brickvoyeur Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 (edited) 14 hours ago, Bricklectic said: Once quality is on par with lego, its lights out for lego. But i was under the impression that there still is a considerable gap (no pun intended). This can be seen on the reviews on amazon where i think they are mostly in the 4 star range with negative comparisons to lego. Are you guys referencing a specific brand The ick factor on fake bricks is gone. There are still some of the bottom barrel producers that have poor clutch and an oily feel (similar to Megabloks), but across the board you'd find it hard to notice a difference in quality without looking for the logo. I've come across a ton of them while sorting, and previously I could just tell by touch... but now I have to actually look at the studs. The quality really changed when Lego opened facilities in China for production, as they steal and copy everything they can get their hands on. It probably didn't take until the end of the first shift for mountains of data to be provided to the other companies there. It's never going to be 100% as good, but 95% is still an A, and the vast majority of people are going to be happy with it. It will never be lights out for Lego though, as they still sell multitudes more product, and many people are so absolutely brand conscious that they'd never buy anything else. And the move to China only helped Lego grab a footprint in a multibillion person country, which has its own brand conscious people. If you recall, around the time of the move the news was full of "China's growing middle class", and how the "China middle class will surpass America". If they had to give up trade secrets to grab that market, they knew who they were making a deal with. It's going to hurt resellers more than anyone, as the bootleggers keep sets in production for years. It doesn't help that Amazon will display bootleg sets right next to genuine sets on search results. As the reseller price rises, and the bootleg price stays the same, you're going to have more people taking pause and digging deeper. If I'm looking at having a UCS star Destroyer, am I going to spend nearly 4x the price for 2.5x less parts? This is the question our buyers will be asking when seeing these side by side. 6x the price for 2.4x less pieces? Our customer base is getting old, and the replacements are overall not nearly as brand attached, nor are they going to have the disposable income of the previous generations. And Amazon is just blatantly telling them there are other options out there, and to "click here" to explore more. 24 minutes ago, Pseudoty said: I don’t think FLego will live up to my standards as a builder but I am going to buy and build a trial set to take one for the team and report back. I've bought bootleg animals/dinos for my kids that Lego hadn't produced yet, and it's hard to tell the difference. For example the styracosaurus and pentaceratops feel and clutch the same as the triceratops. Had a brachiosaurus for years now, as well as countless zoo creatures that Lego is still catching up on. You also have MOC artists on rebrickable licensing their designs directly to MouldKing and other brands, as they pay out a lot more than selling instructions on rebrickable. I suppose a lot of people "like" designs but rarely buy the pieces once they see the part cost. Now you can get your MOC instructions and parts in one transaction, for 1/4 of the cost of sourcing them yourself. I don't blame the MOC designers for making money, but it directly affects part resellers. Edited March 27 by brickvoyeur 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DadsAFOL Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 Quality aside, none of the Flego brands have licenses for the IP (Star Wars, LotR, etc). So buying any of those is effectively stealing from the IP owner. MOCs are a different story. No issue there as long as they are either original or licensed to the designer. I’m all for legit competition with Lego using original ideas and quality parts. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pseudoty Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 57 minutes ago, DadsAFOL said: stealing from the IP owner. Agreed 100% but Lego is doing it as well: https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-ideas-snow-white-designer-feels-let-down 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bricklectic Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 14 minutes ago, Pseudoty said: Agreed 100% but Lego is doing it as well: https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-ideas-snow-white-designer-feels-let-down and the electric truck is a rip off as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickvoyeur Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 1 hour ago, DadsAFOL said: Quality aside, none of the Flego brands have licenses for the IP (Star Wars, LotR, etc). So buying any of those is effectively stealing from the IP owner. MOCs are a different story. No issue there as long as they are either original or licensed to the designer. Most people don't share the same care, and are loyal to their wallet not multibillion dollar companies. Many of the MOCs are based on licensed products that the bootleg companies have no rights to. You wouldn't download a car would you? 5 minutes ago, Pseudoty said: Agreed 100% but Lego is doing it as well: https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-ideas-snow-white-designer-feels-let-down The MOC creator didn't own the IP, so it wasn't stolen. What they did was skirt the spirt of the Ideas program. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzy_bricks Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 This thread got me to go look at some of their original designs. They had some old west stuff, which I'm a fan of. Not sure I can pull the trigger on fake Lego. The old Tyco castle I had still haunts me. I did find this humorous on Funwhole's Amazon storefront. 97.5% chance of being complete. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickvoyeur Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 A picture posted on reddit recently from a "reputable" and reliable bootleg seller. 5 Icons sets for less than the RRP of the land rover. The price differences are extreme, and all the buyer has to deal with is the guilt of not supporting Lego and the IP owner. Apparently shipping to Europe is much higher than to the USA, as we subsidize it because we love cheap Chinese crap in our consumption based economy. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonka858 Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 USA is a push over when it comes to China, Why do we allow sites like Alibaba to be publicly traded, When they are known for anything and everything fake. We need to Tariff everything from there, Add like $100 per item Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickvoyeur Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 (edited) 38 minutes ago, Tonka858 said: USA is a push over when it comes to China, Why do we allow sites like Alibaba to be publicly traded, When they are known for anything and everything fake. We need to Tariff everything from there, Add like $100 per item Because the billionaire oligarchs here write the laws and buy the politicians. They make more money importing cheap products using *less than ethical* production methods, than paying a livable wage to American citizens. Edited March 28 by brickvoyeur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincevaughn Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 1 hour ago, brickvoyeur said: Because the billionaire oligarchs here write the laws and buy the politicians. They make more money importing cheap products using *less than ethical* production methods, than paying a livable wage to American citizens. I would say its more the American peoples fault. They wanted high wages, pensions, all the benefits AND they wanted cheap stuff. Is it any wonder that we killed our country to import cheap Walmart goods made with slave labor in other parts of the world. All the while virtue signalling on workers benefits and human rights. And now when the system is falling the world is descending into the dark ages, all people can do is say "it's not my fault, I did nothing wrong and it must be evil rich people.....that's it! those evil richies must be destroyed......it's not our fault......we did nothing wrong." Keep yelling that, it'll fix it.....don't worry...... just keep running up the debt and not looking at fixing the problem..... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iahawks550 Posted March 29 Share Posted March 29 I blame the baby boomer politicians. Their greed and reluctance to give up power in this country has gotten us here. Someone is getting a kickback or benefit by looking the other way for just about every bad thing happening in this country. Including knock-off bricks. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cladner Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 There will be plenty of people looking for a legitimate Lego bricks hard to find exclusive sets for many years to come and not having any issue with paying up. Lego is a premium brand. You could drive a Corvette or a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Obviously the Lamborghini is the most coveted in one. Other ones are great too but there’s still only one Lambo and there’s just one Lego. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/03/22/the-us-is-the-top-country-for-millionaires-and-billionaires.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pseudoty Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 (edited) On 5/3/2019 at 11:49 AM, Ed Mack said: I think we are mostly adults here. It's OK to have a serious discussion from time to time. I personally think it makes for a vibrant and quality forum and breaks up the monotony. Opinions vary and while I always don't always agree, I try to learn something. I realized long ago there are a lot smarter people than I, but that doesn't always translate to success or a happy life. I try to be somewhat respectful and funny, but that doesn't always work out. Sometimes it's difficult to judge tone or sarcasm on the internet and that is where issues start. Truth is usually somewhere in between all the opinions. Bottom line to me with these bogus bricks is that they are illegal and bad for us collectors and resellers. But I can also agree that LEGO products are overpriced and generally for the affluent and there are millions of kids that will never get the option to play with these great products because they cannot afford them. WOW just looked and @Ed Mack hasn’t been here for over a year now. When I bumped this thread my intent was to focus on the increased quality of bogus bricks and how that may affect sales as I have seen so many people posting their builds and collections of FLego on social media. I know others have their own opinions and I am not one to censor so hopefully we can keep it civil and on topic and not go down a geopolitical rabbit hole. I have placed three different orders as the algorithm let me know about an