Last week I stopped by the local Five Below store to look for pipe straws (for a Necromunda terrain project - which will hopefully be the subject of a later post), when I stumbled across a display of construction and military toy sets using bricks similar to Lego bricks. There is no brand name displayed on the box, just a small logo on the rear for a company called PlayTek. At $4 each I could not pass them up and bought one from each series to evaluate. This is what I found...
First up, the small Dump Truck. The set is one of a series of eight, that when combined can be used to build a large crane with a trailer and a smaller crane. The box shows the dump truck on the front, and the back shows the entire series that is available.
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| Front of package. |
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| Back of package. |
The set comes in three bags, which unlike Lego sets are not numbered. And it includes a large instruction sheet. The images in the instructions are small, and at times hard to make out, but the overall build is relatively simple so it is easy to figure out. The sheet also has the instructions for the large crane.
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| Parts and instructions. |
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Upon examining the bricks, I found them to be good, but not great. The plates had a small dimple on in of the studs. And the tires had little bits of rubber peeling off on one side, the other side was perfectly smooth. Not major defects, in my opinion, but not quite Lego quality. I did find that the bricks held together well, and these issues did not have any impact on building the set.
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| Plates with dimples in studs. |
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| Tires with rubber "flash." |
A bigger issue, I feel, is that the top of the truck has printing on it - a date and a number! I solved this problem (details later) but it definitely is something I was not expecting.
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| Printing on top of the truck! |
The cab of the truck was very straightforward to assemble, and the style of it matches that of many Lego truck designs. The next portion of the build was the real surprise, at least to me. The whole dump trailer is built "upside down," that is to say, the studs all point downwards when it is complete! It's very interesting, and works quite well.
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| Dump bin completed. |
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| The dump trailer is build "upside down." |
As far as the color of the bricks, they are quite close to Lego's light orange color. (The wedge plate is Lego.)
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| Color comparison with Lego light orange. |
The set also came with a small sticker sheet, a sprue with a set of tools, and one extra piece - an axle plate.
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| Extras. |
All in all, this is a nice little set that will be very useful in my cityscape. I plan on adding a couple more of the small dump trucks, and based on my experience with this set I will also look to get the cement mixer and one of the small crane or dozers. I'd actually be tempted to get more, but I already have a lot of Lego construction vehicles.
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| Job's complete! | |
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The other set I bought is for a theme that Lego does not do at all - military. It is a small pickup truck with a gun mounted on top - I guess it would be called a "technical" in certain areas.
Again, the series of eight sets can be combined to build a larger model, in this case an aircraft carrier.
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| Front of box. |
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| Back of box. |
In many aspects, this set is the same as the dump truck. The box contains three bags of parts, not numbered, as well as the instruction sheet for this model and the aircraft carrier.
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| Contents of box. |
Once again, the roof piece had a date and number printed on it... although oddly there are two of that piece in the set and only one has the printing.
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| Again, printing on the roof piece! |
This set did contain a very interesting little part - a 1x2 brick with a grill pattern on one side and a masonry pattern on the opposite side. Lego of course makes both of these, but they are separate parts.
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| 1x2 brick with different patterns on opposite sides. |
The gun itself is a neat design, using tap pieces on the sides to secure the shielding.
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| Detail of gun. |
This set had several extra parts, in addition to a sprue of weapons, though no stickers.
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| Completed set. |
The weapon sprue includes a headset, combat knife, tactical baton, billy club, machete, walkie talkie, flashlight, pistol, and two types of grenades. I think these will be very useful for my Lego police/military figures.
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| Weapon sprue detail. |
As with the construction sets, I think I will pick up a couple more from this series - the other vehicle and a chopper for certain.
Once assembled, the only thing left to do was deal with the silly printing. I took some extremely fine grit sandpaper that I use for modeling and gently rubbed the printing off. I suspect that I could get an even smoother finish if I used Brasso or a similar product, but I was in a hurry and the job falls under "good enough."
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| Models after sanding off the printing on the roofs. |
All in all, I enjoyed building these sets. While they are not quite up to Lego quality, they're not bad. I was also impressed that they are not copies of Lego designs, but rather original. Considering the price point (the dump truck is $4 for a 136 piece set), they're a good value and I am looking forward to adding more to my collection.
'Til next time.
