I have some old Tyco bricks in my collection. They work just as well as regular lego blocks (Even considering they're at least 20 years old.) I just don't use them for Religious reasons.

I ended up with a decool copy of a technic racers set. The colour consistency is poor, and the pins are terrible, but if you use genuine pins with the copied structural elements, it works satisfactorily.

If you started with the copy and didn't know what real stuff was like, you'd throw the whole lot at the wall and walk away thinking that the whole concept is crap, rather than just getting a poorly manufactured clone/fake. That said, it doesn't have lego branding anywhere, although it's a direct copyright contravention, all the way down to the manual.

Really? so this:

is not a copy of this:

Whilst there are quite a few original Enlighten designs, there are many more that are copies of lego. And having bought a few it has to be said that whilst not quite up to lego standards, they are reasonable.

Yes that is certainly a direct copy. What I meant was the kits I got were original designs by Enlighten. For a while they made a lovely green and cream engine and carriages, but I missed out on those.

Enlighten have copied a lot of Lego kits, but as far as I can see these have been kits that are long out of production, so whilst it's still bad I would say it's not as bad as the Iron Man figures posted further up, which are direct copies of current Lego products.

Enlighten (and the other clone brands) do make a lot of military kits that look quite interesting. Lego wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole, they've always said no military.

Apologies, I may have misinterpreted. The green and cream coaches go well with the Emerald Night, but they are a bit tall and do have some flaws/idiosyncrasies, for example only using a pair of hinges with two studs each to hold half the roof and a whole side was never going to work well no matter how good the clutch power was. They were also a cross between a Santa Fe observation car and a European style Pullman which made them a bit odd. I bought four of them, initially to go with the EN but then decided to MOC my own Pullmans re-using the rather nice Enlighten printed windows. I do have a pile of Enlighten spares now!

I bought some when i was young. Bad strength, bad colours, bad printing, bad everything. I eventually decided to bend them until they broke when i was mad

I sure that's a terrible experience.However,some of the fake lego parts has a terrible quality,so I understand why you decided to bend those cheap Lego rip-off parts until it break!

Edited August 9, 20159 yr by ArmstrongYong

I have some old Tyco bricks in my collection. They work just as well as regular lego blocks (Even considering they're at least 20 years old.) I just don't use them for Religious reasons.

Same here, except I guess I'm atheistic. :D

I almost picked up a bucket of Tyco military blocks awhile ago. Sort of regretting it. The quality is on par with Lego and they offer some interesting possibilities.

Does someone know if there is clone Lego on Bali? I am there at the moment.

Well, there are A LOT of those sold in my area (in parallel to LEGO, just in different shops, for obviously different market segments, if ya'know what I mean). They do fall apart sometimes, not quite as super smooth as LEGO, but useable. And, the selling point to me is that they DO military themes. Tanks, APCs, helicopters, AAAs, outposts, gunships, radars, command centers, missile launchers, what have you. And, naturally, there are A TON of different trademark (?) labels on those boxes, inane sounding and not, with or without chinese characters. Enlighten, sluban, little companion, cogo, and many more.

My stance is clear - leave them to the people who actually can't afford LEGO. Asian markets, some places in ex-USSR with remote areas, maybe south america. There is no much reason to get them, aside from military theme (most others are clones of Lego themes), than LEGO for consumers in western world with western kinds of incomes. Even western 'poor' can actually afford or save up for some nice LEGO sets.Now, whole thing's different if you earn 50-100$ per month in total.

added: Well, just returned from a shop. Local LEGO prices are somewhat marked up from genuine euro prices, from 5% up to 40% I'd estimate. Naturally, bigger sets aren't sold. The largest I saw was Rebel Gunship for 165eur.

Now, cheapware store has a lot of Sluban. And man, they're affordable and well sold here. So, a 1050 piece military set (tank, aaa, block post, guard tower, mil.quad, helicopter, and command building, as well as a squad of soldier minifigs) come in a like 1 meter long huge box with handle and costs ~60eur. Largest one for for 110eur, and huge ship with 1870 pieces or so. Smaller set are ~20-25 eur, but they are also around 300-400 pieces. Once I actually buy one, I'll write how good or bad is it. So far, I have seen the difference between a chinese set and LEGO set, and, while noticeable, it's not a major one. So I'd say, if you can comfortably afford LEGO, stay with it. If, however, you never could, except for smallest sets and rarely, then our Chinese friends are a sure help.

