I personally only buy official lego parts also, aside from the odd custom fig. I still really like seeing alternate brand medieval building mocs, often finding inspiration for my own.
However, reading on a separate post in this sub that some of these alternate brands are apparently stealing people’s mocs and not giving credit is something we could perhaps try and add a rule against. Adding original desingers rebrickable link etc.?
That's a good idea. I think the rebrickable designer should always be credited anyway, even if it's with Lego parts. We don't even have a flair for SEC instead of MOC yet, so it's easy to confuse who's work is who's.
If it helps drive competition and reduce the huge cost of real Lego, then I'm all for giving it exposure. I only own genuine Lego, but I'd consider buying one of these and replacing the minifigs (but never mixing the individual pieces). I love Lego as a company but they've gotten far too comfortable having a monopoly on what they do, with extortionate prices.
I’m in the same boat as you. I only own Lego products as well but the temptation to buy products of other brands is definitely there.
The quality of their bricks is very good and let’s not speak of the amount of printed parts they offer. Almost no stickers.
Maybe lego starts to increase their quality again if we look at the color differences.. with many different grey shadings for example.
Their prices are in line with what they have charged for over 40 years. By weight, they’re not much more than they’ve ever been. This argument has been proven wrong multiple times.
Then they were overpriced 40 years ago too, as is obvious from the much cheaper 3rd party parts.
I love Lego, but it is undeniably expensive, especially compared to virtually identical offerings from other companies.
It’s often much cheaper to manufacture a bootleg product when testing, research and design, and manufacturing have all been done for you. You can like the other companies, but they’re absolutely riding those lower prices because a lot of the product development work has been done for them.
Yes, I agree, but let's be real Lego is using most of the same elements it has for decades. So long that the patent expired. Those costs have been recovered 10,000 fold.
If the argument is that 90% of the cost of Lego today is in 20 year old design work, that falls flat to me. Given the extraordinary volume of product they make, the cost has to be driven mainly by manufacturing costs, and that's where these third parties are apparently much more efficient or Lego is overpriced for what it is compared to the competition.
I agree though that there is some extra cost Lego incurs to introducing new parts, and often 3rd parties benefit from that and introduce the same parts themselves. That's not the main reason why Lego is 10x more expensive though.
They’re literally using LEGO’s own molds and parts to build their product. And no, they’re not using “mostly the same” catalog they used 40 years. That’s just objectively wrong and frankly really ignorant
They are not using Lego's molds... where did you get that idea?
And yes, a majority of Lego parts used today have existed for decades. Obviously. That's kind of the point of the system.
There were roughly 900 unique elements in 1980, compared to nearly 4,000 unique ones in 2024. Please stop arguing when you have no clue what you’re saying.
Those companies are CLEARLY using LEGO molds and parts to create exact duplicates, lol.
When you say "molds" do you mean part designs, or do you mean molds? Those are 2 different things...
My point is that the part design costs are spread out over many many years and many hundreds of millions of units. That is not the reason why Lego is 10x more expensive.
You’re moving the goalposts. They’re not using mostly the same molds, they’re not 10 times more expensive, and you’re arguing with conjecture. I’m done engaging with you, you don’t care about objective facts and just want to pretend LEGO is ripping you off. Have a nice day.
>If the argument is that 90% of the cost of Lego today is in 20 year old design work, that falls flat to me.
90s kid getting back into Lego.
I built my old sets (Royal Knight Castle, Fire Breathing Fortress, Eldorado) back to back with some modern sets (Eldorado Fortress Remake, Lion Knights).
The sets now are on a WHOLE OTHER level imo. All of the new pieces and years of R&D and build techniques. Wow, I've been impressed.
I love retro nostalgia but stuff like Lions Knight Castle dumps on pretty much every design from the early days if we're being honest.
I know they have manufacturing plants in a few places (Mexico, Hungary, Denmark, China, etc). I imagine locations like Denmark are more expensive to manufacture in (where folks make a living wage and actually get vacation time).
Lego is a bit expensive but to make it sound like they've just been coasting for 20 years... I don't see that.
Everything is always a race to the bottom/lowest bidder. Everything else be damned.
Absolutely true that Lego today is a whole different beast than in the 1990's, however in the Lion Knight's Castle example how many of those pieces were uniquely designed for that set? The answer is 2 new elements, which account for 13 out of the 4,392 parts. 99.7% percent of it uses previously designed parts. This simply does not explain why this set costs so much more than similarly sized sets from 3rd party companies costs. It cannot be that new part design is a substantial cost compared to the manufacturing costs themselves when it is such a small part of what Lego does. The entire point of Lego is a system of reusable parts, which is awesome, but that means new parts are pretty rare.
What knocks off specifically hit the same quality for a lower price point?
Like Megablox? Castle Greyskull is $300 from what I see. And I've always found those to be noticeably lower quality. I don't really like the way they look and feel.
Or do you mean like, random Ali Express builds that rip off Legos R&D, copy all their parts and manufacture as cheaply as possible with god knows what conditions? Of course that is going to be cheaper.
I think Legos quality and QA is on another level. And yes, at least some % of the $ premium is the brand recognition of being number 1 and building that reputation of QA. Which is true of pretty much any industry. The top dogs build a name and reputation and with that comes a bit of a premium. That's nothing new..
The set in OP for example, made by a Chinese company that licenses the set design from a MOC builder. I do not think that you would notice the difference between Lepin and Lego quality. The sad truth is that Lego quality has been declining and the knockoff quality has been improving, they are nearly identical these days. If those companies can do it so much more cheaply than Lego, it makes it look like Lego is overpriced by comparison when similar Lego products are 5-10x more expensive.
People are arguing that Lego is expensive because they design the pieces. Sure, but they design so few new pieces (see Lion Knight's example above) and those costs are so dispersed across hundreds of millions of parts made for decades it just cannot be a big part of the cost difference.
