Send in the Clones

So my wife and I were in the Magic Kingdom today... I saw a guy with what I thought was a LEGO shirt on. I followed the guy into a shop -- I wanted to get a better look at his shirt; in the back of my mind, I thought it might have been a international LEGO club. It was my mistake, it turns out the shirt was for a clone brick company called Diablocks out of Japan... And I sound like a stalker. :)

From the website, it looks like the company has been around a long time. There's some interesting building guides & some interesting products, like this monorail set from the 80's & an interesting Optimus Prime. The other thing I find neat is the set of bricks with a certain color palette, like blues & rainbows, this dog set, and Hello Kitty set.

So here's something interesting, I know LEGO owns the right to make Thomas Duplo sets... but here one made by Diablocks. I'm guessing the contract isn't exclusive. It's also got me thinking about national pride for local building blocks (with the "made in Japan" on all of their products) vs. if LEGO is having a tough time breaking into the Japanese market. Or is it the public doesn't like toys that are made in China, for fear of being tainted with lead; something that has been on the rise.

And I find it neat that kids share their creations on the website in the form of a flip book. There is such a scale of difference with what LEGO fans have done vs. what clone fans are doing.

Google LEGO (clone) Calendar

google lego calendar
Originally uploaded by keso

Now this is interesting... not LEGO, but a clone brand. With all the commotion over the #4999 Wind Turbine Vestas promo set, if LEGO ever got into the market of making "marketing sets" like this for big companies, it would drive LEGO collectors mad with murderous glee.

I personally think this calendar looks cool... I'd buy one, even if it isn't LEGO. And here's another type of clone brand calendar. Found on darkroastedblend.com. BTW, just checked eBay, there's none listed at this time.


Update: You can buy your own clone brand calendar here.

Nothing More Annoying...

Just got a package of 10 lbs of Lego in the mail today... it's not to terrible... paid a little too much for it. About 30% of it was Tente and MegaBlocks. The bricks themselves weren't too dirty or smell too funky -- they're used, so I expected them to be played with. But I was suprised at the number of broken plates... just snapped in half... and some pieces look like they were shot with a BB gun... And it broke my heart seeing that someone took super glue to some of the parts -- very annoying.

The suprising thing was, there were some really old parts in the mix; say early to mid-70's, because the Lego logo on the pips was the old logo and parts from a few homemaker figures.

Before the Dark Ages

I started into Lego around the age of 6-7 years old. I remember having something similar to #460 (Rescue Units), maybe the #455 (Learjet), and some generic universal building set from the 70's. And that was it -- Lego was expensive and my parents couldn't afford much more.

I had acquired a Mike Sells potato chip box from my uncle and kept my Lego bricks there, along with some American Plastic Bricks, Tinker Toys, green army guys, dice, jacks, pennies... and kept other hand-me-down toys in it.

The building set had this green 10x20 base brick (there were no row of tubs on the underside, so you could only connect bricks to the top of the base brick). I remember trying to build a house with it, but never seemed to have enough bricks to build it completely.

I remember being frustrated with building: I never seem to have enough bricks to build what I wanted to and I never seem to have enough bricks in the same color I wanted to build in; because the stupid American Bricks would never connect to Lego (but that wasn't Lego's fault), I was frustrated with not having enough windows or doors; and I had lost the instructions and boxes, so I could never figure out how to rebuild the helicopter, ambulance, or jet.

By Christmas a few years later, Star Wars had come out and I became hooked on Star Wars action figures... My Lego affinity was short lived...

This just blows me away!

Found this up on eBay: Star Wars Minifigs Clone Building Set. Where was I when this came out??? I'm thinking it was for a TRU event, and some employee is selling it for fun & profit (hopefully after the event was over).