another line of bricks called GoBricks that are used by a company called Pantasy that make their own designs and don’t have some of the issues that the other 2 companies do: too much clutch power and cloudy colored translucent pieces. I messaged with someone who is a close friend/colleague of a LAN member and he says that GoBricks are as good as if not better than Lego. So I ordered their Bakery Modular for $84 after 10% off promo code from Amazon. I did not order any current Lego sets like Rivendell just retired sets and new third party creations that are not ripoffs of MOCs so I am technically only taking money away from resellers, although this is money I could be spending on real Lego. Currently, I have well over 100 Lego sets in my backlog of “to be built sets” with probably 50 of them being sets that cost $100 and up. I completed 21036: Arc de Triomphe I wanted to build something that I had previously built and still have to do a direct comparison. I am working on “Old Fishing Store” now, I had kept one for personal build but when the price got above $500 had to let it go. I have QAR, another set I had built and sold, well traded away to an old Moderator on here, I wanted to see how the quality of the sails were since they are not plastic bricks. Also, picked up the FunHole Farmstand but will definitely work on the Bakery next as it arrives tomorrow. Early review on the Mars Toys “Old Fishing Store” I am done bags 2 of 7 using the instructions app but the printed instructions look good, there are no stickers as that could be an issue, minifigures are much improved but still not comparable to Lego, printed pieces are spot on, no smell, no oily residue, sheen and feel of the bricks is identical to Lego, Hues are identical although I will do some more testing with various elements later on. No missing pieces but I see numerous people post that they use the Lego system to order replacements if there are missing pieces and this is just wrong. The injection mold points, a big sign of decreased quality in Lego to me, are much better than Lego coming out of the Mexico plant and I can post pictures later comparing The Translucent colored pieces are still not as clear as Lego but much improved and I think the biggest issue so far is the clutch power is too strong especially with larger pieces to the point that some parts of the build are hard to get together perfectly and your fingertips will hurt. This also makes it difficult to correct mistakes in the build and if you ever want to disassemble the set. Other than no Lego logo on the studs I can’t see any differences but I can feel it during the build. Is that feel and Logo worth $430 more for Lego Rivendell that has stickers and awesome minifigures perhaps Edited March 30 by Pseudoty 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ravenb99 Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 4 hours ago, Pseudoty said: WOW just looked and @Ed Mack hasn’t been here for over a year now. When I bumped this thread my intent was to focus on the increased quality of bogus bricks and how that may affect sales as I have seen so many people posting their builds and collections of FLego on social media. I know others have their own opinions and I am not one to censor so hopefully we can keep it civil and on topic and not go down a geopolitical rabbit hole. I have placed three different orders as the algorithm let me know about an another line of bricks called GoBricks that are used by a company called Pantasy that make their own designs and don’t have some of the issues that the other 2 companies do: too much clutch power and cloudy colored translucent pieces. I messaged with someone who is a close friend/colleague of a LAN member and he says that GoBricks are as good as if not better than Lego. So I ordered their Bakery Modular for $84 after 10% off promo code from Amazon. I did not order any current Lego sets like Rivendell just retired sets and new third party creations that are not ripoffs of MOCs so I am technically only taking money away from resellers, although this is money I could be spending on real Lego. Currently, I have well over 100 Lego sets in my backlog of “to be built sets” with probably 50 of them being sets that cost $100 and up. I completed 21036: Arc de Triomphe I wanted to build something that I had previously built and still have to do a direct comparison. I am working on “Old Fishing Store” now, I had kept one for personal build but when the price got above $500 had to let it go. I have QAR, another set I had built and sold, well traded away to an old Moderator on here, I wanted to see how the quality of the sails were since they are not plastic bricks. Also, picked up the FunHole Farmstand but will definitely work on the Bakery next as it arrives tomorrow. Early review on the Mars Toys “Old Fishing Store” I am done bags 2 of 7 using the instructions app but the printed instructions look good, there are no stickers as that could be an issue, minifigures are much improved but still not comparable to Lego, printed pieces are spot on, no smell, no oily residue, sheen and feel of the bricks is identical to Lego, Hues are identical although I will do some more testing with various elements later on. No missing pieces but I see numerous people post that they use the Lego system to order replacements if there are missing pieces and this is just wrong. The injection mold points, a big sign of decreased quality in Lego to me, are much better than Lego coming out of the Mexico plant and I can post pictures later comparing The Translucent colored pieces are still not as clear as Lego but much improved and I think the biggest issue so far is the clutch power is too strong especially with larger pieces to the point that some parts of the build are hard to get together perfectly and your fingertips will hurt. This also makes it difficult to correct mistakes in the build and if you ever want to disassemble the set. Other than no Lego logo on the studs I can’t see any differences but I can feel it during the build. Is that feel and Logo worth $430 more for Lego Rivendell that has stickers and awesome minifigures perhaps I always thought the true test was if your pecker fell off after handling the inferior disease ridden infested bricks that some called them. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil B Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 I have no problems with people buying FLego, provided it is not a copyright violation. I do have problems with people then selling FLego in the LEGO category on online platforms, or calling it LEGO in the description.Everytime I find this stuff in secondhand lots, I either ask for a free return or a significant refund.Sent from my SM-A326U1 using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iahawks550 Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 1 hour ago, Phil B said: I have no problems with people buying FLego, provided it is not a copyright violation. I do have problems with people then selling FLego in the LEGO category on online platforms, or calling it LEGO in the description. That's where expertise comes in. 99% of the population calls all building blocks, LEGO. I agree, some sellers mean harm, but most, especially on FB, use LEGO as the generic equivalent, because they have no idea. It's becoming a classic case of trademark erosion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CsabaLazlo Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 (edited) On 3/26/2024 at 10:07 PM, Bricklectic said: Once quality is on par with lego, its lights out for lego. But i was under the impression that there still is a considerable gap (no pun intended). This can be seen on the reviews on amazon where i think they are mostly in the 4 star range with negative comparisons to lego. Are you guys referencing a specific brand I've used FLego for MOCs. Go Bricks, which is considered to be the market leader, is very close to Lego. The white bricks can be scuffed occasionally but that aside they look nearly identical. The clutch on Go Bricks is stronger than with real Lego, which is a positive when you consider the illegal techniques used in some MOCs. On 3/27/2024 at 12:14 PM, brickvoyeur said: If I'm looking at having a UCS star Destroyer, am I going to spend nearly 4x the price for 2.5x less parts? This is the question our buyers will be asking when seeing these side by side. It amazes me that they get away with selling stuff on Amazon. It's blatant infringement of the Star Wars IP. The mouse usually does not **** around when it comes to that stuff. Edited March 31 by CsabaLazlo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonka858 Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 The knock offs you don't know what they are making them with, It's China odds are pretty good it contains all the banned ingredients, You get caught selling that stuff by a hungry lawyer and your going to lose your house. 17 minutes ago, CsabaLazlo said: I've used FLego for MOCs. Go Bricks, which is considered to be the market leader, is very close to Lego. The white bricks can be scuffed occasionally but that aside they look nearly identical. The clutch on Go Bricks is stronger than with real Lego, which is a positive when you consider the illegal techniques used in some MOCs. It amazes me that they get away with selling stuff on Amazon. It's blatant infringement of the Star Wars IP. The mouse usually does not **** around when it comes to that stuff. send the pages to [email protected] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pseudoty Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 (edited) Just finished the Flego “Old Fishing Store”. I remember when this set first came out that I was not looking forward to building it because my OCD requires all the bricks be aligned perfectly. There were stickers as I got further into the build and I found the sticker sheet in the instruction manual that I was not using. The quality of the stickers is good as they are a little thicker than Lego which makes applying them easier but the prints are not as detailed on some. Some of the printed tiles were changed like the newspaper called LEGO Times to Logo Times but most were identical. The main issue with the set was the clutch power of the elements being too strong. This makes parts of the build difficult like when applying all of those sand green 1x6 plates you really need to press them on firmly as well as the lattice and railing elements. This is harder on your fingertips, takes more time and really decreases the joy of the build experience. If you make a mistake taking apart some of these pieces requires a knife and being careful not to damage the elements or cut yourself. No way you are disassembling this set entirely. Other differences: the translucent elements are not as clear as Lego, the chains need to be built a link at a time, and the minifigure headgear doesn’t fit perfectly. There were no missing pieces, twice I thought there were but they were in the next bag. There were a few random extra pieces pictured including 2 extra chains. Once I thought there was a color swap of two 1x2 plates but by the time I realized this