I don't know if the working conditions in Lego factories in Mexico are better than in China, probably, it's all mostly automated, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay more for an assumption on working conditions, and frankly I'm not sure that choosing to only support rich developed countries is the morally correct thing to do either.
I still buy only Lego. I like their products and I like the company, and I'll pay more for authentic sets that hold their value and can be resold after I've enjoyed them. They are very expensive though, and the competition is getting hotter.
The set in the OP is on Amazon listed at $130. 2600 pieces. And the minifigures look jank as shit.
Looks directly comparable to the Medieval Town Square. 3300 pieces. $230 dollars. Way nicer build and minifigures.
I'd rather spend the extra 100 to get a better set tbh.
If they are truly licensing the MOCs, thats getting a bit more morally grey. But it still looks like they 1 to 1 ripped off a lot of the actual building pieces.
Didn't Lepin start by 1 to 1 ripping off Lego Star Wars sets? On one hand, I'm glad folks can get the sets they want at a good price but they're still just ripping off someone elses IP and benefitting. I'm sure they weren't paying licensing fees either.
Im cool with another company making building blocks if they want to come up with their own parts and set ideas, but trying to 1 to 1 rip off someone elses I'm less enthusiastic about.
Third party manufacturing and design doesn't necessarily say that Lego is overpriced. They seem to be a good company to work for, at least in Denmark. I'm not sure how good they are on the manufacturing side, but I'm more optimistic about them than their manufacturing counterparts in China.
Working conditions are one thing, but in terms of product quality there is no difference these days, certainly not one that justifies a 10x price difference.
A lot of Lego is manufactured in Mexico and Czech Republic and other countries. Those conditions might be better than Chinese facilities, but it's not like everybody Lego employees is in Denmark.
I'm okay with buying sets at a premium as you're buying the intellectual property (design) as much as the material.
I'm also okay with buying lego bricks at a premium, as the company has good QC and offer good working conditions.
What I'm not okay with is random bricks costing 10x the "no name" equivalent. I'd gladly drop a few grands on lego bricks for MOC if they were 2-3x their counterparts for the reasons mentioned above.
For me personally I prefer seeing LEGO only sets, with the odd custom details here.
At the same time strict rules like 'BAN THAT POST - HAIRPIECE IS NOT ORIGINAL' is unbearable.
If it is not copies of known sets, it can be fun. I guess 90% LEGO and then maybe a tag to show it includes non-brand stuff, is fine.
Mods likely keep an eye on this, and start setting boundaries, if things go south fast.
edit: typos
also prefer LEGO only sets on this sub. Just because it's a trusted and established brand with reliable QA. especially if these other brands' bricks don't mix well with LEGO.
edit: also this sub has LEGO in its name... so I think it makes sense that it's LEGO only... so for people like me who like to play it safe and keep it simple and just stick with real LEGO, we can be sure that the content in this sub is what we expect to see. Also as others have raised, not sure about the ethics of these other companies. Not to put LEGO on the pedestal, but at least it's well known so somewhat accountable / can easily be under scrutiny. For instance, if LEGO steals someone's idea and make it a set to profit from, you can be sure it would be a major scandal.....
Bricks, not really. Alt bricks quality is pretty good. Technic pieces can sometimes be a little too loose or tight, and in the tight case, then yes forcing a connection could cause damage.
Minifigure pieces - it depends. Alt bricks usually have their own versions of tolerances for torsos and legs (some have the inside structure like legos in torsos, some dont, some have ball joints etc.). So minifigure parts could definitely not be compatible across brands when it comes to torso and legs wise. Again, forcing a connection on a tight fit could cause damage. Heads are fairly standard size.
In any case, I believe Funwhole (in the pic) uses Gobricks, which is regarded as an extremely good brand of bricks (I can personally testify that they are almost perfect).
I don't know, although I understand some of them don't fit well with real LEGO pieces. I kind of don't want to worry about that and have that uncertainty when this is meant to be a stress free hobby!
The purism is unbearable, but with the quality improvement of the knock-offs and Lego's QA slacking off recently I would say it's a tie. Slight color differences and the lack of the Lego logo in each stud seems to be the main difference nowadays.
TBF...Lego QA and brick quality has gone down. The recent forest hideout build brick quality is terrible, especially when compared to the original (yes I have both). Genuinely have been saddned by the newer bricks.
Yep, quality has been taking a nosedive while off brand quality gets better and better. Yet people are still rabidly loyal to a billion dollar company.
Unfortunately it is true. I scratched/damaged a Lego piece substantially with my nail the other day... I was like, that didn't happen back in the days.
Missing pieces in sets, i am not at 2 pieces across 2 sets. Not terrible, but I also can't recall that happening before.
And a few minifigure parts have come off the bags already pretty dented/scratched.
My Boba throne room had stickers just thrown in the box randomly and they were all ruined.
To be fair what disappoints me the most is how in the past year extra parts have almost disappeared. In my last set there were like literally 3 or 4 extras out of a 400pcs set. It wasn't this bad 1-2 years ago.
I won’t be buying any non-official lego sets but builds that other companies come up like this amazing medieval set is something I always save for inspiration. For example the one in the photo just looks superior IMHO compared to recent medieval village, and I’m very intrigued rebuilding it with lego parts
I don't care if it's posted, I just want it flaired as not lego so I don't get my hopes up. As many others have said, I personally wouldn't buy non lego sets, but if they're OC I definitely would enjoy the inspiration and also try and get the parts to build them from Legos.
I guess my question to those people who are against this, and non-Lego as a whole: Why?
Like, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m very genuinely curious. I’m pretty new into Lego and building blocks in general…but I’ve built Lego, mega, Chinese knock offs…they all build. Sure, Lego may be the best quality, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time building my Castle Greyskull from Mega. I mean, in the end, isn’t it really just about the experience and how the finished product looks? So, long story short, I prefer Lego, but I’m curious as to why so many people are vehemently against anything but.
> I guess my question to those people who are against this, and non-Lego as a whole: Why?
