Friday Fail: 1 Police Patrol

Every Friday at noon I showcase a real failure of a toy. And by "Failure" I mean "a cheap, crappy knockoff toy that should be destroyed before it infects humanity with some sort of degenerative disease".

But first: A reminder of some basic info. These posts are meant to showcase FAILURE, not to act as a catalog. I'm not selling these bootlegs, nor should you go out and look for them on your own. These are posts about what to AVOID buying. Go spend your money on real LEGO parts. You'll be glad you did.

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I'm reaching the bottom of the pile of my first batch of LEGO knock-offs - that means it's time to venture into more of the "carded and boxed" Xin Qi Le bootlegs. I thought it best to finish this suicide run in sequential order, so we'll begin with stock number 101 - the 1 Police Patrol.

As usual, we'll take a look at the packaging first.

In a departure from the other knock-offs we've been looking at, the "1 Police Patrol" box features a drawing of the toy, rather than a doctored photo of a LEGO product. It's not even a particularly good drawing. (Not that a photo would have accurately represented the toy either, mind you.)

This set is part of the "Combinatorial Series" of "Intelligence Toys". Twenty-four pieces of crap to make you question the existence of God.

The back of the package has the old LEGO catch phrase of "Just Imagine." You have to imagine, because you're not going to get any fun out of this bootleg by itself.

The "combinations" are again drawings rather than photos. And what a combination they are! You can....ride the motocycle! Or.....ride the motorcycle! Or......push the motorcycle! Maybe you're supposed to imagine you ran out of gas.

The sides of the box re-use the images from the back. Notice that they must have thought the whole "out of gas" motif was much more exciting than driving along under your own power. Why else would they re-use that image twice?

Nothing too odd about the child safety warning on the bottom of the box. By now the mangled English of "Design is not stand for original product" fails to even be slightly amusing.

The contents of the box are standard, too - a baggie of parts and a folded bit of instructions.

As expected, the parts almost match the packaging in shape, but fail completely in color matching and design. They manage their 24 parts by completely dismembering the mini-figure.

The instructions are pretty straightforward and can actually be followed. Or, rather, they could have been except for these tires:

Notice all that gunk inside the rim? I had to take a pen knife and trim it away before I could insert the yellow hubs. A sad increase in difficulty - I didn't expect to have to use tools.

If you've looked closely at the illustrations above you might have noticed something odd about the vehicle: it's a two-wheeler. Why is that odd? Because the LEGO part that they're duplicating is for a three-wheeled trike! (The same 3-wheel motorcycle we saw in the aptly-named "3 Wheel Motorcycle" bootleg set in fact.)

The rear wheel mount is duplicated from the front handlebars, and the cowling is slightly modified to allow the rear wheel to turn.

Here's a side by side with the Bootleg (in black) and the LEGO version (in white).

From the rear you can see the modification to the cowling - the rear headlight clip has been removed. Otherwise the parts are identical.

The "Policeman" figure for this set had a slight problem - his left arm was so cracked that his hand won't stay attached. Maybe it's the weight of that strange green sidearm causing all the trouble.

The face we've seen before - a single color transfer of an official LEGO design. The printing is really sub-standard this time. The photo above is in focus - it's the printing that' s blurry.

The torso is a single-color reprint of a torso designed for the Viking theme.

Yes, that really says "officer of the law" to me.

And here's the full "1 Police Patrol" toy, ready to....well, fall apart, I suppose. It doesn't really roll, the pieces stuck on to the back are just posed there - they fall off with the slightest jolt - as does the headlight. And we've already talked about the problem with the figure's left hand.

Yes, "1 Police Patrol". For all your quality law enforcement needs.

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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.

Friday Fail: Photo-Graph Car

Every Friday at noon I showcase a real failure of a toy. And by "Failure" I mean "a cheap, crappy knockoff toy that should be destroyed before it infects humanity with some sort of degenerative disease".

But first: A reminder of some basic info. These posts are meant to showcase FAILURE, not to act as a catalog. I'm not selling these bootlegs, nor should you go out and look for them on your own. These are posts about what to AVOID buying. Go spend your money on real LEGO parts. You'll be glad you did.

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Friday again? Already?
Well, that means it's time to get ready to be shocked and horrified by yet another cheap LEGO knock off.

Today's scum? A little piece of crap identified as Photo-Graph Car.

Zephyr Knight is back with another "Almost a legit LEGO set buy not quite" offering. This time, they've taken LEGO STUDIO theme and made a mockery of it.

The front of the box shows the LEGO Director mini-figure sitting on a mobile camera rig - filming plastic army men. No, really.

Here's a closer look. That's a plastic army man and jeep! They didn't even bother to keep the bootleg confined to a single brand.

The back of the box continues the goofiness. A part of "Series Transformation", the Photo-Graph Car changes shape ever so slightly to take on the challenges of war (I guess - the photo backround is to blurry to make anything out), auto-racing and dirt bikes. Well, mabe not auto-racing - maybe RC car racing. Either that, or our Director figure is meant to be roughly fifteen feet tall.

