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Well, I just got my first purchase of Best-Lock bricks in the mail
yesterday-- I had been searching for their castles in stores (where I had
seen other Best-Lock stock) to no avail, so I finally I just ordered them
online.
The stats:
Kingston Castle 720 pieces (6 figs) $40
http://www.best-lock.com/new/images/4018.jpg
Ye Olde Fortress 350 pieces (4 figs) $20
http://www.best-lock.com/new/images/4019.jpg
So, some general reactions:
- Dumb figs. Their castle figs seem to be of 2 types. Blue w/ grey armor or
Red w/ brown armor. Cool, BUT... 1st, their legs don't come off. and 2nd,
their helmets also don't come off. Just their heads (with helmets).
Annoying. The helmets are glued on instead of "put" on. One I got was quite
lopsided, and 90% of the others just weren't nicely centered, they were off
to the left or right.
- Wierd brick sizes. The "thin" bricks were a little thicker than lego
plates. And the next size up is-- DOUBLE "thin" thick. Very odd. And hard to
tell apart from "thin" bricks at first when reading the instructions. And
the next size up? 6-thins thick. (actually, there were a few 3's and 5's
too). But very wierd after being used to 1's and multiples of 3's. Oh yes,
and the studs were kinda larger than "usual".
- Stupid underside locking. Let's say we put a best lock 1x1 brick under a
2x6 "brick". Or, heck, a 4x6 "plate". It's locked in ONE direction
(front-back), but free to slide all around in the other (side to side) until
it gets to the edge.
- Hand dirtyness. After building for 20 minutes or so, I noticed my fingers
were turning a little black. It was almost as though the dye was coming off
the bricks. Sure, I've heard about the white powdery stuff on Lego that you
get sometimes, and the greasy stuff on the rubber wheels, but this was on
regular pieces. :(
- Bad, but not TERRIBLE tolerances. 95% of the pieces had a pretty good fit.
But I'd say maybe 1 in 20 or maybe even less just didn't fit quite right.
The only time this was a real problem, though, was when you were fitting one
piece over several pieces, where any discrepancies were amplified. I'd guess
that making solid structures would be tougher with this stuff
- Neat set designs. As far as set design goes, this kicks the past few years
of Lego castle designs into a humble little corner. It's pretty much
rivaling classic castle where design is concerned. It doesn't have the
"symetrical" look that many Lego castles do, and has some neat coloring in
there, with nice solid walls (no windows every 4 feet). The only downside
being that many of the passageways aren't "really" accessible to the figs
(doors will be 2 or 3 studs wide, etc., and some space like the octagonal
tower in 'Ye Olde Fortress' was totally inaccessable).
- Badly built. The instructions are full of bricks being stacked one on top
of the other, with very little overlap for sturdiness. Some places it was
necessary, but others it was just a complete mystery as to why they had done it.
- Kinda juniorized. More juniorized than the old classic castle stuff, but
less juniorized than the new 2000 line castle stuff. OK, but not great.
- Brown swords? Huh? Ok, they had a nice little set of spears (brown) with
brown spear heads-- I can forgive that. Actually, they were kinda cool.
There's 4 of them that come on a sprue, each with a different head
(Actually, one's an axe). But swords? Brown? Who fights with a wooden sword?
- Extra pieces. This was pretty cool of them. Each set had roughly 40 extra
pieces. About 10 seemed like they were "replacements" like Lego's extra 1x1
round plates & visors, but a good chunk were just... extra. The bigger set
even came with 2 extra castle wall sections.
- Not Lego! This was just kind of amusing. My guess is the reason this
company (the one that sold them to me) came across this small horde of
Best-Lock castles was that some German toy store accidentally bought them
thinking they were Lego (or had a remarkable concience). Why? Because the
front of the box was marked with a big yellow sticker which (when translated
from German by Babelfish) read "This is not a Lego Product!"
- Some unexpected pieces. Looking at the sets in the catalog, I
automatically assumed that the castles were in the same time frame as Lego
castles-- pre-gunpowder, etc. But one of the sets actually had a cannon
(pretty darn cheap-looking); while the other set featured both glass (in the
carriage) and also the little box-style laterns that always seem so 18th
century to me.
Ok, I think that's all I wanted to comment on. All in all, kinda cool... but
anyone who's really played with Lego will know the difference in a heartbeat.
DaveE
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Best-Lock Castles Review
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| (...) **snip of a nicely thorough review** (...) I've only bought the military sets, since they--along with construction sets--are all I find on stores' shelves. Your comments are generally consistent with my observations, as well. I haven't run (...) (23 years ago, 3-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)
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