Edited October 6, 20159 yr by Iori_Yagami

Keep in mind that Sluban is just copying Oxford for a lot of stuff and Oxford, for many people, is on par with Lego quality.

Amazing, more ppl still need bricks and minifigs even though the electronic world dominates long time ago.

Edited October 8, 20159 yr by wilson3a10

My stance is clear - leave them to the people who actually can't afford LEGO. than LEGO for consumers in western world with western kinds of incomes. Even western 'poor' can actually afford or save up for some nice LEGO sets.Now, whole thing's different if you earn 50-100$ per month in total.

pretty Interesting but even here in Europe I find LEGO expense, all times I have been to Italy LEGO was more than twice the price of the LEGO in The Netherlands. And even different shops can make a huge difference.

Since you guys are talking so openly about Lego clones and similar brands, i'd like to ask if someone has got any experience with KRE-O?

I'm interested in some of their Star Trek sets if their quality would turn out to be ok. I find those Minifigures interesting, especially their arm flexibility and their less "cute" appearance.

Besides that, Lego feels like it has become 3 times as expensive in the last couple of years. (times don't get better tbh)

Especially if most stuff i'm interested in (like Castle) only exisits in licensed sets or doesn't exist at all.. (double expensive)

Can anyone tell about good experiences with other brands minifigures, especially medieval/fantasy themed?

Last spring woot.com had a Kre-O Enterprise on sale, so I got one.

I built it and put it on display at my office - a decent conversation piece.

Here's someone's

.

When built, it looks OK, but there's a few things I didn't like about it. First, there's a big chunk of a piece in the middle where batteries go for the lights. I didn't even bother with the batteries since it will just sit on my shelf for display, but the way they did it to hold the saucer section and engines on felt like cheating. I also am not a fan of the Kreons; perhaps LEGO is too cute, but don't like Kreons at all.

One thing you can look out for is someone here on EB makes Star Trek uniforms. They don't come with arms or legs, so I had to buy black arms and legs on bricklink. Here's the quick thing I made (warning: crappy phone pic ahead):

Lego star trek by Fred Haab, on Flickr

Lego star trek by Fred Haab, on Flickr

Sorry, I cannot find the post that lead me to the site where I bought these.

I did also find these online.

It's an really interesting review.

If i have understood this correctly the middle part (engineering hull and pylons) are one piece?

Well that's understandable, since without any more advanced building techniques it can be very hard to keep such unique shapes to hold together.

(unlike most SHIPS some people build, which are basically just boxes, lol)

About the kreons themselves, i still don't know if their quality keeps up with lego. On the other hand i like their design. They don't look so blocky and allow much more different poses. (which is basically EXACTLY what i'm looking for)

Maybe i'm not a die hard Lego fan but i don't see a reason not to mix them with legos (IF their quality turns out to be ok).

What interests me the most at the moment is, can Kreons heads be removed and be replaced with Lego heads and vice versa?

what about the hair pieces? I don't care if they are made of rubber or plastic, but are the compatible with Lego?

In a nutshell, can Kreons be integrated to Minifig worlds?

I like that video though. The guy doing it states that he's a Star Wars fan, but still likes the Enterprise, that was a big plus to me.

I watched this Video from the same man, which really made me thing into buying some sets:

It's a shame they don't have a fantasy or medieval themed line though.

Yes... Kreon heads/hair seems to be interchangeable with LEGO minifgures.

I just stumbled upon this video:

The nice lady explains the differences between Lego, Kre-O, Megabloks and two other types of Minifigures i never heard of.

Pretty neat!

Back in my foolish youth I bought a few clone bricks. Turns out, mega bloks are no match for assorted carpentry equipment.

Any experience with Click 'n Play? SEems to be a new competitior on the block.

http://smile.amazon.com/Click-Play-Building-Bricks-Compatible/dp/B017EUXEF6/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1448909175&sr=8-11&keywords=Click+%27n+play

^^ Every single review (as I write this) is five stars with the caveat "I received this for [free or with a discount] in exchange for my 'unbiased' review."

