Lepin 15039 Not Lego Roller Coaster Set Review - Part One

 Hey It's Not Lego fans!  I'm presently vacationing in Hong Kong and today I decided to take the train to Shenzhen China.   I took the  Hong Kong East Rail line all the way to the terminus at Lo Wu station.  From here, you have to pass through Hong Kong immigration and then China immigration.

Even though I had a China Visa, the process still took about 30 mins to clear both countries exit and entry counters.   Once you come through the China side, it's mere steps to the Lo Wu Commercial Centre, which is a 5 storey mall filled with fake purses, shoes, and clothes.  Being my first time to the Shenzhen mall , I didn't know what to expect in terms of bootleg toys. So disappointingly,  I was only able to find 3 or 4 stalls that sold knockoff brand Lego.   There was only one stall that carried the set I was looking for, the Lepin 15039 Roller Coaster, which is the knock-off of Lego Roller Coaster set 10261. 

So then the fun begins ....

I entered the store and asked the clerk/owner for the price of the Roller Coaster set.  What's funny is that I didn't even hear what her first price was, it might have been about 1000 RMB, but as soon as she quoted her price, I immediately took out my phone and flashed her a screenshot from Taobao for the Lepin Roller Coaster.  I had grabbed it earlier in the morning to use as ammunition for bargaining.

The price from Taobao was 540 RMB, which I fully expected her not to match, but I threw it out there anyways.  She told me off saying she had to pay rent and salaries, etc, etc.   When I asked her for best price, she'd only move lower by 10 or 20 RMB.  I'd tell her she'd have to do better, she'd asked me what I wanted to pay.   From there it was a matter of her making offers and me making counter offers, she said 900, then 800, I said 560, she said 700, I said 580, she said 650, and I started to walk out the store.

 She told me to come back in and asking me to give her 650, I said no 580, she said no.  I got the impression we were at a stalemate so then I so I upped my offer to 600, then she said 630, so I started walking slowly out the store but a little more slowly to give her time to reset her price.  Just as I was barely within earshot, I could hear her say 610.  I really did want the set for 600 but since I came all that way, I didn't want to lose the set over 10 RMB.   Deal done at 610 RMB.

FYI:   610 RMB = $89 USD, $120 CDN.  ymmv based on current exchange rates.

I asked to open the box to check the contents, and she didn't resist.  There were 2 inner boxes and both looked half empty, and I lamented as such.   She said if there were any missing parts to circle them on the instruction manual and come back to her and she'd order the missing parts for me.  As she was packing it up for me to go, she mentioned that this set was really popular with the foreigners, lol.

 As soon as I got back to Hong Kong, I cracked open all the boxes and took and inventory of the bags, just for peace of mind.   Here's the unboxing pics!

This is how I lugged this monstrosity onto the train back from Shenzhen.

I got the box but in reality, when I return to Canada, I'll probably leave the box here in HK, just no room in my suitcase for it.

Here's the back of the box.

Top and side view.

Side view.

Bottom view.

When you open up the main box, you get 2 separate inner boxes labelled A and B.

Here's what kinda freaked me out.   The boxes are huge but not full at all.  Kind of like when you open your box of cereal only to find the box is only half full because the contents have settled.

I emptied all the bags from both inner boxes and sorted them all to make sure I had all the bags.

My Lepin Roller Coaster set contained 86 numbered bags, 1 un-numbered bag containing some spare parts, 2 bags of red track, and a stack of green baseplates.

The instruction manual is a thick booklet with a bunch of separate addendum pages inserted throughout.   Here's my numbered bag inventory:

Set 1:  bags 1-8
Set 2:  bags 9-15
Set 3:  bags 16-22
Set 4:  bags 23-29
Set 5:  bags 30-39
Set 6:  bags 40-47
Set 7:  bags 48-55
Set 8:  bags 56-61
Set 9:  bags 62-70
Set 10:  bags 71-79
Set 11:  bags 80-86

It looks like all the parts are there, so that's a bit of a relief.
I won't be building the Lepin roller coaster until I return to Canada in the new year, but I'll definitely do a write-up from my build then.    See you then!

Xingbao Home Furnishings - The Bathroom XB01401-C Set Review

Hey there!  Welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com.   Today I'll be reviewing the third set from the Xingbao Home furnishings brick series, which is XB01401-C, the Bathroom diorama.

There are six sets in the Home Furnishings series, and I've already looked at XB01401-A The Study, and XB01401-B the Bedroom.  You can find those reviews by clicking on the Xingbao label on the sidebar.

Here's everything you get, about 6 or 7 bags of parts and an instruction page.  The first thing you notice is that there are a lot of pale green parts.  This colour isn't that common in the Lego world.

 Let's start building!  The baseplates consist of two dark gray 12x6 stud plates.   The flooring will be this light green tile.  The translucent bricks will be the water for the bathtub.

 Looks like one of the walls will be white and the other will be green.

 Completed the bathtub. There's a railing on the end for the handheld shower head.

 Inside the future shower stall is another shower head.

There's a bunch of bottles on either side of the bathtub faucet.  I think the sink design could be better.

In this picture, we're starting to build up the shower walls.  You can see the towel bar installed on the tub wall and a hair brush accessory too.  I tried to put the minifigure inside the shower and it was a tight squeeze, because of the middle protrusions.

The shower stall gets a door and there's a window grill inside the shower.  I would guess the green slats are for ventilation.

In this picture, we have added a fan and a new toilet.

The final pieces are put in place.  They include a mirror over the sink and some wall mounted light fixtures.  As you can see in the picture, that mirror is way too high to be of any use to the girl mini figure that comes with this set.

This is the bathtub and shower wall as seen from behind. The green bricks are sand green I think.

And this is the wall behind the sink and toilet, rear view.

