Korean Style M1A1 Tank - Oxford Review

[crossmr]

Now unfortunately I assembled this before I thought of doing a review, so no loose piece review, but there are a lot of pieces in this set.

Name: Korean Style M1A1 Tank OCM15000

Price: 11,400W ($9.32 USD)

Pieces: A lot, I can't find a piece count.

Size:18.5 CM long (not including Main gun), 8.5 CM wide, 8.5 CM tall (not including pop up machine guns)

Construction time: about 45 minutes

Grew up on Pirates, but now that I'm in Korea without my Lego, I thought I'd check out the local flavour.

I picked up a Jeep just to have a look at it and was impressed with the quality. So I grabbed a tank set as it was incredibly cheep. The quality of it though is very good. I will get the negatives out of the way before I start:

• Oxford's guns are incredibly oversized. It is nice to see a set include guns, but they should partner up with Brickarms I think
  
• The colour of the stickers on this set are slightly off. The jeeps matched the brick colour exactly the tanks stickers are a lighter green and stand out more
  

What's included:

Weapons and accessories sprue with lots of extra guns

sticker sheet

a couple extra bits including a flat blue translucent piece

4 minifigures, 3 soldiers and a commander

The box is nice. The inside cardboard tray slides out well and you can put it back in easily to store your stuff.

The instruction book is clear and I like that it shows the pieces used in each step. There are 26 steps in all. The only Korean writing appears on the last page and says you can put on the stickers if you want.

There don't appear to be an alternative models indicated on the box.

Construction

Construction was easy. Nothing too difficult about it. Lots of flat pieces in this set. If you need flats there are tons of flat 2x2 squares. Also tons of track wheels 14 in total and 9 hatches. Some unique pieces (see the pictures for one) as well as the main gun hinge. My only thought is that there are too many flat pieces on the top of the body. It's hard to position a guy traveling on the armor. They've left a couple of connection points, but really just a couple. I didn't have any trouble fitting anything together and everything fit snuggly.

Playability

Very high with this set. 4 minifigures for such a cheap set is great. Lots of guns. The turret has a nice smooth full 360 degree rotation. It is as smooth as you could want. The tracks turn, they make a clicking noise, but run like tracks should and seem firm. I spent a few minutes sending it back and forth and they had no trouble. Didn't bind or come off. Even turning was okay so long as is wasn't a high speed hard turn pushing down (it made one track pop off just a little)

Bricks are all standard Oxford military color, so not a lot of color variety, but I think Lego doesn't use this color so it is a good source of this color if you needed it.

You can only really put 1 figure in the tank itself. In the turret. There is no opening in the body for a figure to drive it.

They include a "computer" sticker, but I couldn't find a really good place to put it. I could put it in front of the figure, but it's on the outside of the tank.

Oxford figures are Oxford figures. Not the same as Lego, but good quality. The only noticeable thing is that the arms are slightly looser maybe? they don't fall or move, the just seem to swing easier. However they don't fall out of position even holding a gun.

Conclusion:

Minifigs 10/10 - 4 minifigs on the tank for under $10?? I would have been happy with just 2. Includes 3 helmets and a beret

Parts 8/10 - Lots of parts. I found the weird 90 degree parts to be a little off they fit fine, but something "looks" loose about them even if they haven't gone anywhere, and I deducted a point for the oversized guns

Playability 9/10 - Fantastic tank with lots of moving parts. Very solid feel to it. 4 guys, weapons, etc. I'm deducting a point for the lack of places to attach guys for transport like how you often see guys riding on the armor

Design 9/10 - Looks great. Armor skirts for the treads, rotating turret, turret hatch, machine guns, tow hitch, etc

Price 10/10 - I'd give it 11/10 if I could. Just a fantastic price for what you get.

46/50 - If you ever have a chance to get this set, get it. it's great.

I'm attaching some photos. I added a photo of the jeep for sticker color comparison. As I get a little more shelf room I'll probably pick up a few more of these.

Edited July 7, 2010 by crossmr

[vexorian]

Hmnn I am not sure if it is because of lighting but the stickers' color does not seem just 'slightly off' but clearly off. I think I would just not put the stickers on it as the design speaks for itself, really.

I think that it really does look like a tank. Btu what I find rather sad about this set is that I can't picture LEGO doing it better, in fact I imagine that if LEGO would either decide to bring a modern day tank set they would replace all those tiles with much larger tile pieces and probably do other things to greatly reduce the piece count and take some of its bricky look away...

