Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Daily Fail: Little Flying Boat




First time here? Please take a moment and read the DAILY FAIL DISCLAIMER. Thanks!

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Today we introduce another "collection" of LEGO-impulse Bootlegs from Zephyr Knight. No longer satisfied with duplicating LEGO themes and models, these pirates have instead overdosed heavily on acid to bring us a startlingly new assortment of failure.

We'll start off with the first of the series: #1008: Little Flying Boat




I've heard of flying fish - but a flying boat? That's a new one to me. The closest I could imagine would be one of those planes with the pontoon landing gear -it's a air/sea hybrid that exists. Of course, Zephyr Knight had no reason to stay based in reality...



As the box states, Every Styles Fully Wonderful. Little Flying Boat is 24 pieces of incoherent suckage.

What, if anything, are we being shown in the background above? Is the boat on a sea? In outer space? Crashing into a very small planet?

Are those flags at the rear of the ship supposed to be rocket exhaust? Or just festive? We're only at the font of the box, and already I feel a massive headache coming on.



The back of the box reveals that, once again, this set is part of the over-arcing "Series Transformation". Instead of the usual three model variations we get four - not that any of them are interesting in the slightest.

The background shows us a planet seen from space - so maybe Little Flying Boat is also Little Flying Spaceship Boat. Or maybe they just didn't care.

I'm leaning towards the "didn't care" angle, personally.



I've scanned the instruction sheet mainly to show just how lame the build is on this creation. This is what happens when you don't copy LEGO's plans, but instead rely on a third grader to do your design work.


The included mini-figure varies slightly from the one shown on the box - instead of a Zephyr Knight-almost-custom-torso-design we have this strange sleeveless inverted Blacktron jumper. The face, at least, is new - even if it is clearly based on the standard "smile with eyebrows" design seen on many LEGO heads.



Here's the included toy. Even when they're working with their own design, Zephyr can't manage to match all the colors on the box. The control sticks are lying flat because they don't fit together at all - there's no friction to hold them upright.

And - again - what the heck is up with the flags at the back?



Finally, here's a shot of the pilot flying along in the Little Flying Boat.

Hey. Wait a moment. Maybe they meant "A boat that does very little flying" - as in a NORMAL boat. That'd almost make sense!

Nah.

Little Flying Boat. First in a series of trippy suck. You've been warned.
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As always, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.

4 comments:

Brian Schlosser said...

@geoffrey

I dunno... Its giving them a lot more credit than they have earned to think they based this piece of crap on a 25+ year old Classic Space set... I think its more likely convergent evolution at work, a similar shape made from basic parts.

But who knows? The minds of the bootleggers are strange and difficult to fathom...

Filip said...

The set is actually a rip-off of this one from the Space Port theme.

http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=1266-1

Ben said...

Im inclined to go with filip. the two sets are quite similar.

fib said...

This is obviously the "Slower Yacht".