Sluban M38-B0363 Not Lego Helicopter Set Review

Welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com! I keep a giant list of all my building sets I've bought over the last few years and upon checking it today, I bought this Sluban Personal Helicopter set M38-B0363 exactly 3 years ago.

The Set Review

This Sluban brand set has 259 pieces and consists of 3 minifigures, a small ground vehicle, a fueling station and a red and white helicopter.  This set is part of Sluban's Aviation series, of which I have some of their other airplane building sets.  The helicopter design is very similar to the blue Lego helicopter set 3222.

The multi page instruction booklet is glossy and the instructions are well documented. I had actually packed this set away, so I had to scrounge around to find the minifigures and rebuild the set as close to the original instructions as possible.  I'll point out the differences I made further in the review.

  As I mentioned earlier, you get three minifigures which are not Lego compatible.  The Sluban minifigs have completely different parts and about the only thing you could share between these and Lego minifigs are the hats and hairpieces, everything else is incompatible.  On the plus side, you can tilt the heads on Sluban minifigs.

You get the fueling station attendant, the ground vehicle driver and the helicopter pilot.  I couldn't find the orange guys hairpiece, so I gave him some Elvis hair (thank you, thank you very much).  I swapped out the pilots head to give him some sunglasses also.

I couldn't find the original pieces of the fueling station so I moc'd something similar to the original design.

When I was rebuilding the ground vehicle, I decided to stretch it out a bit, so you can carry both people and luggage if necessary.

The above picture is from Sluban's official website and it shows you how the original fueling station and ground vehicle looked like.

Here's the set pieces with the minifigs.

The Helicopter

And here's the helicopter with one of my other Sluban minifigs.  I figured he looks like a mechanic for the helicopter, so I included him in the picture, but you don't get this guy with the building set, sorry.

 I re-built this set fairly quickly and I've separated it here into three components, the large rotor, the roof and nose cone, and the remainder of the helicopter fuselage.

I have to say the clutch power of the Sluban bricks is excellent, and the brick quality of this older 2014 set is much better than the recent Construction series bricks.  The large rotor spins freely on the helicopter motor.  There's also a smaller rotor on the tail.

Here's the fuselage and interior.  There are three sets of double wheels on the undercarriage with the front  wheels being turnable.  The rear wheels are located under the large pontoons.  There are 4 porthole windows on each side of the helicopter and also two accessible storage compartments at the rear.

 Inside there's a cockpit with controls and pilot seat and behind that are two passenger seats.

 Here's how the cockpit looks with the pilot in place.

Here's the top view of the helicopter's interior.  There's definitely a lot of space for cargo in the rear.

 Following are some more pics of the assembled helicopter.  Fit and finish is excellent, in my opinion.

The Verdict

I think this helicopter looks really nice and scales well. As mentioned earlier, it has excellent fit and finish.  Clutch is great and there's quite a bit of play value with the ground vehicle and fueling station accessories.  If you don't like the Sluban minifigures, you could easily replace them with Lego compatible ones.

I paid $10 USD for this set back in 2014 and a quick check of Aliexpress reveals that you can get this set for $12 USD, so it hasn't gone up that much.  The retail price of this set on Sluban's website is around $25 USD right now.

Thanks for looking!  If you want to see some of my other Sluban set reviews, you can find them here.

Sluban M38-B0519 Not Lego Girl Scooter and Fountain Set Review

Happy September!   Are you gearing up to go back to school?  Well, hope you have time to check out this little building set from Sluban.  It's another set of of their own design and not a fake Lego set.  In this review we will look at this 79 piece set M38-B0519.  I'm not sure what the name of the set is so I will just call it the Girl on a Scooter goes around the Fountain set.

The ebay listing which i won calls the set Fountain Motorcycle Kitten Girls, lol.  Sounds like one of those 70's biker chick movies!!

 Being such a small set, it only takes this two sided piece of paper to show you the building instructions.  There are two components, the largest being the multi-level fountain and the purple scooter.  The scooter parts are still on the plastic tree so you have to be careful when extracting them.  I use a small X-acto knife to cut it away cleanly.

The set also comes with a girl mini-figure and her pet cat.  As I've described in other Sluban set reviews, the minifigures are not compatible with Lego ones.