For $20 it might be worth testing them out, but if they needed to bribe people for reviews then what can you expect?

Doesn't look like the colors would be a very good match (green looks too dark for example), they also appear to have some translucent-ness. Honestly the "classic" brick tubs are pretty cheap if you want mostly generic bricks.

Already posted this in the wrong thread, but here is one I haven't seen before: LEBQ.

Here are my thoughts; I have a lot of real lego, and I do buy some clones to supplement my trains - but nothing else.

First, there is no current patent or license for the ABS plastic brick of a particular size and if check out youtube there is an excellent video about the history of the plastic brick, and the rubber brick before this, and lego ... is a clone. This means that it comes down to rule of "you get what you pay for with a BUT...".

The BUT is the design issue. What you get with lego is a large design element and license to create Maersk/Volvo (etc) product based design. The design element is expensive - but it means the set will look good and work, and when there are mistakes (ie WALL-e) the will fix it and send you the new parts for free. You also get free missing parts, and great service.

OK, now down to what I have found with Lego clones (trains). I buy these to add carriages and trucks to my collection and I never mix the bricks - even going so far as buying lego spares parts from bricklink even if I have a (insert clone brand) part that would fix in its place. I have Enlighten, Ausini and Gao-Bo-Le, and in comparison Lego is 10/10 (except colour which 8/10)

Ausini : Brick quality 8/10 (technic bits (4/10), Colour (9/10) Clutch (8/10 - bit tight), Consistency (9/10), design (3/10), Bio-hazard (8/10). The problem with this set is that that it would not go round corner track (! honest - fixed bogies), and not a strong design - so significant MOC changes are needed and it is OK and I use it . The technic bits are used for the engine bogies - and they just too far off in tolerance to be used without significant adjustment.

Enlighten : Brick quality 8/10 (wheels 6/10), Colour (9/10), clutch (7/10 - quite tight), Consistency (8/10), design (7/10), Bio-hazard (5/10). As noted by someone else - the wheels are a bit off so you need to sand them down - not difficult, and a dry silicone works wonders. Bio-hazard is the main problem with some some occasional unknown bit on it - so I washed the sets - but then I wash second hand lego too. The design is good, and a excellent start for MOC - and a made some real nice green coaches to go with the Emerald knight with snot design (OK - that was lego bits).

Goa Bo Le : Brick quality 9.5/10, Colour (8/10), clutch (8.5/10 - little tight), consistency (9.5/10), design (8/10 - some 0/10), Bio-hazard (9/10). This one is very close to Lego and you can see I found it difficult to give 10. I gave 0/10 for 1 of the models as it is a design rip-off exactly. Gao Bo Le has started using snot design on their models, so the look is often good without MOC. So this is probably the best so far.

In all cases the track is identical, except colour and a minor design difference for Ausini. These clones are not very cheep, but probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the price, but specifically for me they allow me to by extra bits to add to trains to extend them.

So my final comment : they are not Lego ! and this is the gold standard (and I can forgive the falling standard on colour), Lego is always the best. But if you want to extend you collection (train rolling stock, pirate stuff I think is good - and as noted, if you are into military then they are the only option). Never mix clones with Lego (look at the logo on every lego stud, and never, never sell clones as lego - not even one piece - I have had 1 brick in a second hand set).

i was once given sluban, a sort of lego but only about the army. tanks, fighter jets and so on. But the quality was terrible, the pieces didn't fit nicely. the biggest mistake was a fighterjet with two left-handed wings on the back. so the left one was good but the right one was the other way around if you understand. There was also a helicopter but it just missed several pieces and there were pieces in the wrong color. i just threw it away and i kept going with lego. i have nothing against compatible products, or maybe exactly the same, but i hate bad quality products.

Can someone tell me if here is a special section for Custom parts of LEGO on this forum? Together with my friend we are going to release a new series of products, that will connect the world of LEGO and RC, so I would like to introduce it to all of you.

I haven't got many fake Lego products.. picked up a Future Foundation minifig set and Invisible Woman along with Mr Fantastic both seem pretty good to be fair to them. Spidey's head was a bit messed up (the stud on top of the head is basically non existent and his legs are loose as anything). The other ones I've picked up are Iron Man Mk 1 which to be fair is actually spot on, it looks brilliant! Phoenix was good too.