PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

BEST-LOCK Garden Party

I was checking out Toy R Us, hoping for a LEGO clearance or sale, but alas the store only had it's normally overpriced sets for sale. TRU marks up LEGO over the MSRP, anywhere from $1-5 a set, so I won't buy those. It's cheaper to go anywhere else mostly and since I'm are lucky enough to have the first LEGO store in the country just minutes away it makes sense to shop there. The selection is better and there is that Loyalty card that gets you some cash back. Since I wasn't buying LEGO and I had lunchtime to kill I looked over the other competing brick products and noticed this BEST-LOCK set.

As you can see the box is very pink and looks like a 2 x 2 brick, albeit with rounded corners, and there are times when I think I would like a brick with rounded corners. I got curious when I looked at the pictures on the front of the package. The studs looked different than I expected the BEST-LOCK pieces to look like. More like LEGO studs. I had bought some BEST-LOCK ships back several years ago, they were on clearance at Target after Christmas, and the studs did not work with LEGO bricks. You could put a BL brick on top of a LEGO brick but they would not attach. You could not put a LEGO brick on top of a BL brick, it won't even seat. I eventally gave up on the ship sets and tried to sell them in a garage sale last year but no one wanted them. Maybe this year I could reduce the price, or just stuff them into someone's car when they aren't looking.

   

Since I was curious about this new BL set I picked one up. It was only $6.99 and there are 105 pieces. Not that I would mix them with my LEGO. I'm not such a purest that I wouldn't consider using a piece here or there but most likely not. The quality isn't there. I was most curious about the plant life in the set, especially those sunflowers. I was thinking the other day on how to make a sunflower out of LEGO. BL has a printed sunflower head with a green stock or pole. The leaves have a loop that slides down the pole to make a complete plant. I liked the idea but they aren't compatible with LEGO poles, the hole is too small. I was looking at the picture on the front of the box and wondering how they attached the leaves to the pumpkin field. The instruction sheet shows they didn't attach them to anything. The leaves are just laying on the ground as it were. Still, imagination, it fills in the blanks.  

   

I like how the instruction sheet is all layed out in a square. There's a small plant that has 5 stalks. It's very close to the LEGO plant which only has three stalks. I like the sticker sheet. That cow is great. I couldn't understand why there was a sticker of a cow, or a dog, etc, until I looked closer at the box. You use the 2 x 8 white bricks and after stacking them you stick the sticker of a cow  on them and you have a kind of blocky cow. Again with the imagination. There's a cup of something that looks like beer in a stien. You stick that sticker on the side of a 1 x 1 brick. Now you can get your minifigs drunk. And those gals don't look too good. What kind of skin color is that? They do give you a horse, and it's fairly nice. Mine came dirty with some black marks on the hind quarters. I also liked the fence parts. There is a brown fence and a white fence. The white fence is very much like the LEGO version except they add details to the balusters. The LEGO ones are just straight poles. The brown fences look pretty good and they clip together. Quality aside not a bad little set. That cow still makes me smile. I'll store this away as a sample of the other brands that try to compete with LEGO. None comes close. Mostly I gave away all the off brand stuff to some kids. They can toss it out once they outlive it's usefullness.  

More Planetoids and Mega Space

About the time I bought that other Planetoids set that I was talking about, Toy'r'us had two more sets on clearance. I just can't resist a chance to waste some money, so I bought those two.

 

The one on the right is the Repzyllian Battleship and the one on the left is the Cyborian Cruiser. Both are made with domes. In both colors. As you can see they are rather unattractive. As Joel used to say on Mystery Science Theater 3000, "when you have lemons, make lemonade". Unfortunately, these are more like turds and no one wants to drink turdade. Like the other City set I tried making something out of these sets. I couldn't make anything very interesting. I used one of the green domes for an equipment hut by a communications tower. They have a vague quonset hut feel, though less round. I think I have some pictures of it somewhere. I didn't get very far with that project. It was about the time that I moved my bedroom downstairs and the toys upstairs. Then I built the LEGO worktable, a 3 by 6 foot sheet of 3/4 inch plywood set on 4 shelf units, there wasn't much room in that bedroom what with all the boxes piles around the walls. That was nearly 8 years ago and there's more stuff in here now. Some is going away. Like these three playsets. I found some unsuspecting kid to palm them off on.

