Bernard generously sent me the above: a Tuomo brick-building kit of a UFO. Tuomo is a competitor to LEGO, and a well-reviewed one as well. Let’s build the kit and see how it is!
Much like LEGO, the pieces are separated into bag groups, numbered 1 through 3. These correspond to steps in the instruction book, to make assembly more streamlined.
The instruction book was in a bit of a state since it seemed to have been shoved into the box after all the bags. This has never happened with a LEGO kit, which usually protects its instructions in a cardboard envelope. Happily the book wasn’t damaged, just folded.
The instructions included steps with many more pieces than the average LEGO kit. I’m in the camp that believes LEGO has gone too far in recent years as far as dumbing-down instructions so I think this is actually a plus. It reminds me of LEGO instructions from my youth.
The pieces are the same size and look and feel like LEGO. The vast majority of the pieces in this particular kit are identical to LEGO pieces, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they all are. I could only detect two obvious differences: the ‘grip’ of the pieces seems stronger than LEGO, and of course they don’t have the LEGO logo on them!
The kit includes some metallic silver pieces. I’m sure LEGO have these, but I can’t remember seeing any (aside from little coins in the castle kits). I can’t tell if these are painted or cast with metallic plastic, but they look good and you can even see my reflection in the curved one.
There are no stickers, which is a massive positive. LEGO claims stickers keep costs down, but this kit has about twenty printed pieces and is much less expensive than LEGO.
It includes a light brick, which is turned on by twisting the top. The LED and battery seem to be sealed inside the brick and not replaceable, but I believe this is true for LEGO versions now as well (like the flame in the medieval blacksmith kit).
And lastly before I get to the assembly, the instructions contained a single error. You’ll see it asks for three corner bricks with a diagonal face, but the bags actually contained two normal corners and only one with the cut face. The diagram itself matched the bricks provided, so it was just the bricks listed in the blue box that were wrong, but it was an error regardless.
This could potentially be confusing for a builder, but I’ll forgive it since the diagram is clear and I’ve had LEGO kits with errors in instructions as well.
The base is built first. Previously in these Chinese brick kits I’ve seen things like woeful instructions, poor structural integrity or questionable engineering but this was solid, easy to put together and rests flat on the table. I’ll say this again, but if I didn’t know otherwise I’d just assume this was LEGO.
I didn’t take a lot of photos of the saucer assembly, but I found the design ingenious especially the ring that held the top and bottom halves together. This is a hidden-stud model, which means the top and bottom halves are inverted, and I was impressed by how this was achieved in a relatively small model.
Notably the kit has no minifig. While LEGO no longer has a copyright on the brick designs, they do on minifigures, which is why the competitors either have different figures or omit them entirely. The alien in this kit is made of sixteen pieces, but I believe the model would be better with an alien minifig in the cockpit.
And here’s the final product! The saucer sits on top of the ‘tractor beam’ and the light brick is underneath the saucer and easy to turn on or off.
And here’s what it looks like with the light on. I’ve placed my only minifig inside to show scale, and I think you’ll agree it looks fairly good.
This is a well-designed model, was fun to build and looks good made. This is by far the best LEGO competitor I’ve ever built, although it feels weird to call it that since the pieces are essentially identical. I don’t remember exactly how much this cost but I know it’s significantly less than were it an actual LEGO product, which is another positive. In short, this is essentially LEGO with a different name.
This is another example of why LEGO is under increasing pressure from these competitors, and why their prices are increasingly eye-opening as these competitors become more widely distributed. And as good as this particular mode is, I’ve read that another LEGO competitor makes an even higher-quality product so I’ve bought one of theirs and you’ll see it here as well one day.
Regarding the dumbing-down of instructions; in our youth LEGO did not even show which pieces were needed for each step. You were expected to look at the diagram of the step and determine the pieces needed for the change yourself by comparing it to the previous step. New pieces were not even highlighted in the diagram!