Well I just like how the tank looks overall. I think I've seen oxford sets somewhere but I am not sure (due to the Korean characters) I have also heard that there are Chinese bootlegs that have much worse plastic quality, so I want to know if I can be sure about it being legit oxford if it has that yellow ghost logo thingy in the box?

Edit: Is the canon a single piece ?

Edited July 7, 2010 by vexorian

[Tony Almeida]

I think that it really does look like a tank. Btu what I find rather sad about this set is that I can't picture LEGO doing it better, in fact I imagine that if LEGO would either decide to bring a modern day tank set they would replace all those tiles with much larger tile pieces and probably do other things to greatly reduce the piece count and take some of its bricky look away...

They'd probably charge $40USD for something like this, and give it a more kid-friendly colour scheme, like blue or yellow.

[crossmr]

The barrel is mostly one piece, there are a couple cylinders added on both ends. but actually I think made out of bricks it might not look as nice.

[Peppermint_M]

You do realise that you will now have a lot of requests for Oxford military helmets...

Thanks for the review. Oxford is one manufacturer I have been unable to purchase, eBay sellers demand higher prices than Lego!

The quality looks really good and the helmets are pretty nice.

[crossmr]

You do realise that you will now have a lot of requests for Oxford military helmets...

Thanks for the review. Oxford is one manufacturer I have been unable to purchase, eBay sellers demand higher prices than Lego!

The quality looks really good and the helmets are pretty nice.

I've only seen one guy selling on Ebay from Seoul. His jeep price is high but his other prices aren't crazy based on retail prices here. I might be able to help people out if they want to purchase whole sets. I'm not really building a collection here, so I'm not going to be trading, but I think I can get my hands on minifigure "booster" packs if people want to buy them.

so I want to know if I can be sure about it being legit oxford if it has that yellow ghost logo thingy in the box?

Yes.

Also you'll see the Korean writing. Korean writing is actually letter based unlike Chinese which is symbol based. here is an example:

한 this is korean, it's made of the 3 letters, ㅎ ㅏ ㄴ. Koreans combined letters in syllable to make what they call a "Jamo"

the same thing in chinese is:

漢 you can see it looks much "busier" or "messy" as I like to describe it.

Korean is very clean with lots of straight lines.

The box also says on it, in English "Made in Korea".

I know we've got pics of the jeep in another post and this post, but I'll do a "review" of that set, just for completions sake. I also just found this set online which I haven't seen in store here:

http://www.hanatoy.com/shop/shopdetail.html?branduid=18342&xcode=002&mcode=002&scode=&type=X&search=&sort=order it's a "mini soldier collection" 1 figure and a checkpoint, price about $1 USD.

actually there are several small sets:

http://www.play365.co.kr/front/php/product.php?product_no=3212&main_cate_no=58&display_group=1

http://www.play365.co.kr/front/php/product.php?product_no=3211&main_cate_no=58&display_group=1

http://www.play365.co.kr/front/php/product.php?product_no=3208&main_cate_no=58&display_group=1

http://www.oxfordtoy.co.kr/product/small_info.asp?category=%BF%C1%BD%BA%C6%F7%B5%E5+MC5000+%BD%C3%B8%AE%C1%EE&Num=412

http://www.oxfordtoy.co.kr/product/small_info.asp?category=%BF%C1%BD%BA%C6%F7%B5%E5+Mini+Collection&Num=277

This site from the page it's on and page 9 and 10 seem to list most or all of the Oxford military sets:

http://www.hobbybay.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=hobby_db_oxford&page=9&page=8

I'm really interested in this one: http://www.hobbybay.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=hobby_db_oxford&wr_id=157&page=9

looks like two jeeps with missile launchers.

Edited July 7, 2010 by crossmr

[XimenaPaulina]

Those look pretty neat. It's the first time I saw these and it looks like of good quality. Thanks for sharing, crossmr.

[crossmr]

So I was poking around the prices of that guy on Ebay, and here is what I can tell:

He's charging about 2x the US dollar price (based on current exchange) for sets, and over charging on shipping.

I could obviously do it for less. Is there much interest in getting a hold of full oxford sets?

For example this set is $17.99 and $15.99 for shipping. Total about $34.

One thing I've found is that Korean post is both cheap and fast. I sent a small box to my parents in Canada, cost about $4 and took about 5 days to get there.

the jeep box fits in those (which he's charged $8 shipping for).

So he's seemingly doubling everything.

I'm sure I could purchase and send this set to the US for $20, maybe less.