Here's a look  at the fountain.  It has three levels and two spigots presumably where the water runs out.  It has lots of translucent blue elements to simulate water.

Here's a look at the Sluban minifigure and her cat which is perched on the rear of her scooter.

The purple scooter comes with a steerable front wheel, a kickstand and a headlight.  The only thing Sluban could have added was a rear tail light.  I also have acquired this scooter in tan and red colours.
I think there is a yellow version of it that I might get one day.

As far as play value, I suppose you could just make the girl and scooter go around and around the fountain.  I think it will be more useful as a display piece, maybe to put into a park setting for my growing Its-Not-Lego town.

 Ok, I quickly made this little parkette using a tree, a bush and a few flowers.   Here's the fountain in the park setting just to see how it looks.

Here's my entire collection of Sluban scooters!  Here's a complete list of the Sluban sets in my collection.

And here's the girl and her cat sitting on the fountain and just having a great day.  Thanks for looking!

Sluban M38-B0550 Not Lego Cement Mixer Set Review

Hello!  It's Not Lego, it's Sluban.  Yes, today we are going to look at one of the vehicles from the Sluban City construction series.  The featured set is the Sluban M38-B0550 Cement Mixer.

The instruction booklet says we get 296 pieces.

The Sluban Cement Mixer looks to be a proprietary design and not a Lego one.  It's quite a large truck and is fairly accurate.  There is the water tank above the mixing drum that actually rotates.

The front cab has opening doors on both sides and tilts forward.  Too bad there's no engine to be displayed.

My biggest disappointment from this set is the ugly wheels that barely rotate.  I tried reversing the rims and tires but the wheels still don't roll.  Also the placement of the front wheels in relation to the fenders don't look that great either, but that's just me being nitpicky.

I like the way the cement mixer looks from the front.  Sluban only put a single seat in the cab, so it looks kind of weird with the steering wheel being in the middle.

The set also comes with a number of non Lego type minifigures and you also get a small cart for wheeling stuff around.

I think you get 4 minifigs but I think one of them went to get coffee for the others, so he's not in the pictures.

Here's the back of the truck and you can see it has a swivelling discharge chute and hopper at the top. It's only for looks, though because it doesn't do much.

The Sluban set also comes with some other accessories like a sign and a small guard rail.  There is also a shovel which attaches to the side of the cab.

Oh I forgot to mention that there are side mirrors that are situated on both sides of the cab.  You also get a small sticker sheet, but like always I hardly ever use them.

Just some more views of the cement truck in action.

I can say that you get a lot of extra parts with this Sluban set, like almost 20 or 30 spare pieces of random parts.  I didn't encounter any missing or deformed parts.  I would say the brick clutch is about 90% of similar Lego bricks.   The cement mixer looks ok to display but I wish it rolled better.  I am thinking about replacing the wheels, but right now I don't have any extras in my parts stash.

Brand: Sluban

Model:  M38-B0550 Cement Mixer

Number of pieces: 296, but you get extra pieces

 Price paid:  about $7 USD with free shipping.

 Bye and Thanks for looking!

Sluban M38-B0563 Not Lego Scooter Courier Set Review

At 28 pieces, this is probably the smallest building set that Sluban puts out.  Set M38-B0563 basically has one minifigure and one scooter and that's it.  The price of this fancy set is a whopping $1.52 USD shipped for free.  The postage probably costs more than this set.

My set arrived in a small plastic bag.  Inside was another transparent bag with the parts, instruction sheet and stickers.  I've been pretty pleased with the quality of the recent Sluban building sets. Clutch is good and the bricks look to be clean.

The Sluban delivery guy looks happy to be freed from all that plastic.

His scooter is still attached to the plastic sprue.

These are the main scooter pieces.

The delivery guy is happy to see his new ride assembled.

Here's our courier going out on his first delivery.

This guy looks like he's having too much fun.  I like that the Sluban minifigures can be easily posable, including their heads.

Ok quit smiling, we're not gonna pay you that much.

And off he goes!  See you!

Almost forgot to show you the sticker sheet.  One of the packages he would be delivering is the Sluban M38-B0555 construction crane set!

Brand: Sluban
Model: M38-B0563 Scooter Courier
Number of pieces: 28