Friday Fail: City Ancgl

Every Friday at noon I showcase a real failure of a toy. And by "Failure" I mean "a cheap, crappy knockoff toy that should be destroyed before it infects humanity with some sort of degenerative disease".

But first: A reminder of some basic info. These posts are meant to showcase FAILURE, not to act as a catalog. I'm not selling these bootlegs, nor should you go out and look for them on your own. These are posts about what to AVOID buying. Go spend your money on real LEGO parts. You'll be glad you did.

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The bootleg brand BRICK returns today with another impulse-sized set in their "Super Bricks Series". The set name is City Ancgl - and, no, I don't know what word they were trying for.

The front of the package (above) has the BRICK logo - a thematic copy of the LEGO brand. It also has a part count (20 pcs) and a suggested age (6+). The toy shown is a small truck-like vehicle and...um...a random collection of bricks including a shield, smokestack, and tool rack.

The background of the image has a blurred cityscape. From the motion lines on the truck you'd think it was moving along at a decent clip - with the strange brick assortment flying along side. Really weird.

The rear of the package trades the BRICK logo and other text for the following:

Vivid Andgreat in Style
Handsome Appearance

The "Andgreat" typo and general wording are identical to other packages in the BRICK line.
The background once again suggests that the truck and parts-rack are moving at horrific speed. Or maybe the buildings are retreating - since the ground the toys are sitting on seems to be stationary.

The side of the box shows the truck and parts rack at rest in front of some teeny tiny houses. The standard BRICK legend of

chariots without rival
many colr a lot.
selected freely by you

appears - with the BRICK standard "colr" misspelling.

Box side #2 has the more of the same text and graphics seen already.

Side #3 has more BRICK-standard goofy text:

Most New Catena
Completely new to Come in to the market
More new items available

Finally, the bottom of the box has a safety warning. Nothing much to say here, so let's move on to the contents of the box.

Inside we find the same mix we've come to expect from BRICK - a poly bag of parts and a cheaply-printed instruction sheet.

The box claims twenty pieces - and the contents of the poly-bag match up. Of course, the colors don't match the pictures on the box. At least they warned us about that on the box bottom.

The bricks have some interesting markings on them. Most have the "HOLI" imprint seen in the other BRICK knock-offs. But a few are marked "YIHE". Maybe if you find all the different markings it spells out a secret phrase.

This set, shockingly, has several parts not lifted directly from LEGO molds. The front window for the truck is non-LEGO, the tires are a recast amalgam, and the rod (in yellow, above) is just a bit shorter than its LEGO counterpart (in white).

The instructions deserve a closer look. Be sure to notice that they don't follow any sort of logic at all - the first three steps in particular are intermingled and senseless. Combine that with a lack of color-matches, and you have an annoyingly complex build for a 20 piece kit.

And here you have the completed model. Even in context, the parts rack makes no sense.

Oh, who am I kidding? The whole CITY ANCGL kit makes no sense.

Oh well. At least I never have to review this set again.

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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.