A crappy review of a crappy “LEGO” Brick Bank

Like many other millennials, I got back into LEGO as a hobby during the pandemic (side note: “Fun” fact: technically the pandemic isn’t over yet.). It all started with a single modular building, the Bookshop. It didn’t take long before I had an entire display cabinet with modular buildings. But there was one particular modular that I really wanted but couldn’t find anywhere; the Brick Bank.

Brick Bank originally retailed for €169.99, but since its retirement in 2018 the set has become ludicrously expensive. Nowadays, original sets can only be found on the secondary market for eye-watering prices that start around €500, which is a lot more than what I’m willing to shell out for a box of mass-produced plastic bricks.

Fortunately, there was another way to get my hands on a Brick Bank set that wouldn’t break the bank: Chinese copycat brands that sell so-called replicas, i.e. knock-off LEGO sets.

Knock-off sets can be easily found via marketplaces like AliExpress, but as I had never purchased or even seen “fake” LEGO sets before, I wanted to do some research first. After reading the starter guide and various threads on /r/lepin, a subreddit dedicated to “alternative bricks” from copycat brands, I quickly realised that I did not want to deal with sellers on AliExpress if there were any problems with my order. So, I went with the JOY Bricks webshop instead, which many Redditors have had good experiences with.

Their webshop sells a replica Brick Bank for $75.00 (side note: €72.58). On top of that, I also had to pay import duties. This ended up costing me €6.78, resulting in a total cost of about €80, which is considerably less than what I would have had to spend on a genuine LEGO set.

Delivery only took about a week, which was much faster than I had expected – especially since the webshop’s FAQ suggested that shipping from China to the Netherlands typically takes around two weeks.

My order was shipped in a plain cardboard box, wrapped in plastic. Inside the box I found a slightly ripped instruction manual, two large plastic bags with smaller numbered bags, and a small “gift with purchase” from yet another LEGO-compatible brand.

Aside from the front cover of the instruction manual (which literally only contains the text “T2100”), the instructions are virtually identical to LEGO’s official instructions. The only notable differences are that everything is printed in a smaller size (side note: The instructions are small enough to be completely useless if you suffer from poor eyesight.) and – ironically – that the instructions have better colour accuracy than the instructions I found on LEGO.com.

The bags use the same numbering system as the official Brick Bank set. This means that you can simply use LEGO’s digital instructions if you prefer theirs over those of whatever brand this is (side note: It’s probably KING (not to be confused with MOULD KING), but as there is no mention of the brand anywhere in the manual or on the bricks there is no way to tell for sure.).

Having said that, the actual building process wasn’t quite as pleasant as with real LEGO. Some of this has to do with the [quality of the bricks], but the biggest issue is that I got stuck not once but multiple times while building the Brick Bank due to missing bricks. I managed to backfill some of the pieces using spare pieces once I had “completed” the build, but even then I was still missing quite a lot of window pieces, as if an entire bag was missing in the box.

As I couldn’t complete the build without these pieces, I reached out to the seller about these issues. After one more week of waiting I received the remaining bricks and was finally able to finish the Brick Bank!

The quality of “alternative” bricks and minifigures varies between different manufacturers. Obviously nothing beats real LEGO bricks in terms of quality and tolerances, but are these knock-off bricks good enough? The answer depends a lot on what you are looking for.

For me, the bricks are fine. Before buying this set I was a bit worried that pieces might not fit together well enough. That turned out not to be the case – in fact, it seems that these knock-off pieces are even slightly tighter than real LEGO bricks! In other words, they’re definitely good enough to build things with.

I’m slightly less positive when it comes to the looks of these bricks. While they are functionally the same as LEGO bricks and are hard to distinguish from real LEGO bricks – especially from afar – there are differences if you know what to look for. This starts, of course, with the studs, which do not have the LEGO logo (because they’re not LEGO). But there are also some minor quality issues. On most pieces you can clearly see where the plastic was injected into the mold, as there is a small area that looks slightly different from the rest. Some pieces have small (barely visible) holes where there shouldn’t be any, and the baseplate on which the Brick Bank sits is slightly warped.

There is also something about these bricks that feels off. Normally, pressing two bricks together feels very satisfying, but I didn’t really feel that with these knock-off bricks. I don’t know why, I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Finally, there is one particular area where my answer is a firm “no” and that’s the minifigures, for two reasons.

The first has to do with how they look. If you look up replicas of LEGO sets on AliExpress, you’ll notice that some sellers blur the minifigures. I used to believe that this is because the designs of LEGO minifigures are still protected (side note: The patent on LEGO bricks expired decades ago.), but it’s actually because the prints on the minifigure heads are so bad that it makes them look as if they are all on drugs.

The second has to do with their build quality. With real LEGO, minifigures come partially preassembled. Here, you need to assemble all the parts – torso, arms, hands, legs, etc. – yourself. That would be fine if not for the fact that parts don’t fit together very well. Some parts are too loose and fall off if you move them too much. Others are too tight and won’t attach no matter how much force you apply to them. The best place to put these bootleg minifigures is in the trash.