Are you considering buying Replica Lego / alternative bricks for your next project? In this video, I share key things I wish I knew before purchasing alternative bricks.
Chapters
0:00 – Intro
0:20 – What Are Alternative Bricks
0:43 – Short Falls
1:37 – Where I Shop
2:46 – Alt Brick Option
3:14 – Shipping
3:44 – My Main Resource
4:03 – Ethical Issue
4:51 – Lego Profit Per Dollar
6:12 – Final Thoughts
Where I Currently Shop:
https://www.youmko.com/ – Youmko
https://joooooy.com/ – Joooooy
https://www.joytoyworld.com/ – Joy Toy World
https://decadastore.com/ – CaDa Bricks
https://www.aliexpress.com/ – AliExpress
Resources:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/ – Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/lqdiar/the_starter_guide/ – Starter Guide
#LEGO #buildingtechniques #alternativebuilding #creativity #innovation #toys #AFOL #aliexpresslego #minifigures #Replica
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Great video! Loved it!
Good to know! I’m a huge Lego fan, My Mother too! Have to show her this and tell her all about it.
I started building in the covid period and have built a large number of sets since, especially modular buildings. At first all the Lego sets that at that time were still in production and these were great. But then I discovered that older sets could only still be bought at exorbitant high prices and that there are several other brands (primarily Chinese) that also sell great alternative sets, MOC designs or even their own designs. I bought and built a lot of them and in general the quality was quite satisfactory (this also applies to a number of mini bricks sets that I have built). Sofar I have also built 6 Chinese clones of original Lego modular houses that are out of production. I bought these last ones from Youmko and again the quality of the stones is on avarage quite good. Only once some of the transparant parts were a bit milky, but that really is an exception. Recently I missed a bag of parts in an alternative Funwhole set bought at Amazon. I contacted their customer service by email and received the missing parts in only 10 days. So, I hardly buy Lego anymore. The prices have increased just too much lately and the alternatives are great imho.
You were spot on with the issues I've found. For example, I just opened a town hall and due to how much was crammed in there, the baseplate was toast. I'm glad I had another one on hand to start building. I have another that was due a few days ago but no update to shipping. I know it will arrive but it does take patience. You definitely find the Aliexpress stores you like best. But you can't beat the deals and overall, the quality is decent most of the time. – Keep showing folks this option – Tammy
Well structured, informative and honest video!
Speaking about prices, alt.bricks that only produce replicas will always be cheap/cheaper for sure, that's the whole point. However, not all alt.bricks companies that produce original sets are that cheap. CaDA is sometimes pretty close to Lego, and then there is, for example, Pantasy, they have some sets with insane price per piece ratio – actually higher than Lego.
Also, I had missing pieces from Ali only once. Contacted the seller and got them in 10 days.
Dear @SheClickBricks I recently discovered your channel and I really like it. There is something I would like you to have in mind if you are part of the alt brick world, and that is the toxicity and hate of "purist" big L brand fans. The problem here is in the minds of this brand fans, they are sooo toxic that for them the big L is like a cult or an extremist religion.
In my eyes, Bricks are toys to have fun with and also everybody should make some modifications to add their own taste to the sets.
I think alternative bricks are fine, if you don’t mind the lesser quality of some brands and potential customer service issues that you can get.
BUT…
Duplicates of Lego sets are NOT acceptable.
Duplicating an existing set is copyright infringement, and especially with Lego Ideas sets, when it means the Lego fan designer is losing out on their potential royalties on their design, or sets with IP’s like Star Wars or Harry Potter etc. they won’t have paid the relevant fees to the people who own the rights to the source material.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I also started Lego just when pandemic hit and it was so enjoyable. I have tried 3 alt builds, 2 from Ali that I was surprised at how good they were (HP theme) and one from Amazon that was Xmas set and was good – a little fussy with fitting the roof 😂
Anyway I still buy Lego and one thing to consider is that you can resell your Lego sets for close to resale price or sometimes more!
Not sure what the alt market is like for resale ??
Anyway I am thinking about trying an alt modular as I really like those sets but most are $200-300
I also agree with the comment below that said some alt products are very similar to Lego $$ so tbh I am primarily looking for the cheaper options otherwise I will buy Lego. Thanks for showing the price in CAD. Thought about trying joytoy but worried about extra charges re duties ?? Did you ever experience that?
alt sets all the way, i too cannot afford the astronomical prices of Lego, even with two jobs.. so i totally agree with your words and video … mental health and happiness is a huge thing, so why would we not buy these sets that help us to be that more happy.
Interesting. Good to know.
The lego sets that dont have licensing issues are pretty much always cheaper than the big name sets.
Sorry, I will never use alt bricks again. I tried a few off brand sets, and assembling those was a nightmare. Pieces had to be forced together, instructions were poor, and too many pieces were deformed. Never again.
Very spot on. I also have bought retired items. When building, I down load the LEGO plans which helps with the build greatly.
