Wednesday, June 9, 2010

All Your Lego's Are Belong To Us: A look at some Not-Lego's

I won some ebay auctions from some sellers in the Hong Kong area advertising brick sets that fit Lego. I love the Engrish on those posts. Some household brand names include Enlightened Child, Kazi, and LoonGon. Actually these sets are pretty cool. Some of the Chinese sets you can get are basically Lego copied sets with the box pictures and all, these were all original designs. The Kazi sets actually have "Kazi" molded on the tubes of thier bricks, lego style. The other companies...uh, not so much. There were 25-35 pieces per set depending on the kit,most parts fit good, although there was some "flash" on pieces, and one small round piece I had was warped beyond fit. Well, I won some kits for one cents, and others for a buck, so I don't think I'm paying for quality control....


These kool little tanks are made by Kazi, I got them for around a buck each plus shipping. They will make great little drone tanks for some future Lego mega battle.



Here are two different missile trucks, and 2 mine detector vehicles, all also made by Kazi. These are small kits, in "scale" with the tanks but of course a minifig towers over them, so they will also make good drone vehicles. Of course, in world of Lego and Lego knock-offs, does it really matter? They just drive!


Lets get serious now, here comes the Military. These fill an area that Lego dosn't do. I think the mine detector vehicle is an Elightened Child set, and the cannon in the middle might be too, although they don't look like they came off the same production line. The biker with the rifle is a Kazi set. The cannon guy looks very happy to be blasting away with that thing, and the biker has a smug look on his face. The mine detector dude dosn't look too thilled though, I guess he was the guy who showed up late and got the lame vehicle.


On to the civilians. I'm not sure what kind of construction vehicle this represents, but the guy looks happy to operate it anyway. He picks up loose Lego's to take back to Pirate's Industrial Park. It's made by some company called LoonGon. The round section on top rotates all the way around. The police boat and the racing car are Enlightened Child kits. Boy, the cop looks like he's gonna meet his quota today, but the race car driver is all business. The strange little spaceship is made by Kazi and more in scale with the tanks and missile trucks. I think the design was put together by a guy with a bits box and nothing to do for an hour.

If you liked this post, let me know and I'll pick up some more for review!





Kool Stuff in Kenosha

This past weekend had some kool stuff going on, on Saturday, me and the kids hit the Kenosha Kite Festival. Believe it or not, I find some kind of inner peace flying kites, I usually pick up one or two here and there if they look cool. There was a lot of neat kites and the kids had fun, especially when they had candy drop from a bag in the air pinata style.





Then we hit the Kenosha Public Museum on Sunday to check out the Model Train Expo. They had a lot of neat set-ups there, Including a huge one in the seminar room. The kids liked looking at the stuff, although by the fourth layout they had enough. My Dad used to have a good sized set up back in the day, so I enjoyed checking them out.












Saturday, May 29, 2010

Toy Story Bucket O Soldiers

Got a Toy Story 3 Bucket O Soldiers...I must say, these guys are awesome! Most of them are similar to the classic Timmee/Processed Plastics soldiers, but with new crisp sculpts. The bucket contains 72 pieces that include 7 Sarge figs, 7 soldier standing with pisol/binocs, 7 kneeling riflemen, 7 riflemen laying down, 7 riflemen looking upwards, 7 riflemen at the ready, 7 mine sweepers, 7 bazooka men, 7 mortar soldiers, 7 stab with rifle soldiers and 2 paratroopers, both unique sculpts that I'd love to get as regular infanty. Well worth it, check out the pics!
















Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Oh My....

The Kung Zhu Special Forces have infiltrated my beloved Department 7...normally I would think it was a cool idea, but I am sooooo tired of these things....

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

May 4th Star Wars Day Battle: LEGO Rhen Var

Had to do a battle for Star Wars Day! Since I'm starting a series of battles this summer featuring Rhen Var and Tatooine, I thought I'd kick off Rhen Var using LEGO Star Wars and ToyMallet 40cents rules. Doug commanded the defending Clones while I fought with the invading CIS. True to history, the Battle Droids won the day.




Ooooh! The Carnage....

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Free Comic Book Day!

Ahh...the first Saturday of May...Free Comic Book Day! The kids posed with some Super Heroes like Spidey, Pheonix and Batman at Heroes & Dreams and then we stopped at Rockhead's for a few more titles. The kids picked up stuff like Shrek, Archie and Sonic, I grabbed Iron Man and G.I.Joe.







Dinosaurs from Acheson Creations

Here are some pics of the Dinosaurs from Acheson Creations that I took at Little Wars...I also included some bare resin pics and some of the small dinosaurs that are cast in metal that are available now.
























Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Little Wars 2010 Clone Wars Game

Pics of the Clone Wars game on Sunday using ToyMallet 40cents rules...at its height this game had 8 or more players, hard to tell it was pretty chaotic and since I spawned new troops every round we went almost ran through both armies completely!
















Little Wars 2010 Combat Storm Game

Had Fun at Little Wars 2010, here are some pics from the Combat Storm game that I ran on Saturday...






Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Cool Little Rover

Here is a robot I found at the Dollar Tree from that movie Planet 51 that three people went to see. I'm naming it 1Rover-1 after 7Zark-7's little buddy... I thought it would be a cool mine detonating drone for Combat Storm... little outa scale, but who cares when you're using plastic army men!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

My 6mm Human Armies

I thought these might be cool to show off, I did these forces sometime in 2006. Both are Terran Armies, made up of GW Epic Infantry, Rhinos and Landraiders, repainted MechWarrior Clix miniatures (planned as super heavy vehicles), Hover Vehicles from Fortress Figures, a couple GZG Hovercraft and VTOLS and stuff I cast from Colony Castings molds from resin. I might use some of these for my first games of Armor Grid:Mech Attack! because I'm lacking the time and motivation to cut out all the neat paper ones, plus these haven't seen action since they were painted....

Here is the Terran Defense Force, heavy on Mechs and Tanks.



Rows of Tanks cast from Colony Castings molds



The five lighter gray tanks are ones that I built and cast from molds I made


The Heavy Mechs and Tanks, repainted MechWarrior stuff


A group of Light Mechs


The Terrain Strike Force, Heavy on fast moving vehicles and Power Suits


Rows of Fortress Figures Tanks and Transports


Heavy Mechs and Tanks


Power Suits from repainted MechWarrior stuff


More Tanks and Transports