I figured it was just my error in the build tan for light tan and it wasn’t visible so I pressed on. The set cost $30 so yes it was definitely worth it and a good way to add these “White Whale” sets to your collection, but I would not look to go this route over current new sets. I did order Apocalypsburg as well but my fingers are not looking forward to the build and doubt I will place another order with Mars Toys. To the people that say there is NO difference from Lego they either don’t know Lego well enough or are fooling themselves to justify their purchase perhaps. Although the injection mold marks are much less noticeable on the Flego and some of the specialty parts like the fish are perfect. Next up is the Pantasy Bakery which I am really looking forward to since supposedly these Go Bricks are as good as Lego. Edited April 3 by Pseudoty 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bricklectic Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 (edited) Thanks @Pseudoty Following closely as I have a large marstoys order on the way. I think its worth noting that clone bricks have varying quality and their merits are debated online with differing opinions. Looks like your OFS is manufactured by Mork which is L..EPIN bricks per the below. GoBricks seems to have the largest fan base, with some going so far as to say better than lego which i doubt so definetly looking forward to a review on a GoBricks set. Edited April 3 by Bricklectic 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickvoyeur Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 (edited) The issue is that it looks too good, and the quality is catching up. At first these sets had terrible clutch power, and now they're hulklike. They'll all eventually figure it out in the end. Lego has decades of time ahead of them, and they've mostly caught up already. Lego will be fine, but as I pointed out before this is going to hurt resellers. You saved $542 versus the price on Amazon today. The younger generations mostly have no care about IP holders, and will happily buy cheap identical products. It's not great for part dealers either. Sites like Webrick can import rebrickable csv files now and will ship you all of your offbrand MOC parts in one shipment. No more sorting through sellers only to find out that they have a lot limit, or wild fees. If you don't mind bootleg bricks, of course. lol I do like looking back to the start of this thread and saying that this needs to be watched closely, and seeing responses like. Though trolling the bootleg reddit page was a magical time that I enjoyed thoroughly, this was always going to be an issue, it just got worse when necessities started being gouged to continue record profit streaks. Money for desires went down, so alternatives will suffice for many. And for the younger folks, many were never given the opportunity to care about brand at all. The jacked up prices for necessities is now normalized. Edited April 3 by brickvoyeur 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bricklectic Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 (edited) Views expressed below do not necessarily represent the views of bricklectic Edited April 3 by Bricklectic 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brickvoyeur Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 (edited) That's a pretty good description of how "The Anarchist" sees things. I feel that most of the bootleg buyers fall into the "Morally Grey" area. They buy discounted Lego available on the shelves, but are not up for rewarding people for stuffing sets into a closet for a few years. They speak out against it in both the Lego and bootleg reddit. Purists just believe that if they missed something, they missed it. And others still want it and don't feel like they are hurting Lego by buying sets that they are no longer producing. Over the last 8 years since this thread was started (have I really been here that long? ), I've seen a trend of the morally grey becoming stuck in a cycle. They buy so many retired bootleg sets that they never complete their backlog before other sets fall off the shelves. They end up anarchists due to the fact that, as @Pseudoty found out, being able to buy 15+ bootleg sets for the same price as one aftermarket set... leaves you with many bricks to build. You will see many from this inflation period dip into the morally grey area when they start treading water, as they're missing a lot of sets. Some will get hooked and justify it, yanking more potential buyers. When it comes to "The Chad", you'll see many bootleg stores direct link to rebrickable, as they've already worked out deals with MOC creators to mass produce their sets pending they don't steal the instructions. I've been watching this cycle off and on for awhile. I've specifically went deep on sets because there were no copies of it (UCS snowspeeder that took years to copy). Know thy enemy, because knowledge is power profit. Edited April 3 by brickvoyeur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcandre Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Jeez I lay out a few months only to return and find bogus brick reviews here. We are def living in end times 😆 2 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exciter1 Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 1 minute ago, marcandre said: Jeez I lay out a few months only to return and find bogus brick reviews here. We are def living in end times 😆 The mods need to step up. 3 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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