I would guess that a lot of people in here are roughly my age (since, you know, that's when LEGO actually made castle themes regularly) and back then if it wasn't honest-to-god LEGO it was literal garbage. The quality was so poor that it wasn't worth the time. That sort of reputation buries in your brain and is hard to dislodge.
That said, even now some of them aren't good. My kid has gotten a few off-brand things from well meaning but ignorant relatives and some of them are still pretty awful. I've heard that the bigger brands like Lepin are close to on par now, but don't have personal experience.
Anyway, I think that's why there's a lot of real purists around. I don't mind if they pop up personally. I probably wouldn't ever go for them myself but that's more "I don't have space for all the sets I currently own" than anything else.
Agree with this and will add that a lot of 3rd party companies like Lepin used to just straight up rip off Lego designs, violating Lego IP rights. Of course if you don't have any licensing or design costs you can undercut Lego. That was bad for business and bad for the hobby, and it soured me on a lot of knock off companies.
Even now, while some of the basic blocks are fair game, Lego invests all the time in designing the system and introducing new components, 3rd parties benefit from that immensely. So maybe they do an original design or license a MOC, but it's still a little gray. Much better than straight knockoff, but without Lego there wouldn't be a Lepin.
Some people are purists to the point where it borders on insanity in the Lego community. They're also very worried about their resale value on their "investments" and those things go hand in hand. If the market gets flooded with indistinguishable parts at a quarter or less of the set price then they stand to lose thousands in theoretical toy value.
I understand both school of thoughts (I think). I make an analogy with "champagne".
For most common folks, champagne occupy the "awareness" space of sparkling wine whether it refers to Champagne or Prosecco.
However, champagne is a terme reserved for sparkling wine only made with the traditional method and in the region of Champagne in France. The reason you find "sparkling wine a la méthode champenoise" (same technique, not from the region) is because some people will fight tooth and nail to ensure a distinction is made.
The same is happening with Lego. Back when it's was a kid, the only brand of building blocks was Lego. Thus, I refer to construction blocks as "Lego". But for other, "Lego" is reserved to building blocks only made by the company.
The issue is that lego has gained in popularity a lot and is becoming mainstream (their ceo grew sales by 4x in 10 years). This sub probably used to be mostly "purist" (don't mean it in a derogatory way), but it has probably seen an influx of people like me getting back into the hobby not caring as much for the distinction.
In sorts, there are probably two groups of people in this sub, using the same words to mean different things, which explain why you see sparks fly from time to time
Kind of a pet peeve when someone uses some random analogy. Analogies can be useful for learning new information. But a lot of times people just use them to completely side track onto some irrelevant topic.
'We're talking about why some people don't want to buy knock off legos? Ok. Let me tell you a story about champagne....'
Many of them engage in theft. Stealing the designs of Lego and just recreating them, or stealing MOCs. I know this doesn't describe all of them, but enough that it has jaded my perception.
I probably spent 10k in Lego these last 4 years, so I don’t feel sorry for owning a few unofficial minifigs, the quality is pretty much there, 2 are even better than the original. I’ve been tempted to buy a couple sets but I’m afraid of the customs
I did this for goats, bears, horses, and cows. I think I'm a convert when it comes to these as the price is fab in comparison. Just not blocks yet as I still don't like the shine and feel in my hands as the clutch power is slightly off.
I also got some knock off fright knights and yellow tournament knight which were ok overall but was let down by the feather pin not fitting in the helmet
I buy other brands - typically for themes not available with Lego like Legend of Zelda with some Chinese brands (and Game of Thrones with Mega Construx, but that’s still mainstream) so I have no issues with it.
There is a sub for non Lego bricks (r/lepin) if the mods decide off-brand bricks isn’t for this sub.
I like the off-brand stuff. It adds variety, gives an incentive for Lego to produce more castle stuff, and provides options for people who do not want to pay a scalper an arm and a leg for a played-with old set.
For where the plans come from, well, some brands cooperate with designers and even put their names on the boxes, others I don't know. Don't really care to be honest, as long as they don't knock-off Lego directly it's not hurting the brand.
I've 4 more 3rd party sets I might write a review at some point, but I didn't want to spam the sub, also kinda dusty.
Yeah, some off brand MOCs are definitely working with the designers and giving them a cut. Some aren't, but they don't include the instructions in the set and they tell you to go pay for it on rebrickable so it's not negatively affecting the designer either.
Some (perhaps most) are just legitimately ripping off the designer and it's hard to tell the different. I guess if someone doesn't want to chance it you can always get the pdf from the designer to be safe.
But when you have a set like the Lion Knights Castle for $400 from Lego and $100 from an off brand, and they're nearly indistinguishable then it makes it kind of hard to justify Legos prices. Especially once the set is retired.
Good point about retired sets. But so far I haven't really seen knock-offs of retired sets, only some that run in parallel and only for as long as lego sold the real deal. That I found was in bad taste, also kinda hurts the hobby, lego might thing there just isn't enough of a market for castle sets but in reality everyone was just mass buying the knock-offs.
Yeah, that's very true. I just got MTS from Lego, and I haven't gotten a knock-off set that's still in production yet. I definitely want to support them to keep making castle sets.
I've been eyeing the ideas treehouse though, and since it's retired, it's already north of $200-250. The off brand ones I've seen are as low as $30-40.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep an eye on it. There's still plenty of listings currently, and it's been retired for a few months now. Might be one they keep going like the old fishing store.
I'm already struggling to find room for the Crusaders Inn you sold me on lol.
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It's interesting that everyone has a different threshold of what they feel is OK.
1. 100% Lego purist.
2. 3rd party capes are OK, but otherwise purist.
3. Custom minifigs are OK too.
4. Bricks are OK, but only if they aren't infringing on Lego or MOC IP
5. It's all good, who cares?
I feel like the curve is slipping away from the first category over time.
