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!

Lepin 02047 Not Lego City Service Station Set Review

Hey there, I'm just doing a quick post of my Lepin 02047 Service Station building set.  This set is  a knock-off of the Lego City Service Station set 60132.

This Lepin set has 540 pieces and comes with 4 original looking mini figures, a lady driver of the maroon coloured sedan, two service station employees and the driver of the street cleaner.  I was very pleased with the minifig quality.

I ordered my brick set thru private seller Jeremy whom I found on Reddit.  This is my 5th purchase with Jeremy.  My set arrived about 3 weeks after my order request.

The Lepin service station instructions can be found in this thick booklet.  It has  instructions to build the service center as depicted on the manual cover and also alternate instructions to build a small car wash and service bay.  Although I didn't use the stickers, I found them to be of excellent quality.

The bags are numbered according to the instruction manual steps, one thru five.  Step one builds the sedan and the tow truck.  Step two builds the street cleaning vehicle. Steps three, four and five build the service station, the interior, the pumps and the overhead awning.

Here's a look at the maroon coloured sedan.  In the alternate instructions, the vehicle becomes a convertible instead of the sedan.  I should point out that I swapped out the wheels that came with the set with the wheels from a Bela brand armoured truck

The two truck has a lifted suspension and a working tow hook.

The sedan conveniently has bars in the front and rear that allow the tow truck to hook it up.

The street cleaning vehicle has rotating brushes in the front and has a shovel and broom as accessories.  The rear of the vehicle lifts open where you will find a brown storage bin.

Moving on to the service station, it has two sections, one is the office area where you pay for gas and buy some minor supplies, and the other part is a rest area where you have two seats, a table and a pizza.  I put together the outside sign, but it doesn't look like much without the corresponding stickers.

As mentioned earlier, this is the store with some products on a shelf and a cash register.

And this is the seating area.  There's no back wall which makes it easy to play with.

The service station as seen from the inside.

A charging station and roof lighting is added to the exterior, along with a ramp.

The gas pump is fairly detailed with hose, nozzle and payment terminal.  Without the stickers, it doesn't look as realistic as the pictures.

And finally the service station with awning attached.  Following are a few more views of the Lepin service station, completed but no stickers.

Final thoughts

Although there's over 500 pieces, the Lepin service station is not that big a set.  The sedan is big enough to seat two minifigures, but I find the two truck a bit on the small side.  Here it is next to the Lego Tow Truck 60056.

Here's the street cleaner compared to the Enlighten version that I reviewed awhile back.

The service center has a nice design but with a few more bricks could easily be converted into a larger modular building.  I would strongly recommend using the provided stickers to add more realism to the set.

My Lepin set also came with a brick separator, a small bike and a bag of spare parts.  The retail value of the Lego service station 60132 is approx $90 USD.  The Lepin 02047 version ican be found for about $20 USD on Aliexpress, with free shipping. 

Everything was excellent about this set including the price, so for that reason, I give it a top score of 5 out of 5.   This set would definitely be a nice addition to your brick city.   As always, thanks for visiting Its Not Lego and See you next time!

Lepin 02034 Not Lego Cargo Port Terminal Set Review - Part Two

Welcome back to my Its-Not-Lego blog!   In this second part of the Lepin 02034 Cargo Port Terminal set review, we will look at the cargo truck, the cargo pier and the cargo port crane.  If you missed the first part of this post, you can find it here.

Cargo Truck

The truck itself isn't ground breaking, it's pretty much a standard vehicle you can find in most of the Lego and clone sets.

These are some pics I took during it's quick construction.  I think there's too many colours going on. They should have made the truck just blue, just red or just yellow, but not all three.

 The cargo truck cab has a steering wheel but no seats or doors.  It does get small side mirrors though.

Here's the assembled truck and driver.

 The instruction manual tells you to make the cargo truck yellow container look like this with the indents facing outward.

