[Toys] Best-Lock Construction Toys - Attack Copter & Tank

So here's an interesting thing.

Best-Lock is another one of those "not LEGO" toylines, very much so once you seeh ow the figures look. I've only just learned about them from seeing these, but it seems they've been around for a long time now and produced enough different sets to be their own legitimate toyline. This item in particular, however, is one that stands out as being unlike LEGO.

See, what makes this stand out as an anomaly is that... LEGO doesn't make army stuff like this. I tried to fact-check to see if I could find a statement for why, but generally it just seems like they have an issue with making these things happen. You can find tons of people online making guides to how you can build a tank out of LEGO pieces, but nothing official as far as I can tell.

I will say here, there's also an air carrier set which I could have gotten, but as of observing the -ahem- quality of the bricks, I'm glad I went for this as a less frustrating set.

That said, let us open this box.

This product here has a label on the box telling you that the product is officially licensed by the US Army, a rather specific honor. With that in mind I wonder if these are based on specific types of vehicles in the army, then. I'm not the guy to confirm it, so let's just say maybe.

 Okay, so let's begin with the guys you get with the set. Six minifigures.

Four of them are standard soldiers. There's also a commander with a nice hat and a pilot with a helmet. So as far as variety goes, you have enough to work with in this set. They all come with some kind of headgear and all but the pilot has a removable padded vest piece. The one here not wearing one has the same kind of paint apps on the chest as everyone else. Nice that they give you the option here.

Gotta say, the first thing I notice and first thing that stands out... the noses they have are weird. Also, the faces are weird too. Half of them have these goggles painted on, and those seem to have particularly thickly painted mouths (unless those are just mustaches...) The paint, also, is sloppily done on the faces, as there's one who's face is too high up and thus his eyes are covered up by the helmet. Also, one whose mouth is drifting off to the side. So the paint on the face is kinda bad. I also found that some of these guys' heads are REALLY tight, I had to bite down on one to pull it out. There's an ongoing issue of tightness.

From the neck down the figures are pretty much 99% copy of LEGO minifigures. Right down to the way the holes in the legs look. However, it's not without flaw. The legs on all of these guys have a weird angle on them, they're pointing too close together. Testing their ability to peg into bricks tells me this doesn't affect them too badly, but I do notice some balance issues may occur.

There's also a reeeally weird skin tone going on with most of these guys. Like I don't think the photos do it justice. It's like they tried to go for a fleshy skin tone but it came out more pale and grey. Very sickly looking.

 So, another neat thing is accessory count.

You get a sprue of weapons. An RPG, three guns, and for some reason one more gun was rattling around in a bag of parts. There's also a couple shovels which are meant to be pegged onto one of the vehicles.

That said...

 So, first on our list is a cannon. Just a cannon. It's a simple one. Due to knowing of LEGO parts, it's really weird seeing a camera-like piece used for the tip of the cannon, but who am I to judge?

 The jeep is more of a nice piece. There's some parts that are loose on it, but I like the overall look. They added in a spare wheel, mainly for decoration, but it's nice to have if you're prone to lose them.

TANK! You'd never see an official LEGO tank. This is what got my attention. It's nicely built with a nice heft to it. Even has some rubber treads which are not nearly as painful to put on as I thought. There is, however, this annoying part where you need to build some sort of barrel to plug onto the back. I couldn't get it to work, so screw it. Also while the opening hatch in the back (seen open here) is neat, it looks really crooked when closed. Hmm.

This might be one of the more complex ones, maybe, since it not only has these treads and a rotating turret, but the opening hatch adds a lot to the play value.

The big one, however...

 The helicopter has a nice heft to it as well. It's big. And it was in fact built in two separate halves, then connected. There's also a lot of parts used to make missiles attached to the underside of the wings. I mean disturbing amounts of missiles. It's nuts.

The rotors also move as expected, and the cockpit opens to place the pilot inside.

If those four sets weren't enough, you also get a pile of grey 2x2 bricks to build... whatever you want. The packaging shows them being used to make a broken piece of a building, with a couple barrels of gas. Oh, and in the display window on the box there are three colorful bricks that were really only there to show you what the blocks look like. So they serve no purpose in the entire set. Do whatever you want with them. Imagination is power! 

SO, I haven't brought it up yet, might as well. Okay, so I had a lot to say about the figures and their quality. The bricks themselves?... Well, I had some trouble building these sets due to occasional (more often than not) quality control. Either something pegs in loosely and needs something placed on top of it to keep it in place, or pieces that require a lot of force to actually peg on. There were some I had to bite down on to get them to peg in (notice a lot of teeth work here...) Upon using them again later, one plate gave me a lot of trouble and would NOT peg onto anything, I eventually make it work by shaving off some of the peg. So these are not a solid copy of LEGO like Hasbro's Kre-O sets are.

  

So hey, what do I say about these guys? Well, the quality control is an issue. I would advise that these are bought if they're at a cheap enough price. Like normally these go for... I think $20 or so. I got mine for more than half, and at that price it's a bittersweet deal. Still, assuming quality control varies, you're getting a 500 piece set with four things you can build officially, and the possibilities for other things that can be built are endless. Kids will enjoy them, I'm sure.