The side of the box has a strange bit of graphic design - the blue background is peeling like bad paint...only to reveal another completely blurred and unrecognizable photo.

Speaking of "blurred and unrecognizable" check out that text. The bootlegers have chose a font that makes it nearly impossible to guess what they've written on the side of the box.

Here's a larger than life-size view. I even ran it through a sharpen filter. My guess at the wording?

This product puts together to pack simple, the construction
is reasonable, the shape is novel, helps to educate to begin
to move the brain ability, expanding the visual field, not the is high school students friend the best to choose.

Clearly.

Here's the box top with the usual photos of other bootlegs in the series.

And the various warning labels on the bottom. Nothing we haven't seen before.

The contents of the box are also pretty standard...but check out those instructions!

They've just been wadded up and cramed into the box. "Neatness counts" has never been a bootlegger's motto, but this is just sad.

Here's the parts spread out. As usual the colors and decorations fail to match up with the illustrations. The wheels are again the single-piece hub and tire recast we've seen in other sets. The parts have "HELO" stamped on them in place of the LEGO brand name.

The instructions follow linear time for once - although they do show an extra brick in the camera assembly.

The parts went together okay - but the cheap plastic and casting resulted in the ugly (and sharp) crack in the camera mount shown here.

Here's the mini-figue. A big change from the STUDIO Director or Cameraman shown in the printed materials, eh? He looks like an albino terrorist to me. (Although why he'd want to terrorize albinos, I just don't know.)

Finally, a shot of the assembled Photo-Graph Car. Is it a simple documentary aide, or is it a weapon of mass destruction?

The answer is: C) None of the Above. This is a piece of crap bootleg.

But I bet you knew that by now.

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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.

Friday Fail: Ack-Ack

Every Friday at noon I showcase a real failure of a toy. And by "Failure" I mean "a cheap, crappy knockoff toy that should be destroyed before it infects humanity with some sort of degenerative disease".

But first: A reminder of some basic info. These posts are meant to showcase FAILURE, not to act as a catalog. I'm not selling these bootlegs, nor should you go out and look for them on your own. These are posts about what to AVOID buying. Go spend your money on real LEGO parts. You'll be glad you did.

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Oh, this one is going to hurt.

LEGO has an established policy not to produce miltary-themed models. Sure, they come close with themes like "Dino Attack" and even "Agents", but so far they've avoided portraying actual military equipment.

Bootleggers aren't held to that standard of course. They can use their knock-off parts to build whatever they choose. Of course, being bootlegs, they're still going to fail. Case in point: Ack-Ack.

Yes. "Just imagine." Or read on, if you dare.


Ack-ack is part of the same bootleg company as Warrior - Xin Qi Le. Apparently a different assortment, though. Warrior has a "stock number" of 7138 - The Ack-Ack is a lowly 106.

While the box claims this can be counted among the "Intelligence Toys"- I somehow doubt it. No, this is thirty pieces of military-inspired FAIL - I mean, really - who's going to mount the firing switch for a rocket two inches from the rocket's exhaust? That's a good way to burn off your hands and arms. Hardly "intelligence" at work.

Still - the box art looks good, doesn't it? All those amry-green bricks, a solider mini-figure - even some badly blurred fighter-jet imagery in the background. Sure, the art suggests that the missles may actually be some sort of ground-to-air cannon - I can't come up with any other reason rocket exhaust would be coming from the top of the cones. But I won't hold that against them much.

In addition to being "Intelligence Toys", the Ack-Ack is ALSO part of the "Combinatorial Series"! (Not to be confused with the Zephyr Knights "Series Transformation" line - even if the art is nearly identical.)

On the package backing (above), you can see three different takes on the Ack-Ack. I know it's supposed to be a gun, but wow, does it look like some mis-managed rocketry to me. Particularly that last "drive the platform into the ground" nightmare on the lower right...

They sure do like that alternate model, though. Here it is on the side of the package. Note the background art of things blowing up. Nifty!

You know, the more I type "Ack-Ack" the more I hear the martian voices from the "Mars Attacks!" movie....

More explosions and another alternate model shot on this side. I love how the mini-figure isn't actually touching the controls - just sort of raching for them.

Here's somethig new. "Design is not stand for orignal product." Your guess as to the meaning is as good as mine.

Inside the box is the standard mix - a poly bag of parts and a crumpled instruction sheet.

Yes, they found thirty pieces to use. They just had to fully dismember the mini-figure and break apart the rotaing plate. But, hey, they did find 30 parts. Too bad they couldn't find any GREEN ones.... Sort of takes away from the military theme a bit, doesn't it?

The bricks all have the YIHE stamp on them.

The instructions, for once, make use of linear time. Amazing.

Here's a couple of shots of the included "Soldier". The head and torso have designs lifted directly from LEGO, as seen in the following images lifted from Bricklink.

Be sure to notice how the quality drops when you go from LEGO to bootleg - a single color spray-op doesn't match the glory of the original product, does it?

And speaking of a lack of glory...

...here's the completed toy. Oh, but how it sucks.

Yes, remember kids, nothing says military might like a banana yellow cannon.

Go ask your Dad. He'll back me up on this.

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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.