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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I'm reaching the bottom of the pile of my first batch of LEGO knock-offs - that means it's time to venture into more of the "carded and boxed" Xin Qi Le bootlegs. I thought it best to finish this suicide run in sequential order, so we'll begin with stock number 101 - the 1 Police Patrol.
As usual, we'll take a look at the packaging first.
In a departure from the other knock-offs we've been looking at, the "1 Police Patrol" box features a drawing of the toy, rather than a doctored photo of a LEGO product. It's not even a particularly good drawing. (Not that a photo would have accurately represented the toy either, mind you.)
This set is part of the "Combinatorial Series" of "Intelligence Toys". Twenty-four pieces of crap to make you question the existence of God.
This set is part of the "Combinatorial Series" of "Intelligence Toys". Twenty-four pieces of crap to make you question the existence of God.
The back of the package has the old LEGO catch phrase of "Just Imagine." You have to imagine, because you're not going to get any fun out of this bootleg by itself.
The "combinations" are again drawings rather than photos. And what a combination they are! You can....ride the motocycle! Or.....ride the motorcycle! Or......push the motorcycle! Maybe you're supposed to imagine you ran out of gas.
The "combinations" are again drawings rather than photos. And what a combination they are! You can....ride the motocycle! Or.....ride the motorcycle! Or......push the motorcycle! Maybe you're supposed to imagine you ran out of gas.
The sides of the box re-use the images from the back. Notice that they must have thought the whole "out of gas" motif was much more exciting than driving along under your own power. Why else would they re-use that image twice?
Nothing too odd about the child safety warning on the bottom of the box. By now the mangled English of "Design is not stand for original product" fails to even be slightly amusing.
The contents of the box are standard, too - a baggie of parts and a folded bit of instructions.
As expected, the parts almost match the packaging in shape, but fail completely in color matching and design. They manage their 24 parts by completely dismembering the mini-figure.
The instructions are pretty straightforward and can actually be followed. Or, rather, they could have been except for these tires:
Notice all that gunk inside the rim? I had to take a pen knife and trim it away before I could insert the yellow hubs. A sad increase in difficulty - I didn't expect to have to use tools.
If you've looked closely at the illustrations above you might have noticed something odd about the vehicle: it's a two-wheeler. Why is that odd? Because the LEGO part that they're duplicating is for a three-wheeled trike! (The same 3-wheel motorcycle we saw in the aptly-named "3 Wheel Motorcycle" bootleg set in fact.)
The rear wheel mount is duplicated from the front handlebars, and the cowling is slightly modified to allow the rear wheel to turn.
The rear wheel mount is duplicated from the front handlebars, and the cowling is slightly modified to allow the rear wheel to turn.
Here's a side by side with the Bootleg (in black) and the LEGO version (in white).
From the rear you can see the modification to the cowling - the rear headlight clip has been removed. Otherwise the parts are identical.
The "Policeman" figure for this set had a slight problem - his left arm was so cracked that his hand won't stay attached. Maybe it's the weight of that strange green sidearm causing all the trouble.
The face we've seen before - a single color transfer of an official LEGO design. The printing is really sub-standard this time. The photo above is in focus - it's the printing that' s blurry.
The torso is a single-color reprint of a torso designed for the Viking theme.
Yes, that really says "officer of the law" to me.
The face we've seen before - a single color transfer of an official LEGO design. The printing is really sub-standard this time. The photo above is in focus - it's the printing that' s blurry.
The torso is a single-color reprint of a torso designed for the Viking theme.
Yes, that really says "officer of the law" to me.
And here's the full "1 Police Patrol" toy, ready to....well, fall apart, I suppose. It doesn't really roll, the pieces stuck on to the back are just posed there - they fall off with the slightest jolt - as does the headlight. And we've already talked about the problem with the figure's left hand.
Yes, "1 Police Patrol". For all your quality law enforcement needs.
Yes, "1 Police Patrol". For all your quality law enforcement needs.
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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.
Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.
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20 comments:
Ahh if id been burgled and I saw that riding towards me, I wouldnt think "serve and protect" but "OMG, theres a crazed madman who has poor fashion sense and a gun coming to mow me down!!!"
I think the pushing the motorcycle cause it's out of gas image is really meant to represent using the motocycle as a shield for a shoot out.
@Chris: These "Friday Fail" posts of yours are beginning to bore me. If you are going to be reviewing so many of them, could you please link to them off-site?
I'm a LEGO purist myself, and I expect that Reasonably Clever would remain more LEGO purist than it is currently with the "cheap crappy knock-offs images in this post" image infesting the front page of your blog every Friday.
Reasonably Clever has always been (to me at least) about LEGO, whether it be the comic, the contests, the mini-mizers, or anything else to do with the LEGO brick we have come to know and love. These knock-off clones are really getting on my nerves and I would rather you see them off to somewhere not directly referenced by Reasonably Clever, except for a very brief link to a subsection on your site, or preferably on another site, by themselves.
