Sembo 102408 Not Lego SWAT Water Cannon Truck Set Review

Sembo Blocks SWAT Water Cannon Truck

Hi again and welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.  Here's a new model we haven't seen before.  It's the SWAT Water Cannon Truck by Sembo Blocks.

The set number is 102408 and is part of the Sembo Black Hawk series of military style back ops vehicles.  Below are a few of the other vehicles found in the Sembo Black Hawk series.

Sembo 102347 Swat Tactical Vehicle

Sembo 102367 Swat Chemical Response Truck

Sembo 102348 Swat Communications Truck

Sembo multipage instruction booklet, stickers and some firearms.

The back of the manual showing the trucks unique play features which I'll review later.

The Sembo Swat Water Cannon truck building set is made up of 503 pieces, over 12 bags of parts.  The  bags of parts aren't sorted or organized in any fashion, so you have to rip all the bags open to find the right parts as you are building the set.  It also doesn't help that the majority of the parts are black in colour.

The Minifigures

Let's take a closer look at the four minifigures that come with the Water Cannon truck.

This is how they look after assembly.  There are 2 SWAT team members and 2 guys with questionable intent.   The SWAT guys have a black hawk logo emblazoned on their shirts.

Here's the backside printing on the Lego style minifigures.  No confusion here on who are the SWAT guys.

Just a side shot of the figures.

 Bonus, you get heads with dual faces on each of the minifigures.  Here they are with their passive faces.

Of special note is that one of the SWAT minifigures has an interesting 2 piece arm design used to separate the bare arms from the shirt sleeves.  Once attached his arms kind of resemble Popeye's forearms. Unfortunately this unique design doesn't afford any extra mobility or flexibility on the arms like the Xingbao style minifigures.

The Water Cannon Truck

Ok, time to build this thing.  As I mentioned earlier, the brick parts aren't sorted in any order amongst the 12 bags, so I had to rip them all open to get at everything.

Upon checking out the block pieces, I found them to be very similar to Megablox, so they are not as good as Lepin.  There were a lot of the pieces were scratched and the clear window/windshield pieces were dull and cloudy.  Here's a couple of pictures during the construction.

 Front left side.

 Rear right side.

Undercarriage.

It immediately became clear that this vehicle was massive.  It's in a much larger scale as other Lego type vehicles.  I can pretty much say this truck is original in design and not bootlegged from any existing or retired Lego set.

And here's the completed truck riding on it's oversized tires.  It's got a mad max sort of vibe going for it, with the bars on the front and side.   The beige gear on the right side of the truck controls the rotation of the turret on top.  Although there's ample storage boxes located on the truck, six of them, there weren't any extra accessories to go into them.

This is the front view of the truck.  There's two water guns attached to the front.  The only missing piece I encountered is on the front grill.  I only got 3 pieces instead of 4.  I've got a spare one in my stash, so not a big deal.  The truck is equipped with side mirrors and windshield wipers.

Despite it's large size, the truck only has room for 2 minifigures.  The cab has opening doors, but it's not easier to place the minifigures through them.

 It's easier to take off the roof panel for egress.

The water guns on top of the turret both pivot up and down.

Here's a top view of the Water Cannon truck.  When not in use the extendable water gun tucks neatly into the back of the truck.

To get at the water gun, you flip up the two panels.

The water gun can be extended and rotated 360 degrees.

When not blasting down anti-government demonstrators, the water cannon truck can also be used for fighting fires.

Almost forgot to mention that in the back of the truck, there is a panel that be opened to access 2 black fire extinguishers (not very noticeable due to their colour).

Here's a look at the accessories and spare parts that came with the set.  Oy, yet another brick separator tool to add to my ever growing collection.

As always, I didn't apply any of the stickers that came with the set.

The truck rolls well and is quite sturdy.  Added to the fact it has a lot of play value, this truck would make a nice addition to anyone's brick collection.  The only cons of this set is that some of the brick pieces are scratched and the windows are dull.  The minifigure printing is very high quality.   Thanks for looking, see you next time!

Brand: Sembo Blocks
Model:  SWAT Water Cannon Truck
Model #: 102408
Number of pieces:  503+
Number of minifigures: 4
My rating: 4 out of 5

Lepin 15009 Not Lego Petshop Set Review - Part One

Welcome back!  It's been over 2 years since I bought the Lepin 15009 Pet Shop, and I just finally got around to building half of it.  Let's take a quick look.

There's two buildings in this 2032 piece set.  Big enough to fill up this blue bin.  For this post I will concentrate on the Pet Shop.  The adjoining Townhouse will be reviewed in a separate post.

As I'm putting this together, I notice that the layout is very efficient and would make a good template for my future custom modular buildings.  I like the foldable staircase going to the second floor and the adjoining store front.

Having said that, I do find that there's a lot of wasted space in the back.  It would have been better if the Lego designer had increased the depth of the modular by 2 or 3 studs.

 Currently, there's enough room in the Pet Shop for 2 kennels, a fish tank and a bird stand.

