.

Now onto the figure...

I have only ever seen this guy in on other place

by Blunty3000, a youtube animation.

Here he is in comparison to: (From right to left) A Lego pirate, a Best-Lock fireman, a new Megablocks PotC figure, and old Megablocks skateborder figure and a Sluban police man.

In all: This set was hard to build, a very weird design, an ugly figure with oddly coloured tools, there were bits missing and it wouldn’t build as the instructions said it should. The plastic was “soapy” and not quite the same as any of the other clones. The entire brand shouldn’t be judged on this one set of indeterminate age, as some of the themes and sets on the website look pretty interesting, however apart from those half arches, it is best avoided.

It’s a good job that the next set I bought was one of the most fantastic sets I have had to build and play with, clone or Lego, since the Agents Mobile Command Centre.

There are now only two more clone sets left on my hard drive for me to review. No worries Big Cam, I spent some time checking the review indexes of each subforum and was pleased to find four sets that I own and are still built that need reviewing! This afternoon I shall be taking the relevant photographs and collecting the images I don’t have from the ‘net and posting reviews of these in the appropriate places (some of these sets are over ten years old!).