Here’s something that has popped up on my feed and also readers emailing in about it but I questioned whether I should post about it or not. You may have heard of a few well-known builders in the LEGO community like The Arvo Brothers, Firas Abu-Jaber, Paul Boratko (CrowKillers), and Bangoo H, many of which have been featured on The Brothers Brick and other LEGO sites. Their LEGO builds are an envy of many builders who have tried to replicate themselves or take inspiration from.
The 29th Guangzhou Toy & Hobby Fair kicked off yesterday and there’s a Chinese “new” brick company who has appeared to be making sets based on the designs of some of the builders I’ve named above. In a post on Facebook, there are images of a company called Xingbao (星堡) who is owned by Meizi Model (美致模型), which is the same company that owns LEPIN, at the convention displaying some of the sets based off of the AFOL designs including The Arvo Brother’s Kaneda’s Bike and Alien, Bangoo H’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky music box, Fira’s Volkswagen Beetle, Ford GT, and Rolls Royce Springfield Roadster, and Paul’s Balisong supercar, just to name a few. It also appears that some of the designers have confirmed to have licensed their models out to the company.
This new company is essentially helping AFOLs who want their models become easier to obtain by their followers who do not have time to BrickLink the parts or whatnot. This whole thing … Continue
