Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Hsanhe 6704 Not Lego Mini Street Shop Set Review


The Hsanhe Set



I first became aware of the Hsanhe brand of building blocks when they made some mini modular buildings.

A few months ago, I saw that Hsanhe created a second series of mini modular buildings, that are bigger than the first set.  I decided to bite the bullet and order one of the buildings to check out the quality.  There are six other buildings in this Hsanhe series, but I got this set because I felt this design was the most interesting.  You can see all of the other building sets here.

Here's my set review of the Hsanhe 6704 model which has no name.  The instruction booklet does say it's a 3-in-1 model but there aren't any instructions to be build any alternate models beyond what you see here.

The Details


 While it's not a direct copy, this modular set does have some similarities to Lego's Corner Deli set 31050.  This set has 472 pieces and the Lego Corner Deli has 467 pieces.  The set comes with the instruction booklet, several grey baseplates and 5 bags of parts.

The set comes with two minifigures but they aren't unique to this set.  We've seen the guy with the green sweater before in the Hsanhe 6410-2 Convenience store set.  And the guy with the red shirt and ballcap comes from the Hsanhe 6411-2 Fast Food store set.

 This bag of parts contains the black, yellow and green parts.

 This bag has the dark blue and light gray pieces.

 Orange and red pieces are grouped together here.

 This bag has all the white and light blue pieces.

 And finally, this bag has a mish-mash of other pieces.

The First Floor


Here's the building set after completing most of the first floor.  It's got quite a few windows and doors and a colourful awning.  The patio still needs to be built.

 Inside the shop, there's a small table with some containers on it in one section and what looks to be a counter area in the other.  It's still pretty ambiguous as to what this store sells.  Definitely no sandwiches here, so it's not a deli.

 The building closes up as pictured above.

 As you can see this set has quite a few colours including the orange bricks, black windows and green doors.  Accent colours are yellow, red and dark blue.  The interior floor tile is brown and cream coloured with light blue accents.

 I don't have the Lego Corner Deli set, so I guess the interior spaces are about the same.  I guess Hsanhe could have done a better job of adding more details inside, because I find it kind of bare.

The Second Floor


 After building the second floor, I found that the dark blue bricks were really scuffed.  This is not typical of the other Hsanhe bricks which I found to be excellent quality.

On the second floor, there's a big armchair and a cabinet under the window.

Here's how the building looks closed up from above.

 I didn't get any stickers with this set but it did come with lots of spare parts and a brick separator.


This building has an outdoor antenna with a bird on it just like Lego's corner deli.  You can see that the patio is finished now.

Here's some views around the building.   Side view above.

 I guess this would be the front of the Hsanhe shop.  There's a small balcony upstairs with another door and awning.

 The opposite side of the building.  I'm not sure if I like the dark blue second floor with the first floor orange colour.

 And here's the back door and lots of windows and a fire hydrant.  I wish the window pieces weren't so cloudy.

The Verdict


Ok, so I thought the set design and build was just so-so.  Brick quality and window pieces could have been better.  I found the interior lacked any detail or indication of what the shop was supposed to be.
The minifigure quality was good but not unique to this set.  Since this set is double the size of other  Hsanhe buildings, they could have added a couple of extra minifigs.  It's also too bad that Hsanhe didn't provide any alternate build instructions despite the fact they call the set 3-in-1.

I give this set a rating of 6 out of 10 for the reasons above.  The Hsanhe 6704 Mini shop cost about $15 USD on Aliexpress.  In the future, I will probably rebuild it as a full modular or use the set for parts in another building.

So do you think you would buy this set?  Let me know if you have another other Hsanhe building sets and what you think of their quality.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

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!

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Lepin 02036 Not Lego City Truck Set Review




Hello and welcome back to Its Not Lego, a blog about Lego alternative building brick sets.  Today, I will be reviewing the Lepin 02036 City Truck.  It is a near exact copy of the Lego City Truck set 3221, with the exception of the Lepin logo on the truck instead of Lego.  Pictured above is the cover page from the instruction booklet.


And here's the back of the instruction booklet which I'm sure is a copy of Lego's booklet (again except for the Lepin logos).


I ordered my set off Aliexpress using a new account.  Recall that my old account got suspended for raising too many disputes.  If you missed that blog post, you can find it here.  Anyways, I'm not going to raise as many disputes as I used to, because I want to stay under the Aliexpress radar.


This is the sticker sheet that comes with the Lepin City Truck set.  Do you notice that the licence plate has the Lepin set number on it?   Normally I don't put the stickers on the building sets, but this one will be an exception.

You only get two minifigures with the Lepin City Truck set.  The guy with the dark blue shirt must be the driver.  The guy with the red cap and overalls is responsible for loading all the boxes.  They both look to be near Lego quality, right down to the hair piece.  Lepin has really upped their game recently when it comes to mini figure reproduction.


Ok, let's start building!  Here I've started on the truck chassis.

Chassis completed!  Pretty straight forward build, no advanced techniques on this one.

Building the sleeper cab.  There's two exhaust pipes on the rear of the cab.  Inside there is one seat and a bed.  You get the standard red mug also.   Good news ... no scratches on the windshield.

You can't see it here, but there is also a printed TV screen on the inside of the cab.

Roof, doors and mirrors attached to the sleeper cab.

The sleeper cab of the City Truck clips onto the chassis snugly.

Here's another view before I add the wheels.

The Lepin city truck has the replica Lego wheels which I like.  It rolls great!

Now it's time to work on the semi-trailer (that's what we call it in North America, what do you call it  in your country?).

The side doors and walls of the trailer are in.

Another pic of the almost completed trailer.

The back doors have been added to the trailer now.

Now we work on the undercarriage of the trailer.  Not exactly a fifth wheel configuration, but it works.  Also added the support struts.

Tail lights added and wheel assembly too.

Time to flip it over.

Testing the struts.  Its Not Lego gives it a passing grade.


Ta-da!  We've now hitched up the trailer to the cab.   The Lepin City truck is complete.  Well almost, now we need to add the stickers.

Here's the final Lepin City Truck with stickers added to the truck and the boxes.

Looks awesome!

More views!

It's so long it has a hard time negotiating the curve in the road.

Here's a look from behind.

Well, that's my review, hope you liked the pictures!

Brand: Lepin
Model:  02036 City Truck
Knockoff:  Yes,  Lego City Truck 3221
Number of pieces:  298 pieces
Number of minifigs: 2