When you say “replica sets”, you actually should be saying counterfeit sets, which are illegal. All fair, you do you, but please dont sugarcoat it. You are spending your money where you want, but it’s unethical. Also, if you enjoy building sets that much, you may be able to look into renting sets, or being part of a pool of builders who rotate sets around. That would keep the costs (and space) down.
Lego Alternatives are fine, but you shouldn't support or advertise stolen designs.
Yeah,
buying literally anything without researching the company is a bad idea.
Cada, goBricks, Bluebricks, Panlos and Mould king are all lego alternatives that have either higher or at least comparable quality.
Mould king has issues with stolen designs, which they have been adressing recently by starting co-operations with designers.
They are all way more cost efficient to buy than Lego and mostly fill niches Lego does not cater to.
I still occasionaly buy lego with huges discounts like 33%+ but otherwise I am finally free
I bought the Imperial flagship in 2022, and the pirates of the carribean ships as well as Castle in the Forest set, the Apocolypseburg set as well as Metal beard sea cow in 2023. All were excellent and the only problem is minifigures and the sails. No regrets, they were at great price and had fun building them. I will keep buying non Lego sets if lego keeps overpricing their stuff
I also feel that LEGO is over priced, and I like the idea of having alternatives.
Just not straight copies, I dont think that's fair for LEGO, is like you create something, loose time and effort putting it toguether and someone just pickup the sketch and sell for a fraction of the price, maybe that price is even lower than your costs to "create/develop", so even if LEGO did not win nothing maybe they could not do at that price…
Others like CaDA get my thumbs up, are making their own path, creating amazing builds by their own, and there you can also see the prices rising and not being all that cheap… also I think the piece quality is not that good as LEGO pieces, but I believe they are on the right track to be a good alternative to LEGO, and doing that I think they deserve it.
Others that just copy-paste I dont think they deserve my money. Even if I've seen several copies that you can hardly tell the difference, but again it's not fair…
But I agree when you say that LEGO cost's too much, the latest prices are really high, and it's no longer a cheap hobbie right now…
Also dont forget that if you buy original LEGO later it's easier to resell than copies, some you can even sell higher than the price you bought…
I am just sharing my opinion.
I completely understand the ethical implications. I live in Brazil and Lego is REALLY expensive here, with big sets being 2x to 3x (some even more) minimun wage. I love Lego since i was really small but it was reserved for christmas gifts or birthday gifts. Now, having access to alternatives that cost a tenth of the price for me, i feel I'm back to liking Lego again. Even though the money doesn't go to the desginers, I feel we're not in a position to continue enjoying our hobby while having designers being paid well. At the end, it's really a profit margin problem, with Lego prioritzing profit over everything, and I don't think my dollars will be missed by Lego.
I have a soft spot for Lego, but they lost the lawsuit with MegaBloks years ago. Companies are legally permitted to make compatible bricks
As far as "bad experiences" go, I had to order the Ghostbusters HQ four times before finally getting it. It really was a pain waiting a month, realising it's wasn't going to arrive when the tracking info never updated and then having to claim my money back. Most sellers on Ali are dropshipper's who don't hold any stock themselves, so they can get caught out if there's a production delay or other hiccup in the supply chain and it's why you can't rely on good post-sale service.
But I got one eventually by stopping trying to get the best price and just paying more from a store that had been selling for 5yrs. – Oh, and the parts weren't sorted by build stage so I had to sort over four thousand pieces before starting to put it together – but that is the only large alt-brick set I've bought where that was the case, typically they are pre-sorted into stage bags like we're used to from Lego.
Damaged or warped alt-bricks or even missing bricks are very rare in my experience but if I need to replace a part I'd normally use WeBrick. Usually it's the print quality on minifigs that is less than stellar. Especially for some reason where printed beards are concerned, they almost always have squished faces.
Another alt-brick delight is you often have to assemble parts that Lego would usually do for you, like putting together the three parts of a minifig legs or worse Technic's Universal Joint – what a fiddly nightmare those things are. Seeing the chains at 2:15 reminded me that for my alt-copy of the Old Fishing Store, I had to assemble every chain link, what made it even worse was it came with twice as many unassembled chains as the set required!
Something else to be wary of are Microblocks or other non-lego compatible bricks which in images look identical to Lego but are around 25% smaller. There's a lot of cool looking MOC Modular buildings on Ali, but some are made from these smaller bricks and they're not always clearly stated as such as I found out!
Don't be the chump that white knights for a multibillion dollar company that has done sketchier things than the "knockoff" companies they are trying to fight. 😂
As soon as I lit the LED lights in my FO steampunk city, my son stopped playing with his MK and Ninjago city (which definitely wasn't cheap, i.e. Ninjago City Markets) and started playing in my city. Point is, a lot of the alternative brand are either much better designed and/or include their own LED lights which is expensive in itself. They are much better in terms value and much more eye catching.
I buy used sets and polybags from bricklink, targeting sets that have dozens of cool alternates on rebrickable. I build a slew of those with the kids, then create and share some of our own.
Done that way, Lego has felt like the best value toy ever! But yeah, no way ill be getting a full-priced modular or new star wars set. We're aiming at 5 cents/brick or less, shipping included.