@Geoffrey: These whiny posts about Friday Fail are beginning to bore me. If you're just going to keep posting the same inane rant, could you just please link back to one of your previous comments? Or, better yet, take your ass off-site entirely and not come back?
Reasonably Clever is about what I want it to be about.
@Chris: And Friday Fail does not fit any part of the description of the words "Reasonably" or "Clever". I don't care what you want it to be about. But kindly take into consideration that I no longer care to even read of these junk foreign sets.
I really only want to hear about stuff that's both Reasonably Clever and related to LEGO. Half a dozen reviews was bad enough but a whole box load more is getting even worse and is polluting your blog posts with it. That really counts for a lot of bad publicity, whether you want it to be about sets you want to ridicule or not.
I continue to read your webcomic while it's there to be read, but Friday Fail can disappear into a black hole for all I care, just as long as I don't have to constantly put up with navigating around it's muck regardless of whether I navigate around your site by links or other means.
I will only be quiet about it when it is gone from my browsing experience once and for all. You may as well just review the entire lot as a bulk collection and do it once a month. The less I see of Friday Fail the better.
If I could, I'd filter blog posts about Friday Fail out entirely so I don't even have to see them. But I can't even do that.
@self: Do not feed the troll. Do NOT feed the troll. Tempting as it is, do NOT feed the troll.
@Chris and @Geoffrey: For what it is worth, I enjoy reading Friday Fail and would be dissapointed if it went away. I do not see it as generating bad publicity.
Isn't it odd that the face of the police officer is that o the bricksters, the main villan of the Loge Island francise. I don't think the streets are safe anymore.
@Wrathkid: You're right, it IS the Brickster! Obviously the bootleggers are not familiar with the Lego Island line...not that I'd expect them to be.
And for what it's worth, I love Friday Fail.
"@Chris: These "Friday Fail" posts of yours are beginning to bore me. If you are going to be reviewing so many of them, could you please link to them off-site?"
Aaaaaaaand he's back.
But that's just it, Chris. I don't think he is a troll. Most trolls would have given up by now. Goeff is just like... I don't know. But this isn't a troll.
Geoff: Get your head out of your ass. It's not your site, scroll isn't nearly as bad as your whining makes it seem. If you don't like it, don't read it. And this ARE related to Lego, if anything he's promoting Lego over these crap piles.
For what it's worth, I'm slightly kind of tired of FF. It's just "Werp, this set sucks get Lego instead." I don't have any ideas to make it more interesting, but something to mix it up some wouldn't hurt.
I don't post often, but I am here reading every day, just not much to say.
For Chris- I love what you do. I enjoy Friday Fail and I hope, since it is your site and yours to do with as you please, you will continue to do them. I like the newish format of the blog where if you don't want to read the whole blog post of something you don't have to (of course I want to so I click on everything :) ).
For Geoffrey- I'm sorry you don't like things. If it was your site you could of course be rid of it. However it's not, and as with anything else that doesn't belong to you you just have to take the good with the bad. Enjoy the things you like and skip the things you don't. Do you have a site I could check out and let you know which things I don't like so you can get rid of them?
Well, I was going to post something like if you don't like reading it why are you to that Geoffrey guy, but others have beaten me to it.
I am another one that likes the Friday fails.
I love these "Friday Fail" sections, there always funny and the point is to show how lame and crappy the bootlegs are in comparion to the glory and quality of real lego.
Does anyone else think the policeman is wearing nothing but a bright blue, tight undergarment designed for a woman?
WV: outoc
O-C rhymes with Geoff-rey, I suppose.
I am also one that likes the F.F.s,
On Doyle's side.
chris and geoffrey
you two argue every week.if you dont like them, just scroll past.
there are some people(i for instance)like friday fails
@ Baz: that indeed is one heck of a suspicious color of underwear to be worn by a man. Ah well, there was a policeman among the Village People as well...
@ Geoffrey: I don't know what part of the site you saved in your favorites, but I have http://www.reasonablyclever.com saved there. Do the same, click the middle or right button every time you come back to the site and OMG, no more Friday Fail!
I do like the Fails though. It might get more fun if Chris would review bigger bootleg sets, instead of the impulse ones. Or has no bootlegger yet come to the idea of making such? Anyway, keep up the good work, Chris! All of it!
I think Chris should just move so that Joe guy wouldn't be able to ship him more fake Lego stuff. :-)
I really enjoy the FF stuff and surely like to see Chris review other bootleg material too.
I heard a rumor that that 'Joe' guy is looking for Lego play sets but has had no luck finding any.
This one is funny....they did a very crappy drawing instead of a picture of the set...the slogan is just to imagine and all the related sets are just a motorcycle and one of them is that you can push it! XD XD XD XD!!!!!
Huh... I actually kind of like the modified two-wheeled motorcycle thing. It reminds me of the Bat-Pod from The Dark Knight. Maybe it's just the coloring.
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