There you can see the Battleship. What a piece of crap. The red markings on the dome in various places are stickers. They are ugly. The domes open so you can play in the space. There's a closeup  of one of the domes open. That's some sort of vehicle sitting there. I found that photo on ebay. Someone was trying to sell a set. Now that picture does do the green color justice. Still, kids like those bugged out colors. I hope. I don't want to get these back. On the right you can see other ways to use the bricks. They seem especially good for making houses without walls. And you know that's where we're all gonna live in the future. After the apocolypse, it'll be harder to get building materials than it was after Katrinia. Just kiddin'! We'll all be dead.

   

If you can bear it, throw your eyes upward, and take in the Cyborian Cruiser again. I know it's hard. Here's a couple of pictures of the inside. The white floor plates come out. The last is the little space ship that goes along with the set. 1010 pieces between the two of them. The two sets share the same 7 figures that the City set has. In the next ten years Mega Bloks would improve their figures quite a bit. They made some nice figures for the Dragons sets. They have improved their basic bricks but they still do not have the subtlety that LEGO has. The Danes have a plethora of small pieces, and an anal retentive laser like attention to detail. Mega Bloks look like they were designed in Russia during the cold war, by someone who was no Raymond Loewy. Occasionally Russia would shine in their print material. Some of their stamps are pretty darn good. But the really cool stuff dries up by the cold war. Here's some shots from a 1994 Mega Bloks set called Galaxy Space Station.

   

You can see it's even more of an open design than the Planetoids sets. There's a little landing pad and a walkway and something that doesn't look like living quarters. Where do those guys sleep? I like the look of that kid in the third picture. Gleefully blasting aliens through his little surrogate. Or just feeling him up. I don't know. This set has a huge base plate with studs that you can build up from and a little bunch of hills. "Hey! Look! I'm on the moon". Here's a couple of shots of that base.

   

I actually like that big slab of gray plastic. It's hard and unyielding. And smooth. Real smooth. You could kill a man with that. The little guys that man the station are kind of cute. I have some of the characters from the extreme sports series and they are similar. When Mega Bloks did the Dragons sets they started making the figures a lot differently. They changed again for the Pirates Of The Carribean and Spider-Man sets. I bought one Spider-Man set but probably will give that away too. I am keeping some of the Dragons set stuff. I like their dragons and will keep one each of those. I might build a big castle before I get rid of the rest of the stuff that I don't want to keep but that's less likely as the year goes along.

Planetoids LX-009 City

That's the front of a Mega Bloks building set from 1997 that really sets the building hobby back 25 years. Mega Bloks were made by Ritvik back then, they later called themselves Mega Bloks, then Mega Brands. Some family in Montreal started the company, which is now publicly held, and currently run by two of the founder's sons. I picked up three of the Planetoids series on clearance. This one is called LX-009 City. It's a huge box 28 inches wide, 17 high and nearly 5 inches thick. And it's friggin' ugly. It's got a thousand pieces. I never counted 'em. Just looking at them was more than enough. That icky green color is really something, isn't it,  especially mixed with the purple. My picture just doesn't do the colors justice.