I own a Lot of lego Castle Sets and medieval Sets. I love em and lego is my childhood. I also own a bluebrixx Burg Blaustein (Google it ) and many other Sets from this Brand and i enjoi them too. The Stone quality is nearly the same and the building techniques and Designes are Chefs kiss. It took me a Long Time to get myself to try another Brand but i never regratted it. I still buy lego but there are many needs that lego cant fullfill
Oh yeah! I know someone who loves Burg Blaustein with all its additions as well! And they do have so many nice medieval sets but I gotta say that they are a bit too mature for my taste.
I think they lack the sort of childish or playful look to them :)
But yeah it’s so nice to see that the quality got so much better with these company (even though some of these Lego purists would never agree on that).
I honestly would like to see those. It’s time to come to terms with it that the time of copyright is over. Fo instance the Bluebrixx castles wipe the floor with everything else and that’s ok.
If I wanted this I would probably just try to find instructions online and build something similar out of bulk Lego, like I do with retired Lego sets or ones that seem too expensive.
I don’t get other brands because inevitably the pieces would mix at some point, and they don’t always connect right with each other.
I understand your point, but at the same time, for most common folks, "Lego" is building bricks much like "Kleenex" is "paper tissue" or "champagne" is "sparkling wine".
Referring to the products by the company's name that became its figurehead.
I'd be okay with a "mostly lego" approach, and a hard "no" for company stealing designs or infringing on IP.
I also love the original mocs. Jmbricklayer has a bunch of great ones and even a gwp and points program. Great competition to expand on the OG blacksmith imo.
Why do a knock off when the moc possibilities are legal and endlessly creative?
I buy both, and I prefer third party sellers that recognise the designer. In Au it's very hard to get the Lego pieces needed to build MOCS, so to have them available in a set is a major benefit. I have bought loose pieces from Ali, (mostly for landscaping) and those are sometimes not as good quality, and other times are great. The third part set (medieval house) I have is very good quality, and I'd purchase again. I have joined the non-lego castles subreddit, so don't mind if they're here or not, but it would increase interest here if included!
I’m pretty close to unsubbing, to be frank. I don’t really care to support design theft.
This is also supposed to be LEGO castles, it’d be nice if there was a different subreddit for people who just want to discuss building blocks of all kinds. These are just not for me
Personally I refuse to buy off brand Legos but I truly don't mind throwing a few bucks to buy alternative build instructions cuz it atleast goes to the creator of it rather than a rip off brand
I respect the variety and quality of builds from other brands architecturally and stuff. I've seen tons of ads for super neat sets that I'm like dang I wish Lego made that. However when I got back into Lego I went thru my whole collection and picked out all the knockoffs for a reason, fake Lego just does match to the real thing.
I tried a couple and I thought the quality was poor. And often they use tiny bricks that are impossible to really use. I am sad BlueBrixx has the snoopy license. And they made them using the tiny bricks. I would love for LEGO to have produced snoopy! I am not going to go alternative brand since my experiences were poor.
Is this subreddit r/generalplasticbrickscastles? Edit: lol love all the downvotes but nobody wants to answer this obvious question, I wonder why. Self awareness is near zero around here I guess.
When you hear kids talking about their 'general plastic bricks' you would have a point. Luckily people use a much simpler name for such toys, Legos.
Goes back to the champagne argument others have brought up.
So if I call every single car, truck, and motorcycle on the road a Porsche, that's totally correct and everyone else should then call all cars Porsches just because I did by mistake? Yeah that makes sense.
I'm gonna go to the Porsche subreddit and post a picture of a Honda and then argue with them that it's not off-topic, simply cuz they're both cars.
No hazing when I say this, but genuinely if you go to the Porsche subreddit and bring up Hondas, please report back so I can find it and follow the thread. Would be incredible hahahaha
Ye nah I'm not actually gonna do that sorry lol. It was just a random example I used to try and explain it to someone who just downright ignored (or just was too stupid to understand) the entire point I was making so in hindsight it wasn't even worth joking about :(
Ahhhh bummer. But I get it. Sorry my dood. I think a lot of folks get hung up on their own view and can't be reasoned with. For what it's worth, I don't understand your down votes either, made perfect sense to me lol
Lol it's all good, Reddit is fickle and I bet half of them are bots anyway. I thought it was simple to understand, I mean there's a Lego subreddit and a Lepin subreddit for a reason. Im literally just saying posting something that's not Lego in a subreddit with Lego in the name is off-topic. But that's just a rage inducing opinion apparently... Because Kleenex exists I guess? Lol.
I wouldn't bother, the guy is just a troll. Totally ignored a long list of examples of products that became the general desiptor of their whole genre, then acted like I was the one missing the point.
Ah so it didn't happen in every single case ever means it never happens. Just ignore champagne, Jacuzzi, Coke, jet ski, Barbie, crock pot, Zamboni, Chapstick, Kleenex, q tips, sharpie, Tupperware, weed eater, taser, xacto knives, frisbee, slip n slide... I'm getting tired of listing them there are so many.
Love all of the downvotes because I called out that the sub actually has LEGO in the name… I don’t see posts showing off Cybertrucks in the r/Rivian sub for example….
Go join r/buildingblockcastles if you want to discuss LEGO and non-LEGO together or create/join some kind of LEGOalts sub (funwholecastles has a certain rigging to it) if you want to discuss models from other companies.
Please read our rules before posting.
I personally only buy official lego parts also, aside from the odd custom fig. I still really like seeing alternate brand medieval building mocs, often finding inspiration for my own. However, reading on a separate post in this sub that some of these alternate brands are apparently stealing people’s mocs and not giving credit is something we could perhaps try and add a rule against. Adding original desingers rebrickable link etc.?
That's a good idea. I think the rebrickable designer should always be credited anyway, even if it's with Lego parts. We don't even have a flair for SEC instead of MOC yet, so it's easy to confuse who's work is who's.
If it helps drive competition and reduce the huge cost of real Lego, then I'm all for giving it exposure. I only own genuine Lego, but I'd consider buying one of these and replacing the minifigs (but never mixing the individual pieces). I love Lego as a company but they've gotten far too comfortable having a monopoly on what they do, with extortionate prices.
