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> Shifty Brick quality is definitely not as good as Lego, but it's • compatible and
> still quite useable for many purposes (e.g. if colour matching with Lego • is not
> important).
I just bought another Shifty set. This one is a Pirate/Imperial set, an
obvious copy of Lego's 6279 Skull Island.
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6279
It cost $35 (US$20) and was the largest Shifty set available. The Lego
equivalent cost US$53 in 1995 according to the LUGnet database, so I got a
bargain?! Well, maybe, maybe not.
This Shifty set was definitely more of a disappointment compared with the
ones I have previously reviewed.
Firstly the 32x32 base plate had a significant warp in it, and despite
bending it, I was unable to get it to sit completely flat on the table. This
made it difficult to build on as the structures built on it tended to want
to pop off or come apart. Eventually I got so frustrated that I went and got
a Lego 32x32 baseplate and started again.
Things certainly went a lot better with the Lego baseplate, but there were
still some problems with one of the larger plates used to build the jetty.
It too had a slight warp in it and would connect at one end or the other but
not both. I don't know what caused the warp. I have experienced warp in a
couple of Lego plates but never plates out of new sets, only older ones in
2nd hand lots.
This set features a trapdoor which has some parts suspended from it using
only 2 studs, and the weaker clutch power of the 1x2 Shifty plate (part of a
bracket) just wasn't good enough and it fell off every time I closed the
trapdoor. It may be that it snagged going through the hole of the trapdoor
(I could not quite tell the difference) but the result was the same. Every
time I closed the trapdoor, the bits on the underside fell off.
Also I generally found it harder to connect the bricks; they often seemed to
be a little bit out of true alignment and needed a bit more pressure.
Sometimes I would turn the brick around (most parts being symmetric) and
found it would fit better one way than another.
Although some of the minifigs looked OK (and they have nice silver weapons),
the pirate with the headscarf looked more like he was wearing a large
bandage for a head injury or perhaps a small turban.
So, while there were some useful parts in this set (and I finally have a
large pirate flag without broken clips!), as a set overall, it was not so
good. If you only had this set, you probably could not have built it due to
the warp in the baseplate. With a few Lego substitutions, the end result
isn't too bad, but then it was Lego's design, and the problems seemed to lie
entirely in the quality of the Shifty bricks. I don't know if I was just
lucky with the other sets, or unlucky with this one, but if this had been my
first Shifty set, I probably would not have gone back for another.
Kerry
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Shifty Brick set reviews
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| The dreaded Shifty/Brick brand has now appeared in Brisbane, Australia, spotted by a group of LUGnetters at a recent OzFest (see (URL) the interests of scientific research, informed consumerism, and saving a bit of dosh, I went along to the same (...) (22 years ago, 19-Jun-02, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)
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