Semi-Pure

Experimentation

This is really embarrassing to admit, but when I was in my twenties, I did a little bit of experimenting.  No, not with drugs.  (What?  No, not with that either.  Minds out of the gutter, people!)  My experimentation was with plastic building bricks that were a cheaper alternative to LEGO products. 

(And even then, I didn’t buy Mega-Bloks.  I had friends who used Mega-Bloks, and having played with their bricks a little, I knew how badly they sucked in comparison to LEGO.) 

I can’t remember what all I tried.  I know that there were some Tyco-Bricks.  Several other brands the details of which escape me.  And some ridiculous product I found at Wal*Mart called “Blocks By The Pound”.  BBTP bricks were made of a plastic so much softer than anyone else’s that you could bend the sidewalls of their 2x4 brick inward with minimal pressure from your finger and thumb. 

It didn’t take very long to realize that nothing on the market compared to LEGO.  So I quit looking for the cheaper alternative, because it was just that:  Cheaper, in all regards. 

LEGO Snob

I didn’t encounter the term ‘purist’ in relation to LEGO fans until I discovered the online LEGO community in about 2009 or 2010.  So before that, when talking about LEGO bricks (and how they must ONLY be LEGO-brand bricks), I’d simply refer to myself as a LEGO Snob. 

None of those crappy Mega-Bloks for me, thanks.  And certainly none of the misshapen lumps of plastic trying and failing to be the counterparts to LEGO’s minifigures. 

Because of licenses, I have broken down and purchased three Mega-Bloks sets in my lifetime.  Two of which were Christmas presents for fans of either TMNT or Call of Duty, and the third was a miniset with a Thing figure back when MB had the Fantastic Four license.  I no longer have the Thing set, but I suspect that the actual Thing figure is still lurking about at the far edges of my possession. 

My nephew’s building brick collection is about half-LEGO, half Mega-Bloks.  It takes a real effort not to argue about why that shouldn’t be with his mother, but – since I live in their basement, I keep my mouth shut. 

The Slippery Slope

“LEGO bricks (and only LEGO-brand bricks)” worked for me as a philosophy right up until I discovered the existence of third-party minifigure accessories.  The first time I found the BrickForge web page, my head nearly exploded. 

[My word processor just informed me that there’s no such word as ‘explosed’.  I mentioned this to my brother in law, and he tells me that the actual spelling is ‘a-splosed’.  But my word processor frowned on that as well.]

BrickForge had all sorts of minifigure-compatible accessories:  Weapons, armor, hats, hair, sports equipment, tools, musical instruments, and all sorts of other goodies.  They even had Ghostbusters equipment (although not by these names):  Proton Packs, PKE Meters, and Ecto-Goggles.  My LEGO snobbery slipped a notch as I quickly loaded up my cart and clicked the checkout button. 

After discovering BrickForge, I started searching for other vendors of custom minifigure accessories.  I found several of them.  BrickWarriors, with its weapons and armor, plus oddball things like bear traps, jester accessories, crutches, and single roses. 

Then came BrickArms (and its official reseller G.I.Brick), with its as-authentic-as-possible real-world military hardware in minifig sizes.  (And the crates!  Oh, those marvelous crates!) 

I still considered myself a LEGO snob (or ‘purist’ as I discovered the term).  But now there were marked exceptions.  I still wouldn’t use the basic bricks and plates and things from other block brands.  But the third-party accessories?  They were suddenly fair game in my mind.  They weren’t products that LEGO made (or were likely to make anytime soon), and so they weren’t really competing with the company.  But making the exception JUST for minifig accessories still left me mostly purist.  Didn’t it? 

Customization

I love the printed elements from LEGO.  Computer screens, signage, and so on.  And I absolutely hate the fact that most LEGO sets lack printed elements and come instead with blank pieces… and a sheet of stickers. 

I think my hatred of stickers is what allowed me to slide further down the slippery slope of impurity when I discovered custom printed elements.  Citizen Brick, Eclipse Graphx, and CustomBricks were my seducers in this arena.  Printed bricks and tiles.  Printed minifigure parts.  All actual LEGO elements, just with additional printing.  That’s still sort of pure, right? 

Aside from new faces and outfits on minifigs, custom printing companies also brought us woodgrain tiles, bacon, money, credit cards, all sorts of signage, targets, computer equipment, and so much more. 

I’d pick up printed tiles from vendors at conventions, and occasionally order more bricks and tiles over the internet.  Pick from what’s available, add to cart, checkout. 

And then my local Bricks and Minifigs store got themselves a high-end printer, and began to offer their printing-on-brick services to their customers.  Instead of a limited selection of printed parts, custom printing now became whatever design I wanted on whatever brick I wanted. 

Chinese Knock-Off Minifigures

So:  LEGO only for the basic building elements.  Custom accessories for minifigures.  And custom printing on actual LEGO pieces.  NO ‘fake’ bricks.  I buy supplemental pieces that LEGO doesn’t offer, but nothing that’s a duplicate of things already in their inventory. 

In the past few years, there have been a handful of companies in China that started producing cheap replicas of official LEGO minifigures.  Fully assembled, they look just like the real thing.  (You know, if you squint just right, and are standing far enough away.)  There are some obvious differences when looking at the individual pieces (different leg connectors on most of them, for one).  But they exist, and even when resold by vendors here in the states, they’re still usually cheaper than the sometimes out-of-production figures are on the secondary market.  I’ve seen Marvel and DC superheroes, TMNT, Ninjago, and others. 

Yeah, they’re cheaper, but they’re also cheaper. 

It really didn’t even need to be stated, but even according to my relaxed LEGO snobbery and semi-purity, these were off-limits.  There were definite uncrossable lines, and one of them sat right in front of cheap Chinese knockoffs. 

Just How Slippery Is the Slope?

Despite there being that definitive uncrossable line… I eventually discovered that some of the figures available in Chinese knock-off form were reproduction of the San Diego Comic Con exclusive figures that are extremely limited in number and go for hundreds of dollars.  Then I discovered that other figures are reproductions from LEGO video game characters that don’t actually exist in physical LEGO form. 

So how slippery is the slope?  Very, very slippery.  So much so that I slid downhill right past that seemingly uncrossable line. 

There are vendors on Amazon that sell counterfeit versions of Bizarro, Captain Marvel/Shazam, and the Phoenix for anywhere from $5 to 10 bucks per, including shipping.  Previously only available for those fortunate few at SDCC with lucky lottery numbers.  $5 to 10 vs. $200 to 500?  That math was easy. 

 

Amazon also has vendors that offer the Fantastic Four.  $20 to own counterfeit versions of my favorite Marvel heroes vs. not being able to buy them because LEGO doesn’t make them?  That was also an easy decision. 

 

The Final Verdict

Purist before 2011.  Semi-pure until this Christmas.  Mostly semi-pure with a little bit of inexcusable and shameless behavior in the last couple of months. 

But I still won’t build with Mega-Bloks.