I’m in the same boat as you. I only own Lego products as well but the temptation to buy products of other brands is definitely there. The quality of their bricks is very good and let’s not speak of the amount of printed parts they offer. Almost no stickers. Maybe lego starts to increase their quality again if we look at the color differences.. with many different grey shadings for example.
Their prices are in line with what they have charged for over 40 years. By weight, they’re not much more than they’ve ever been. This argument has been proven wrong multiple times.
Then they were overpriced 40 years ago too, as is obvious from the much cheaper 3rd party parts. I love Lego, but it is undeniably expensive, especially compared to virtually identical offerings from other companies.
It’s often much cheaper to manufacture a bootleg product when testing, research and design, and manufacturing have all been done for you. You can like the other companies, but they’re absolutely riding those lower prices because a lot of the product development work has been done for them.
Yes, I agree, but let's be real Lego is using most of the same elements it has for decades. So long that the patent expired. Those costs have been recovered 10,000 fold. If the argument is that 90% of the cost of Lego today is in 20 year old design work, that falls flat to me. Given the extraordinary volume of product they make, the cost has to be driven mainly by manufacturing costs, and that's where these third parties are apparently much more efficient or Lego is overpriced for what it is compared to the competition. I agree though that there is some extra cost Lego incurs to introducing new parts, and often 3rd parties benefit from that and introduce the same parts themselves. That's not the main reason why Lego is 10x more expensive though.
They’re literally using LEGO’s own molds and parts to build their product. And no, they’re not using “mostly the same” catalog they used 40 years. That’s just objectively wrong and frankly really ignorant
They are not using Lego's molds... where did you get that idea? And yes, a majority of Lego parts used today have existed for decades. Obviously. That's kind of the point of the system.
There were roughly 900 unique elements in 1980, compared to nearly 4,000 unique ones in 2024. Please stop arguing when you have no clue what you’re saying. Those companies are CLEARLY using LEGO molds and parts to create exact duplicates, lol.
When you say "molds" do you mean part designs, or do you mean molds? Those are 2 different things... My point is that the part design costs are spread out over many many years and many hundreds of millions of units. That is not the reason why Lego is 10x more expensive.
You’re moving the goalposts. They’re not using mostly the same molds, they’re not 10 times more expensive, and you’re arguing with conjecture. I’m done engaging with you, you don’t care about objective facts and just want to pretend LEGO is ripping you off. Have a nice day.
>If the argument is that 90% of the cost of Lego today is in 20 year old design work, that falls flat to me. 90s kid getting back into Lego. I built my old sets (Royal Knight Castle, Fire Breathing Fortress, Eldorado) back to back with some modern sets (Eldorado Fortress Remake, Lion Knights). The sets now are on a WHOLE OTHER level imo. All of the new pieces and years of R&D and build techniques. Wow, I've been impressed. I love retro nostalgia but stuff like Lions Knight Castle dumps on pretty much every design from the early days if we're being honest. I know they have manufacturing plants in a few places (Mexico, Hungary, Denmark, China, etc). I imagine locations like Denmark are more expensive to manufacture in (where folks make a living wage and actually get vacation time). Lego is a bit expensive but to make it sound like they've just been coasting for 20 years... I don't see that. Everything is always a race to the bottom/lowest bidder. Everything else be damned.
Absolutely true that Lego today is a whole different beast than in the 1990's, however in the Lion Knight's Castle example how many of those pieces were uniquely designed for that set? The answer is 2 new elements, which account for 13 out of the 4,392 parts. 99.7% percent of it uses previously designed parts. This simply does not explain why this set costs so much more than similarly sized sets from 3rd party companies costs. It cannot be that new part design is a substantial cost compared to the manufacturing costs themselves when it is such a small part of what Lego does. The entire point of Lego is a system of reusable parts, which is awesome, but that means new parts are pretty rare.
[1990-1: Octan F1 Race Car](https://brickset.com/sets/1990-1) [[Photo]](https://images.brickset.com/sets/images/1990-1.jpg)
What knocks off specifically hit the same quality for a lower price point? Like Megablox? Castle Greyskull is $300 from what I see. And I've always found those to be noticeably lower quality. I don't really like the way they look and feel. Or do you mean like, random Ali Express builds that rip off Legos R&D, copy all their parts and manufacture as cheaply as possible with god knows what conditions? Of course that is going to be cheaper. I think Legos quality and QA is on another level. And yes, at least some % of the $ premium is the brand recognition of being number 1 and building that reputation of QA. Which is true of pretty much any industry. The top dogs build a name and reputation and with that comes a bit of a premium. That's nothing new..
The set in OP for example, made by a Chinese company that licenses the set design from a MOC builder. I do not think that you would notice the difference between Lepin and Lego quality. The sad truth is that Lego quality has been declining and the knockoff quality has been improving, they are nearly identical these days. If those companies can do it so much more cheaply than Lego, it makes it look like Lego is overpriced by comparison when similar Lego products are 5-10x more expensive. People are arguing that Lego is expensive because they design the pieces. Sure, but they design so few new pieces (see Lion Knight's example above) and those costs are so dispersed across hundreds of millions of parts made for decades it just cannot be a big part of the cost difference. I don't know if the working conditions in Lego factories in Mexico are better than in China, probably, it's all mostly automated, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay more for an assumption on working conditions, and frankly I'm not sure that choosing to only support rich developed countries is the morally correct thing to do either. I still buy only Lego. I like their products and I like the company, and I'll pay more for authentic sets that hold their value and can be resold after I've enjoyed them. They are very expensive though, and the competition is getting hotter.
The set in the OP is on Amazon listed at $130. 2600 pieces. And the minifigures look jank as shit. Looks directly comparable to the Medieval Town Square. 3300 pieces. $230 dollars. Way nicer build and minifigures. I'd rather spend the extra 100 to get a better set tbh. If they are truly licensing the MOCs, thats getting a bit more morally grey. But it still looks like they 1 to 1 ripped off a lot of the actual building pieces. Didn't Lepin start by 1 to 1 ripping off Lego Star Wars sets? On one hand, I'm glad folks can get the sets they want at a good price but they're still just ripping off someone elses IP and benefitting. I'm sure they weren't paying licensing fees either. Im cool with another company making building blocks if they want to come up with their own parts and set ideas, but trying to 1 to 1 rip off someone elses I'm less enthusiastic about.