There's also a little table and cash register.  I've got all these Friends style pets that I can finally use now in the pet shop.  If I expand the footprint of the building, I can add more kennels and use up some more of the animal figures.

Second floor of the pet shop under construction.  Don't mind the mess.

 While the second floor is adequately furnished, I wasn't particularly enamored with the furniture.  I decided to completely remove the fireplace and the moved the provided coffee maker to the stairwell wall.  I also replaced the chair that came with the pet shop with a sofa instead.  The dog minifigure is originally from the main floor kennel but he got adopted by the girl minifigure.  Sorry, but she doesn't come with the set.

Second floor updated.

 Second floor rear view.

 Pulling away the front facade gives a better view of the second floor flat.

 I need to start changing all my modular buildings so that walls can be pulled away for viewing.  It definitely makes picture taking easier.

The third floor consists of a bed and and a lamp (not shown).  I changed the bed from green to pink, just to use up some pink brinks.   The open concept wastes a lot of space.

 I don't particularly like the three windows on the third floor.

 Third floor exterior.

 If I had to change this model, it would be to increase the footprint of each level of the building.  The third floor would benefit from the addition of a bathroom if there were more floor space available.

 Just a few more pics.

There are four minifigures that come with the pet shop set.  There's one minifig face that looks different than the rest.  I'm not sure if it's a one-off misprint problem or if this is consistent on all the Lepin pet shop sets.

I've now decided that I will definitely start tearing the building down to rebuild it and make it larger on all levels.   Time to get to work, soon you soon!

Not Lego Xingbao Home Furnishings - The Gym XB1401-D Set Review

Hey, welcome back!  Time for another not Lego set review.  This one is the Xingbao brand Home Furnishings series XB-1401D, the Gym.  I acquired this set a while back, but I was thinking about making a gym out of one of my modulars, and one set wouldn't be enough, so I bought another one.

A reminder that Xingbao makes their own Lego like sets but these are not cloned or bootlegs of Lego sets, so if you are a Lego fan and want to buy this set, you won't feel guilty about it.  My reviews of the some of the other Xingbao Home Furnishings series can be found here.

There are six bags of parts but not I'm not sure what the actual part count is.  There's lots of accessories as we will see later.

 Instructions to build the gym come via a two-sided instruction sheet.

So, since I bought my first Gym set and this new one, it looks like Xingbao has changed the mini-figure style.  The first one was like the Lego style and the new one has different arms and legs.  The legs on the new set already came pre-attached to the torso for the new figure, so I just had to assemble the ball joints for the arms and insert them into the torso.  Be careful though, these parts are really small.  The hands they use remind me of the ones used by Sluban brand minifigures.

So here's the gym room almost assembled.   It has a yellow tiled floor and two walls, one in dark orange and another in tan colour.  It makes a nice contrast.  There's also two windows with glass, that came packed separately in their own bag to prevent scratches.

What I really like about this set is the amount of accessories you get like this first example of  realistic looking gym mats.

Here's a cool little stool.  In case you were wondering, the first generation of the Xingbao Gym mini figure is shown here.

 A punching bag!   No gloves are included in the set though, boo.

Gotta have some tunes while one is working out, so here's a cool ghetto blaster (do they still call them that?).

 Got a hoop but no ball either, damn.

 The two bros are really flexing it with these dumbbells.  With the two figures side by side, you can see some differences in their track pants.  The older one has a black piping down his left leg, but both have the Spirit logo on their legs.

 I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a storage locker or what, but it's tall!

Nice little treadmill.  After I took the picture, I realized I used the wrong parts on the treadmill.  There are two printed pieces that make up the information console on the treadmill.  I swapped in the right pieces in subsequent pictures.

 This workout bench looks like it will do the job.  The headrest will move up and down.

A small table and mug is another cool accessory.

 Finally, The larger weights are finished in a metallic silver.  The weight stand comes in a metallic pewter finish.  Nice!

 Here's the extra parts that were leftover after building the gym.  The sticks were supposed to go on the window wall, but I added some of the surplus technic washers to make extra dumb bells.

Here are some bonus pictures of the latest minifigure showing off his flexibility.

You can pretty much extend his arms all the way out perpendicular to his body.

 Or you can bend his arms upwards.

Even walk like an egyptian, lol.

Both figures come with back printing.

This is how the complete Xingbao Gym set looks like, minus the extra minifigure of course.

 And this is how it looks like when you put two of the gym sets together.

 In the near future, I hope to build a new modular building that can incorporate all of the gym accessories into a single place, but make it look a little more cohesive and spaced out.  I've already got some extra gym worthy minifigures on order.

I really had fun with this build and can definitely recommend the set.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures and as always, feel free to leave your comments and questions in the box below.   See you next time!

Brand:  Xingbao
Series:  Home Furnishings
Set number: XB1401D
Number of pieces:  Unknown
Number of minifigures: One
Rating: 5 out of 5 for all the accessories and play value.