Sluban on Amazon, Sluban on eBay
Overall Brand Rating:
Sluban is a Chinese company whose primary store is here- http://sluban.tmall.com/. Unfortunately there is no English interface and best I can tell they only ship within China. (Their company site has an English translation but you can't buy directly from there.) They do however have a large collection of "Compatible" building sets. I was very curious to try these sets as they are a fraction of the price of comparable Lego sets (at least at their own store) but also there are many sets Lego will never make. Military sets for example- aircraft carriers, battle ships, fighter planes, bombers, etc... these do not fit the family friendly image of Lego and it is most certainly their right not to market models of weapons of war.
It is for this reason that I don't consider Sluban to be knock-offs. They aren't exact duplicates of Lego sets. The bricks however are very close to Lego look. Lego's patent on their bricks expired so there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal about selling similar bricks so long as you don't violate their trademarks.
The trick to buying Sluban is the Western World is to find someone selling them at a decent price. I found such a store on eBay. The eBay user popooki has an ebay store: Popo-Hobby. They sell more than just Sluban sets however so you may need to go through several pages to find the good stuff.
More recently a number of Sluban sets have been made available on Amazon as well.
The brick quality of Sluban in my experience is good to very good. Pieces fit fine with Lego pieces and they also stick well to each other. The biggest issue I saw was with their tires- they are hard plastic, not rubber like many Lego tires are. The axles they snap on to were considerably thinner (and therefore weaker) than I was used it- it was easier to accidentally bend them trying to get tires to snap on.
Also the "joystick" piece (What Lego calls a "Mini Antenna") comes in two pieces, not together, like Lego's mini-antenna does. They also fall apart much easier. Not a big deal but trying to point out noticeable differences.
Sluban has some excellent sets... Their "Flagship" being a large Sluban Aircraft Carrier. It is a Chinese carrier based on a Russian design. The sloped front helps planes take off and stop and is used instead of the catapult and tail-hook/arresting wire on US carriers. Also have a large Sluban Cruiser and Sluban Nuclear Submarine.
Don't worry, they aren't exclusively about naval ships. They have a full array of sets including planes, cars, and non-military themes.
Overall Brand Rating:
Sluban is a Chinese company whose primary store is here- http://sluban.tmall.com/. Unfortunately there is no English interface and best I can tell they only ship within China. (Their company site has an English translation but you can't buy directly from there.) They do however have a large collection of "Compatible" building sets. I was very curious to try these sets as they are a fraction of the price of comparable Lego sets (at least at their own store) but also there are many sets Lego will never make. Military sets for example- aircraft carriers, battle ships, fighter planes, bombers, etc... these do not fit the family friendly image of Lego and it is most certainly their right not to market models of weapons of war.
It is for this reason that I don't consider Sluban to be knock-offs. They aren't exact duplicates of Lego sets. The bricks however are very close to Lego look. Lego's patent on their bricks expired so there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal about selling similar bricks so long as you don't violate their trademarks.
The trick to buying Sluban is the Western World is to find someone selling them at a decent price. I found such a store on eBay. The eBay user popooki has an ebay store: Popo-Hobby. They sell more than just Sluban sets however so you may need to go through several pages to find the good stuff.
More recently a number of Sluban sets have been made available on Amazon as well.
The brick quality of Sluban in my experience is good to very good. Pieces fit fine with Lego pieces and they also stick well to each other. The biggest issue I saw was with their tires- they are hard plastic, not rubber like many Lego tires are. The axles they snap on to were considerably thinner (and therefore weaker) than I was used it- it was easier to accidentally bend them trying to get tires to snap on.
Also the "joystick" piece (What Lego calls a "Mini Antenna") comes in two pieces, not together, like Lego's mini-antenna does. They also fall apart much easier. Not a big deal but trying to point out noticeable differences.
Sluban has some excellent sets... Their "Flagship" being a large Sluban Aircraft Carrier. It is a Chinese carrier based on a Russian design. The sloped front helps planes take off and stop and is used instead of the catapult and tail-hook/arresting wire on US carriers. Also have a large Sluban Cruiser and Sluban Nuclear Submarine.
Don't worry, they aren't exclusively about naval ships. They have a full array of sets including planes, cars, and non-military themes.