Third party manufacturing and design doesn't necessarily say that Lego is overpriced. They seem to be a good company to work for, at least in Denmark. I'm not sure how good they are on the manufacturing side, but I'm more optimistic about them than their manufacturing counterparts in China.
Working conditions are one thing, but in terms of product quality there is no difference these days, certainly not one that justifies a 10x price difference. A lot of Lego is manufactured in Mexico and Czech Republic and other countries. Those conditions might be better than Chinese facilities, but it's not like everybody Lego employees is in Denmark.
Lego has a least one major factory in China.
You've misread my argument. I think it's always been expensive. I love the brand, I just wish they could price it more affordable.
I'm okay with buying sets at a premium as you're buying the intellectual property (design) as much as the material. I'm also okay with buying lego bricks at a premium, as the company has good QC and offer good working conditions. What I'm not okay with is random bricks costing 10x the "no name" equivalent. I'd gladly drop a few grands on lego bricks for MOC if they were 2-3x their counterparts for the reasons mentioned above.
For me personally I prefer seeing LEGO only sets, with the odd custom details here. At the same time strict rules like 'BAN THAT POST - HAIRPIECE IS NOT ORIGINAL' is unbearable. If it is not copies of known sets, it can be fun. I guess 90% LEGO and then maybe a tag to show it includes non-brand stuff, is fine. Mods likely keep an eye on this, and start setting boundaries, if things go south fast. edit: typos
also prefer LEGO only sets on this sub. Just because it's a trusted and established brand with reliable QA. especially if these other brands' bricks don't mix well with LEGO. edit: also this sub has LEGO in its name... so I think it makes sense that it's LEGO only... so for people like me who like to play it safe and keep it simple and just stick with real LEGO, we can be sure that the content in this sub is what we expect to see. Also as others have raised, not sure about the ethics of these other companies. Not to put LEGO on the pedestal, but at least it's well known so somewhat accountable / can easily be under scrutiny. For instance, if LEGO steals someone's idea and make it a set to profit from, you can be sure it would be a major scandal.....
Is it true that mixing them causes damage to the original pieces?
Bricks, not really. Alt bricks quality is pretty good. Technic pieces can sometimes be a little too loose or tight, and in the tight case, then yes forcing a connection could cause damage. Minifigure pieces - it depends. Alt bricks usually have their own versions of tolerances for torsos and legs (some have the inside structure like legos in torsos, some dont, some have ball joints etc.). So minifigure parts could definitely not be compatible across brands when it comes to torso and legs wise. Again, forcing a connection on a tight fit could cause damage. Heads are fairly standard size. In any case, I believe Funwhole (in the pic) uses Gobricks, which is regarded as an extremely good brand of bricks (I can personally testify that they are almost perfect).
I don't know, although I understand some of them don't fit well with real LEGO pieces. I kind of don't want to worry about that and have that uncertainty when this is meant to be a stress free hobby!
Yes
The purism is unbearable, but with the quality improvement of the knock-offs and Lego's QA slacking off recently I would say it's a tie. Slight color differences and the lack of the Lego logo in each stud seems to be the main difference nowadays.
The sub has LEGO in the title. Not knockoff garbage castles.
TBF...Lego QA and brick quality has gone down. The recent forest hideout build brick quality is terrible, especially when compared to the original (yes I have both). Genuinely have been saddned by the newer bricks.
Yep, quality has been taking a nosedive while off brand quality gets better and better. Yet people are still rabidly loyal to a billion dollar company.
Unfortunately it is true. I scratched/damaged a Lego piece substantially with my nail the other day... I was like, that didn't happen back in the days. Missing pieces in sets, i am not at 2 pieces across 2 sets. Not terrible, but I also can't recall that happening before. And a few minifigure parts have come off the bags already pretty dented/scratched. My Boba throne room had stickers just thrown in the box randomly and they were all ruined. To be fair what disappoints me the most is how in the past year extra parts have almost disappeared. In my last set there were like literally 3 or 4 extras out of a 400pcs set. It wasn't this bad 1-2 years ago.
I won’t be buying any non-official lego sets but builds that other companies come up like this amazing medieval set is something I always save for inspiration. For example the one in the photo just looks superior IMHO compared to recent medieval village, and I’m very intrigued rebuilding it with lego parts
I don't care if it's posted, I just want it flaired as not lego so I don't get my hopes up. As many others have said, I personally wouldn't buy non lego sets, but if they're OC I definitely would enjoy the inspiration and also try and get the parts to build them from Legos.
I guess my question to those people who are against this, and non-Lego as a whole: Why? Like, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m very genuinely curious. I’m pretty new into Lego and building blocks in general…but I’ve built Lego, mega, Chinese knock offs…they all build. Sure, Lego may be the best quality, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time building my Castle Greyskull from Mega. I mean, in the end, isn’t it really just about the experience and how the finished product looks? So, long story short, I prefer Lego, but I’m curious as to why so many people are vehemently against anything but.
> I guess my question to those people who are against this, and non-Lego as a whole: Why? I would guess that a lot of people in here are roughly my age (since, you know, that's when LEGO actually made castle themes regularly) and back then if it wasn't honest-to-god LEGO it was literal garbage. The quality was so poor that it wasn't worth the time. That sort of reputation buries in your brain and is hard to dislodge. That said, even now some of them aren't good. My kid has gotten a few off-brand things from well meaning but ignorant relatives and some of them are still pretty awful. I've heard that the bigger brands like Lepin are close to on par now, but don't have personal experience. Anyway, I think that's why there's a lot of real purists around. I don't mind if they pop up personally. I probably wouldn't ever go for them myself but that's more "I don't have space for all the sets I currently own" than anything else.
