I bought the above construction kit (‘fake LEGO’) in NYC. It was only $40. Was it worth this price?
The above shows the contents. I didn’t look closely enough at the box to realize the extent of the lighting so I was surprised to see it comes with a rechargeable battery and three lights, one of which is a flexible strip:
The strip is triggered by sound and pulses. Like a steampunk jellyfish!
The quality of the pieces is very high and while most were identical to LEGO there was a good quantity of unique parts as well. Construction is done in two halves, each of which utilizes more pieces than is typical for a LEGO kit. The several dozen steps of the first half used almost entirely orange pieces.
And the above are all the pieces for step 2, which is a little excessive don’t you think? Assembly wasn’t difficult but felt more like a technic kit than a normal LEGO one. The grip of the pieces is extremely strong, and my ruined hands found removing incorrectly placed bricks a painful challenge.
The central support is well engineered and very sturdy but supports the jelly with just a single tiny axle which makes the kit surprisingly fragile. Things got worse with the arms attached, and while the finished jelly looks great you wouldn’t want to accidentally bump it!
At about a foot tall, it’s bigger than I expected. It looks better than I expected. It was more fun to build than I expected. And it looks fantastic in the dark:
At $40 this is an absolute steal. Lego would charge twice as much and they wouldn’t even include the light! I’d never heard of this company (Sembo) and likely will never see their products again but based on this alone I’d certainly buy another.