 But, I prefer the container on the truck to look more like this.  Now let's move on to the next component, the cargo pier.

 The Cargo Pier

The cargo pier is an easy build.  The frame  above is basically covered with a large flat grey piece that makes up the pier.

Here's the entrance gates and ramp to the pier.

Yup, you can close the gates at the end of the working day.  There's a small traffic light that tells you whether you can proceed.

There's a small guard station that you snap into the pier.

Accessories for the guard station include a tool rack with broom and shovel, a garbage can and some tank.  There's a control screen inside the station presumably to monitor the activities at the port.

Here's the remainder of assembled pier that is comprised of the two large road pieces.  The Lepin pieces are a bit soft and there's yucky plastic extrusion dimples on each piece.

Check it out!  This cargo pier is really long.  It pretty much spans the length of my little building setup.

You get this fisherman minifig with the cargo set.  It took me awhile to thread his fishing pole and wind the string around his reel.

I made a little chair for him to sit at the end of the pier, out of the way while we build and install the next component, which is the gantry and crane.

The Gantry and Crane

Another straight forward build, the gantry and turntable.  I was thinking how cool it would be if it had wheels on the bottom that could roll along a track on the pier.

For now, it continues to be a stationary gantry.  Easily mounted onto the pier.

At this point, I was focused on building the control cabin and the crane attachment so I didn't stop to take pictures during it's construction.   Needless to say, I was running into some problems with the finicky parts that wouldn't stay together.   Specifically, the two 1x4 bricks pictured above.  Once you attach the crane pieces, those two pieces would pop off due to the weight of the crane and lack of clutch power.

Ok, so I switched out the 1x4s and tried this solution instead.  At this point, the crane did not topple over.  Yay!

The crane operator was pretty happy about that until ....

....  I tried lifting one of the containers with the crane and this is what happened.  The crane still popped off the control cabin.   Urrrgh.

Back to the drawing board, I decided to use some Sluban bricks (you can tell, because their shade of red is darker).  Their clutch is better for some reason.

Here's a rear view shot of the crane where I used the Sluban bricks.  In case you are wondering about the two knobs, the lower one controls the cable length, which you can reel out or reel in.  The upper knob controls how high or low you want to adjust the crane arm.

Here's the crane arm in it's highest position.

And here it is in the lowest position.

Alright, this is much better.  The crane successfully lifts up the container without falling off.

Final Thoughts

The Lepin Cargo Port set definitely has a lot of play value.  I can see hours of fun driving the cargo truck onto the pier and off-loading the huge cargo ship with the giant crane.  I wish I had a big table so that I could integrate the cargo port with all the modular buildings into one large layout.

To review, the Lepin brick quality was acceptable except for the scuffed ship hull.  All the clear pieces such as windshields and windows were individually wrapped to prevent scratches.  I had some problems with the brick clutch on the crane portion of the set which I subsequently resolved.   Minifig quality was excellent and I didn't see any flaws or errors in the bootleg versions.

I didn't encounter any missing or broken parts in this set (other than the hull that probably got cracked during shipping).  Lepin included an extra bag of small spare parts, which I think they've started to do on all of the newer sets.

From a design perspective,  there should have been more than the three cargo containers in the set.  I took the cargo containers from my Ausini freight train set and added them to this set.  I also found the bridge structure (I think it's called a castle?) to be a bit small, and if you take a closer look at the top picture, you will notice that I completely rebuilt the bridge and castle of the cargo ship.  I'll make a bonus post in the near future to take a closer look at the changes I made to the cargo ship.

So just for fun, I decided to scour ebay to see what a new original Lego 7994 Cargo Harbour set costs today.  I found about 8 sets ranging in price from mid $400s up to almost $900 USD.

If I had to rate the Lepin Cargo Port set, I would give it 4.5 out of 5, knocking off half a point for the poor brick clutch in the crane.   Well, that's my review, hope you enjoyed the pics.  As always, thanks for visiting Its Not Lego and See you next time!