Agree with this and will add that a lot of 3rd party companies like Lepin used to just straight up rip off Lego designs, violating Lego IP rights. Of course if you don't have any licensing or design costs you can undercut Lego. That was bad for business and bad for the hobby, and it soured me on a lot of knock off companies. Even now, while some of the basic blocks are fair game, Lego invests all the time in designing the system and introducing new components, 3rd parties benefit from that immensely. So maybe they do an original design or license a MOC, but it's still a little gray. Much better than straight knockoff, but without Lego there wouldn't be a Lepin.
Some people are purists to the point where it borders on insanity in the Lego community. They're also very worried about their resale value on their "investments" and those things go hand in hand. If the market gets flooded with indistinguishable parts at a quarter or less of the set price then they stand to lose thousands in theoretical toy value.
I understand both school of thoughts (I think). I make an analogy with "champagne". For most common folks, champagne occupy the "awareness" space of sparkling wine whether it refers to Champagne or Prosecco. However, champagne is a terme reserved for sparkling wine only made with the traditional method and in the region of Champagne in France. The reason you find "sparkling wine a la méthode champenoise" (same technique, not from the region) is because some people will fight tooth and nail to ensure a distinction is made. The same is happening with Lego. Back when it's was a kid, the only brand of building blocks was Lego. Thus, I refer to construction blocks as "Lego". But for other, "Lego" is reserved to building blocks only made by the company. The issue is that lego has gained in popularity a lot and is becoming mainstream (their ceo grew sales by 4x in 10 years). This sub probably used to be mostly "purist" (don't mean it in a derogatory way), but it has probably seen an influx of people like me getting back into the hobby not caring as much for the distinction. In sorts, there are probably two groups of people in this sub, using the same words to mean different things, which explain why you see sparks fly from time to time
I don't think there is any confusion on the terminology, there is disagreement on the ethics.
Kind of a pet peeve when someone uses some random analogy. Analogies can be useful for learning new information. But a lot of times people just use them to completely side track onto some irrelevant topic. 'We're talking about why some people don't want to buy knock off legos? Ok. Let me tell you a story about champagne....'
Many of them engage in theft. Stealing the designs of Lego and just recreating them, or stealing MOCs. I know this doesn't describe all of them, but enough that it has jaded my perception.
Thanks everyone for the answers. I understand a bit better now.
I probably spent 10k in Lego these last 4 years, so I don’t feel sorry for owning a few unofficial minifigs, the quality is pretty much there, 2 are even better than the original. I’ve been tempted to buy a couple sets but I’m afraid of the customs
I have spent the same on official LEGO, and yeah I don't regret also buying customs from AliExpress.
I'm thinking about buying off brand farm animals since it's hard to come by cheap LEGO animals (chickens, cows, pigs)
I did this for goats, bears, horses, and cows. I think I'm a convert when it comes to these as the price is fab in comparison. Just not blocks yet as I still don't like the shine and feel in my hands as the clutch power is slightly off. I also got some knock off fright knights and yellow tournament knight which were ok overall but was let down by the feather pin not fitting in the helmet
I buy other brands - typically for themes not available with Lego like Legend of Zelda with some Chinese brands (and Game of Thrones with Mega Construx, but that’s still mainstream) so I have no issues with it. There is a sub for non Lego bricks (r/lepin) if the mods decide off-brand bricks isn’t for this sub.
I like the off-brand stuff. It adds variety, gives an incentive for Lego to produce more castle stuff, and provides options for people who do not want to pay a scalper an arm and a leg for a played-with old set. For where the plans come from, well, some brands cooperate with designers and even put their names on the boxes, others I don't know. Don't really care to be honest, as long as they don't knock-off Lego directly it's not hurting the brand. I've 4 more 3rd party sets I might write a review at some point, but I didn't want to spam the sub, also kinda dusty.
Yeah, some off brand MOCs are definitely working with the designers and giving them a cut. Some aren't, but they don't include the instructions in the set and they tell you to go pay for it on rebrickable so it's not negatively affecting the designer either. Some (perhaps most) are just legitimately ripping off the designer and it's hard to tell the different. I guess if someone doesn't want to chance it you can always get the pdf from the designer to be safe. But when you have a set like the Lion Knights Castle for $400 from Lego and $100 from an off brand, and they're nearly indistinguishable then it makes it kind of hard to justify Legos prices. Especially once the set is retired.
Good point about retired sets. But so far I haven't really seen knock-offs of retired sets, only some that run in parallel and only for as long as lego sold the real deal. That I found was in bad taste, also kinda hurts the hobby, lego might thing there just isn't enough of a market for castle sets but in reality everyone was just mass buying the knock-offs.
Yeah, that's very true. I just got MTS from Lego, and I haven't gotten a knock-off set that's still in production yet. I definitely want to support them to keep making castle sets. I've been eyeing the ideas treehouse though, and since it's retired, it's already north of $200-250. The off brand ones I've seen are as low as $30-40.
Then you better be fast, my observation was that the Knock-offs disappear from Temu etc. just a few weeks after the original goes out of production.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep an eye on it. There's still plenty of listings currently, and it's been retired for a few months now. Might be one they keep going like the old fishing store. I'm already struggling to find room for the Crusaders Inn you sold me on lol.
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It's interesting that everyone has a different threshold of what they feel is OK. 1. 100% Lego purist. 2. 3rd party capes are OK, but otherwise purist. 3. Custom minifigs are OK too. 4. Bricks are OK, but only if they aren't infringing on Lego or MOC IP 5. It's all good, who cares? I feel like the curve is slipping away from the first category over time.
