True, LEGO now has the beginnings of a strong foundation to expand its market in China, home to so many clone and knockoffs to the world’s most famous building-brick toy brand. But despite government recognition and even some legal victories, the stubbornly determined copycats continue to churn out their LEGO knockoff brands.
Our fellow LEGO news source and online set guide Brickset has just recently completed an updated edition of their survey of the various China-originating LEGO knockoff brands that they’ve nicknamed Communist LEGO. Some of the many brands it covers include prominent LEGO posers like Xingbao and Lepin, the latter already smarting from a recent court action.
The Communist LEGO survey, complied by Brickset contributor Anthony Tomkins, includes reviews of some 30 sets from various LEGO knockoff brands, all of which he graded from passable enough to work with authentic LEGO pieces, to hopeless causes that should just be ignored and thrown into the trash bin.
Tomkins’ 2018 survey is available in PDF form on the Brickset website. If your curiosity on the subject of LEGO copycat brands has been piqued, you can also read the survey’s previous editions going back to the year 2015 when Brickset first began their review. For true blue LEGO fans, it all makes for some interesting, funny and terrifying reading.