 The bathroom set comes with a few extra accessories, including a small pink pail, a smaller green basket, some large lavender bowls and a blue push broom.  That's the first time I've seen it in this colour.

As with the other Home Furnishing sets, you get a small bag of spare parts.

In closing,  the Bathroom set has quite a bit of detail, in fact I think it has too much going on in such a small space.  This is a full four piece bath with shower, tub, sink and toilet.  If I had to change anything, I'd redesign the sink and lower the mirror. And get rid of the wall lighting and the vents behind the tub.  Let me know what other changes could be made in the comments section.

Thanks for looking and see you next time!

XingBao Home Furnishings - The Bedroom XB 01401-B Set Review

Hi and welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com.  Today, I'll be showing you the second set of the Xingbao Home Furnishings building block set.  This one is XB01401B, the Bedroom diorama.

There's quite a number of parts distributed amongst seven bags.

 In the instructions to build the Bedroom are on a large two sided and folded sheet of paper.

 This set makes use of a lot of Sand Green coloured bricks.  Here you can see the bedroom floor has been tiled and walls are going up.  In the centre is the makings of the large king sized bed with overhanging linens.  In the corner sits on of the two night tables.

This set comes with a large window and drapes on either side.  The large bed is finished off with some colourful pillows and decorative headboard.

 The bedroom diorama is mostly completed.  There's a big picture frame and clock above the bed.  My one pet peeve with this set is the uneven drapes.  One side of the drapes looks higher than the other.  This is how they look following the provided instructions.  This should be totally fixable provided I can find a few spare orange bricks.

Here's what the back side of the diorama looks like.   If you have the Lepin Green Grocer building set, this bedroom would integrate nicely into the second or third floor.

 The completed set.

 The accessories that come with this set include the mini figure in his pyjamas, his pet cat and a darth vader like figure that goes on his night table.

In summary, this set was a fun build and I'm definitely thinking about putting this bedroom into my Green Grocer.  Brick clutch and quality was very good and no missing or deformed parts.  There's a bonus pack of spare parts, but no brick separator.

 

Ok, it's time to turn out the lights now and give our friends some privacy, heh heh.

Thanks for looking!  Don't forget to check out my review of the Xingbao Study room set XB01401A!
See you next time!

Xingbao Home Furnishings - The Study Room XB 01401-A Set Review

Hey look, here's one of the new Xingbao Home Furnishings building sets.  When these first came out, I was all eager to get them until I saw their prices.  On Aliexpress, the going price for the whole set of six is $69 USD or about $90 CDN.  That works out to about $11.50 USD or $15 CDN per set.  By comparison, my Hsanhe shop sets were about $7 USD each, so yeah the Xingbao sets are kinda expensive.  I had resigned myself to maybe just getting just one or two sets but was waiting for the right time to pull the trigger.

as seen on ebay.com

as seen on ebay.ca

Anyways last month, I was scouring Ebay for brick deals (of which there aren't many anymore), and found all six sets for  $51 USD.  The bootleg brick gods must have been smiling on me that day, because Ebay also had a 20% coupon. That amounted to another $10 USD off.  Score!  

No sooner after I submitted my payment, I get the dreaded message back from Ebay saying the listing had been removed.  In fact upon checking that sellers other building block listings, they all disappeared.   Arrghh!

Nowadays, I know better than to buy any of those ridiculously low priced bootleg sets from the many zero feedback China sellers on ebay, but this particular seller had lots of feedback and mostly positive feedback, so I thought I was safe.   Has this  ever happened to you?  

I reached out to the seller, and was reassured when he gave me a valid tracking number.  My sets subsequently arrived a few weeks soon after, so all was good.  I figure I've saved almost half off $53 CDN vs. $90 CDN.  I never did find out why all his building block listings were pulled off ebay.

Anyways, I digress.  Here is set XB-1401A, the Study Room, one of six in the series.  I'll review each of the other sets in order in future blog posts.  Now, let's rip it open and see what we got.

This is my first ever block set by Xingbao, so I don't know what the quality is going to be like.  Instead of a manual, the building instructions are printed on both sides of a large sheet of paper.

There are approximately 6 or 7 bags of parts.  I emptied all of my bags and sorted them by colour.  No stickers though.  And no brick separator either, unlike Lepin which almost always includes one with each of their sets.

I did a quick inspection of the bricks, and finish looks alright and no defective pieces either. No problems with the clutch or quality of the bricks.

The footprint of each home furnishing diorama is 12 studs by 12 studs, typically with a finished tiled floor, two walls, and some furniture and accessories.  Each set also comes with a minifigure.

In the pic above, I've assembled the giant wall unit/bookshelf.  It's got lots of drawer units and shelved for the assorted brick-a-brack.  You can't see it in this picture, but there's a computer monitor inside the bookshelf, next to the table lamp.  Over the window are some blue and white drapes that give the room some contrast. You can see that the height of this diorama is just about twice the height of the minifigure.

There's a few studs on the floor where you can attach different objects, like this side table and plant.

Here's a  close-up shot of the wall unit.  I took the table lamp out and put it on the side table instead.  The headshot of mister minifig is a nice touch.

You also get a computer chair and a red chair.

Just in case you were wondering how it looks from the outside, I took a couple of pics.

 And here's the completed set!  The Study room is well furnished, don't you think?  At some point in the future, I'd like to incorporate this diorama into one of my modular buildings.

I discovered that each set comes with a few extra pieces.  Here's the ones that come with this set.

Ok, that wraps up my review of the the Study room diorama, part of the Xingbao Home Furnishings building set XB 01401-A.  All in all, this was a fun build, and not too complicated.   What did you think of this set.  Did i miss anything in my review? Let me know!

 Thanks for visiting Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com.  See you next time!