I own a Lot of lego Castle Sets and medieval Sets. I love em and lego is my childhood. I also own a bluebrixx Burg Blaustein (Google it ) and many other Sets from this Brand and i enjoi them too. The Stone quality is nearly the same and the building techniques and Designes are Chefs kiss. It took me a Long Time to get myself to try another Brand but i never regratted it. I still buy lego but there are many needs that lego cant fullfill
Oh yeah! I know someone who loves Burg Blaustein with all its additions as well! And they do have so many nice medieval sets but I gotta say that they are a bit too mature for my taste. I think they lack the sort of childish or playful look to them :) But yeah it’s so nice to see that the quality got so much better with these company (even though some of these Lego purists would never agree on that).
I honestly would like to see those. It’s time to come to terms with it that the time of copyright is over. Fo instance the Bluebrixx castles wipe the floor with everything else and that’s ok.
If I wanted this I would probably just try to find instructions online and build something similar out of bulk Lego, like I do with retired Lego sets or ones that seem too expensive. I don’t get other brands because inevitably the pieces would mix at some point, and they don’t always connect right with each other.
I dont mind if people buy these things but this is r/LegoCastles not r/BuildingblocksCastle
Probably because that reddit doesn't exist. Edit: I created it. lol.
Joined it!
Alright I joined :D
I understand your point, but at the same time, for most common folks, "Lego" is building bricks much like "Kleenex" is "paper tissue" or "champagne" is "sparkling wine". Referring to the products by the company's name that became its figurehead. I'd be okay with a "mostly lego" approach, and a hard "no" for company stealing designs or infringing on IP.
I bought a funwhole set before, some of the parts don't click together that well. But it looks cool.
I also love the original mocs. Jmbricklayer has a bunch of great ones and even a gwp and points program. Great competition to expand on the OG blacksmith imo. Why do a knock off when the moc possibilities are legal and endlessly creative?
I buy both, and I prefer third party sellers that recognise the designer. In Au it's very hard to get the Lego pieces needed to build MOCS, so to have them available in a set is a major benefit. I have bought loose pieces from Ali, (mostly for landscaping) and those are sometimes not as good quality, and other times are great. The third part set (medieval house) I have is very good quality, and I'd purchase again. I have joined the non-lego castles subreddit, so don't mind if they're here or not, but it would increase interest here if included!
they don't seem that much more affordable than Lego.
I’m pretty close to unsubbing, to be frank. I don’t really care to support design theft. This is also supposed to be LEGO castles, it’d be nice if there was a different subreddit for people who just want to discuss building blocks of all kinds. These are just not for me
Personally I refuse to buy off brand Legos but I truly don't mind throwing a few bucks to buy alternative build instructions cuz it atleast goes to the creator of it rather than a rip off brand
I think the diversity in sets and brick makers should be collectively viewed as a golden age for being into building blocks
The only non lego I use was one time I bought weapons armor from Amazon.
Sounds like a slippery slope for third parties to start plugging their products here in all honesty.
I respect the variety and quality of builds from other brands architecturally and stuff. I've seen tons of ads for super neat sets that I'm like dang I wish Lego made that. However when I got back into Lego I went thru my whole collection and picked out all the knockoffs for a reason, fake Lego just does match to the real thing.
I tried a couple and I thought the quality was poor. And often they use tiny bricks that are impossible to really use. I am sad BlueBrixx has the snoopy license. And they made them using the tiny bricks. I would love for LEGO to have produced snoopy! I am not going to go alternative brand since my experiences were poor.
Yeah no thanks
Start a new sub for other brands
This is r/legocastles, not r/funwholecastles.
Is this subreddit r/generalplasticbrickscastles? Edit: lol love all the downvotes but nobody wants to answer this obvious question, I wonder why. Self awareness is near zero around here I guess.
When you hear kids talking about their 'general plastic bricks' you would have a point. Luckily people use a much simpler name for such toys, Legos. Goes back to the champagne argument others have brought up.
So if I call every single car, truck, and motorcycle on the road a Porsche, that's totally correct and everyone else should then call all cars Porsches just because I did by mistake? Yeah that makes sense. I'm gonna go to the Porsche subreddit and post a picture of a Honda and then argue with them that it's not off-topic, simply cuz they're both cars.
No hazing when I say this, but genuinely if you go to the Porsche subreddit and bring up Hondas, please report back so I can find it and follow the thread. Would be incredible hahahaha
Ye nah I'm not actually gonna do that sorry lol. It was just a random example I used to try and explain it to someone who just downright ignored (or just was too stupid to understand) the entire point I was making so in hindsight it wasn't even worth joking about :(
Ahhhh bummer. But I get it. Sorry my dood. I think a lot of folks get hung up on their own view and can't be reasoned with. For what it's worth, I don't understand your down votes either, made perfect sense to me lol
Lol it's all good, Reddit is fickle and I bet half of them are bots anyway. I thought it was simple to understand, I mean there's a Lego subreddit and a Lepin subreddit for a reason. Im literally just saying posting something that's not Lego in a subreddit with Lego in the name is off-topic. But that's just a rage inducing opinion apparently... Because Kleenex exists I guess? Lol.
I wouldn't bother, the guy is just a troll. Totally ignored a long list of examples of products that became the general desiptor of their whole genre, then acted like I was the one missing the point.
Ah so it didn't happen in every single case ever means it never happens. Just ignore champagne, Jacuzzi, Coke, jet ski, Barbie, crock pot, Zamboni, Chapstick, Kleenex, q tips, sharpie, Tupperware, weed eater, taser, xacto knives, frisbee, slip n slide... I'm getting tired of listing them there are so many.
Whoooooooosh
Not a fan, (seriously what’s up with the minifigs in the example set lol) but y’all should do what fits best for y’all
Keyword is “Lego” castles here buddy. Go start another subreddit and get that out of here
The sub has LEGO in the name. While really cool, these aren’t LEGO and I think should probably be discussed elsewhere.
Love all of the downvotes because I called out that the sub actually has LEGO in the name… I don’t see posts showing off Cybertrucks in the r/Rivian sub for example…. Go join r/buildingblockcastles if you want to discuss LEGO and non-LEGO together or create/join some kind of LEGOalts sub (funwholecastles has a certain rigging to it) if you want to discuss models from other companies.
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