General "not-LEGO" review: As a 90s kid who grew up slightly obsessed with LEGO but hadn't built a set in almost twenty years until recently, I was blown away by the current state of play in the greater "building brick toy" ecosystem. When my brothers and I were growing up, the options for off-brand bricks were sparse: MegaBloks were noticeably lower quality than the big L, and if we happened to find anything other than those two (dollar store, etc) it was typically so bad that the pieces weren't even worth adding into our bucket of bricks. I recently stumbled back into this world through Amazon Vine, and was stoked to discover the seemingly endless wealth of off-brand sets available, even if that stoke was a bit tempered pending a general assessment of quality. I've now built over a hundred sets of "not-LEGO" bricks found here on Amazon, and I couldn't be more impressed by the amazing options out there, in terms of set variety, quality, and (especially) price. These sets I've received account for literally tens of thousands of bricks, yet I can count on one hand the total number of pieces missing. Sure, the regular presence of extra pieces might be indicative of less-than-stellar quality control practices by these manufacturers, but it seems like the errors are overwhelmingly biased to the side of surplus, and I'm not going to complain about getting a few extra bricks per set. Feel and fit are generally great, I'd say 99% up to big L standards for studded pieces and even a shade better for technic pieces. Colors aren't always Pantone-perfect between sets (though internally they're consistent), minifigures are rarely included (and always slightly "off"; this is due to the minifigs being strictly patent-protected, unlike most bricks), and some accessory bits (sails, stickers, etc) are of more variable quality; but the most noticeable difference in my experience is just the lack of a tiny "LEGO" on every single ABS stud. It also seems that many of these manufacturers aren't beholden to the same copyright restrictions as the bigger western companies, so you're likely to encounter more unlicensed/unofficial sets from various IP ("Harry Wizard", "Star Farm"...), as well as MOCs that failed to launch. If you love the look of this set; if you want to maximize your piece-per-dollar ratio to fill out a bucket/chest/room; or if you just want to build for the sake of building, I'm happy to say that this set (or pretty much any other you can find nowadays) is worth the investment. Set-specific notes: My collection of powered elements (motors, batteries, etc) and technic has grown considerably thanks to Amazon Vine, and with this expanded arsenal I've had a blast learning how to better add movement and power functions to my builds. I haven't had any issues with a single piece, whether related to the actual power functions or the way they integrate with the rest of the system. (Fair warning: I honestly haven't built any pieces large enough to take advantage of everything all at once; I may have used each of these motors individually, or I might have just grabbed the same one on multiple occasions...) Motors, actuators, cables, gears, lighting; everything I've added into my collection has performed admirably. At a fraction of the name-brand cost, I definitely recommend shopping around on Amazon or other marketplaces for parts from "other" brands, and I won't steer you away from this kit in particular. YUN.arbor and Domoni in particular have always sent high-quality parts with no compatibility issues, but they're definitely not the only options on here.