And this playset doesn't do a city justice. Three ugly buildings and a road that goes nowhere, just round and round, doesn't even make a crappy neighborhood. It sort of looks like a road race but there aren't any controls, and there's only one stupid lookin' car. It fits in the single slot that goes round and round the track. Here's a better picture of the layout. The second shows the car. That light coming out of the purple shape on top is really a light. It's just an oddly shaped penlight. I bet if you turned on the light on the car and ran it around the track in the dark it would be exciting. If you were a dog. And the car was covered in bacon grease. The kid below looks like he's having some fun, huh. He's gettin' paid, why wouldn't he be happy. The third picture is an over head shot of the 10 feet of Sky Track. You can see it loop round and round the three structures.

 

The universe is populated by ugly robots and aliens. There's one human guy. They have cutesy names too. There's a better shot of two of the buildings.

 

I call those large green pieces domes. I don't know what Ritvik calls them. They are wonderfully unattractive. I can't even imagine what the designer was thinking. I'm imagining he or she was thinking how versitile it would be. "You can make anything out of it." Anything ugly. Who would want that green for anything. Here's a couple of pictures of the dome and one of the car motor works. You build the body onto that red brick with wheels. I'll show you some more sets with that dome in them. As you can see it comes in green and dark blue.

I never even bothered to build the set. Some parts are still in their plastic bags. No one would really want these, so I'll find a home for them with some unsuspecting kids who think they are getting something. Toughen them up for the real world. Yeah, kid, LEGO imitators just aren't as good. Mega Bloks sets are better in 2007 but they still are not as good as a LEGO set.

Fill 'er Up, Pooh

   

Back in 1988 I got this building set from Sears. Winnie the Pooh's Gas Station. I know, it makes nearly no sense. I don't remember any cars in the Hundred Acre Woods, but, many of the Disney characters have worked in gas stations, so maybe, this is the case. Clutchin' at straws here, Walt. What up with that! It might be a bad cartoon where Winnie and Tigger run a gas station. It could happen. A fat guy and a goof running a gas station. Sound familiar? That's Disney Magic!  As a matter of fact. It's a Disney Magic toy. I'm just guessing it's some sort of whacky alternate dimension, or some shit. It was a set sold exclusively by Sears. Common enough practice still. Target had an exclusive Harry Potter Lego set in 2005 that had extra figures in it. Missed that I did.

   

This set was made by Tandem, who were a second rate brick company that tried to compete with LEGO. They failed, which is probably why I couldn't find anything about them on the net. I did find a lady who was selling an 800 piece bucket on ebay. It was up to 99 cents and 6 bucks for shipping. No one much wants them. I bought a bunch of sets and gave most of them away to other people's kids. The bricks aren't anywhere near as good as LEGO. In many ways. Their people figures are very LEGO-like, except for the head, big weird heads. Creepy.

   

The side panel of the box has a long paragraph that promotes the toy and it ends with: And since these bricks are compatible, they can build many other things. I liked that, but I am having a hard time getting those two thoughts to join together in my head. Of course you have to think of something to build before the bricks can be formed into your vision. And they are not as compatible as they would have you believe. The studs that do the connecting of the bricks, top to bottom, have weaker clutching power when used with a different brand, but work better with their own brand. The worst, like Best Lock, barely work with themselves. I have ten thousand pieces out in my garage, banished from the attic, in shame. Still the imitators usually are much cheaper than LEGO and that offers low income havin' folk a chance to build. I've always thought someone could sell a building set with pieces of metal and cardboard. So you can build a slum. You get pieces of balsa wood. No piece the same as another. They give you paint, many colors, but never enough to paint any one structure the same color. You get the idea.

   

During the recent sorting of the toys I found the Winnie the Pooh and Tigger figures. I couldn't remember what they were from. Last week I found the box and most of the bricks from the set. They weren't lost so much as neglected and ignored. I think I built the model on the front of the box. I usually do. At some point I had taken all the pieces and stacked them up by type and somehow or another I had arranged them on the large plates into a sort of city scape. I was into building buildings in those days. Karen liked it, I had no other use for the bricks. so I left it. It stayed like that on a shelf for ages. Then it got packed away in a box. Now I'm debating. Keep, no keep.