Best Lock Website Review

[Peppermint_M]

Well, lets get all Meta.

I was browsing the Best Lock website (and Cobi, I am tempted to get one of their lovely Liscensed Jeeps) and I thought it would be an interesting idea to review the website. There will be links, as screencaps just aren't interactive enough to be representative.

Homepage

Here at the home page we are greeted by a studded background with the company logo and motto. There are two language options, English and German. Selectable by country flag. Clicking on of these leads to the language specific index page.

We are greeted by a welcome text and this wonderful paragraph "WARNING : By entering this webpage you risk damage to your beliefs regarding the history of toy bricks ! Enter only, if you can accept the TRUTH !" this is a great phrase, in my mind the person who wrote this wears a tinfoil hat and has an I BELIEVE t-shirt...

The index has links to each theme along the left hand side, with business related links at the bottom. Interestingly enough, clicking on the Brick History button will lead you to a link to Hilary Page Toys a website about the very first plastic brick toys. Legal, Press and About us are the usual "bumpf" all company websites have to have. If you are particularly interested, they are not too hard to read. Retailer is a list of links to the websites of shops and the online shops of Best Lock stockists. As you may notice, this website does not sell the products. Contact Us and eMail are both methods of communicating with the company.

Onto the products list! as mentioned, this runs along the left hand side. Military, Girl Range, Town, Police, Firefighter, Construction, Farm and a button marked More. Clicking More leads to their other themes; Space, Dinosaur, Pirates, Romans, Specials, ADAC, THW and second More button that leads back to the first list.

The Specials are brick boxes and baseplates, in System and Duplo compatible scales. ADAC is a rather spiffy yellow coloured action theme and THW is a lisence with Technisches Hilfswerk.

Each theme page has a colour coded "swoosh" (or variation on the theme) that matches the "swoosh" on the boxes. It seems to be coloured a default blue or the dominant colour of the theme. The sets availiable are pictured, one at a time. These are navigated through arrow buttons, if there are no sets, or only one, the arrows do not work. Unfortunately, the pictures cannot be made larger and the arrows move from page to page, as the pictures suffer from different widths, pushing the arrows across the page.

Each theme starts with it's duplo sized brick and moves along to the System scaled brick. Finding the sets you see might be more awkward as it isn't an online shop.

Overall, its a nicely designed website, sometimes afflicted with slightly clashy colours and vexing navigation issues. It provides most things one would want from such a site, but missing the online store part (probably not economicaly viable) the links to other sites that sell the toys are useful.

Of the themes on offer, I like THW and Space (ADAC only has one set, so its not the most interesting theme) I think I will look out for these when I am on a clone hunt, (although THW might only be availiable in Germany...).

Well, I hope this has been edifying. I will more than likely do the Cobi site at some point in the near future (it is the brand I see as most likely to compete with Lego well). I appreciate that I post a link to company sites in my set reviews, but that doesn't tell you anything about the site as a whole. Let me know if you think this is unneccessary, I won't bother posting another website review. This was all a little experiment I thought up, I have a day off, house/dog sitting so no toys and I was browsing the site when the idea hit.

[Joey Lock]

I was browsing the Best Lock website (and Cobi, I am tempted to get one of their lovely Liscensed Jeeps).

I bought one of their Jeeps at Fort Nelson infact!

I went there and saw what looked like Lego on the way into the Fort. Once we came out, I saw it in the Giftshop, But they only had the Desert version, So I bought it and I have to say it looks nice! But it is very oversized from the real Willys Jeep. It's taller than a Figure but very well built! It has a sweet engine compartment, With a brick shaped as an engine, The Gas Canister is rubbish though, I managed to MOD it to a Lego version by added some clips and bits. I also modded the AT-Gun that I got, Heavily, so it's extremely Lego look!

I'll post some pictures later when I get round to taking 'em!

[prateek]

Nice "review" of a website. This site is surprisingly good for a brand that doesn't care too much about quality. I also find it funny that there is a whole section of "Legal Terms"

Edited April 25, 2010 by prateek

[Peppermint_M]

It is useful for looking at what I might be able to buy. I treat most of the clone sets the same way I treat Lego I buy: What does it provide? Is there a cool animal or gear? A headgear or type of brick that I have yet to add to my collection?.

Granted with some clones I do buy it because it is so flat out wierd, but those sort are few and far between..

I might try Cobi next, but not for a while yet, I have some sets to review now

[larry marak]

This was a great idea Peppermint. Besides Cobi and MB, there are several Asian websites out there. Oxford and Kadawa both maintain an Afolish orientation to their builders including builder's club areas, while BenBao, Sluban and others maintain info sights for retailers only, offering sets in cartons of 24 to 50. Still these give us a window on how the rest of the world builds.

[fred67]

I'm not a LEGO purist (more of a LEGO segregationist), and if someone is offering stuff I like then that's cool, I've bought non-LEGO sets before.

But after seeing the review, I went to the website and, using Chrome on Linux, go so far as to the Viking page, but it wouldn't let me see anything beyond that... just the one set, with no information about it. Clicking the arrows to the right of the set, I would expect to see more... but they did nothing.

Not belittling the bricks, but the site could use some work.

[Peppermint_M]

If it was the Roman ship, I think that is the only set in that theme. They could do with taking down unneeded arrows...

Thanks for the info Larry, I will have to do some more in depth digging to see what I can turn up

[larry marak]

If it was the Roman ship, I think that is the only set in that theme.

It is the only Roman set released by Best Lock because it was produced on the eve of the divorce between Best Lock and Cobi. Cobi was sold back to its original European owners and continued the series with quite a few releases under the label Romans and Barbarians.