On this blog, it hasn’t come out yet, but I am pretty addicted to Lego. The only reason why I am not building models all the time is the limited space I have. Now it’s time to try something new – The Blue Runner from a Lego competitor named Bluebrixx.
Update 2020-12-04
I bought a couple of models from Bluebrixx in the meantime, and I can tell you that the quality is continuously increasing.
What is Bluebrixx?
In recent years, consumers have become increasingly dissatisfied with Lego, and several competitors have entered the market, among others Cobi, Xingbao, and – Bluebrixx.
Bluebrixx is a German company that manufactures its own models and distributes products of other manufacturers. While I was looking around for new impressions, in their online shop, I found a model that looks uncannily similar to the spinner from Balde Runner. Who doesn’t know, what a spinner is: it’s some kind of flying car – see the image below:
The model is called “Blue Runner” and from my point of view, it looks somewhat inspired by the spinner from Blade Runner.
Anyway, compared to Lego, the models of Bluebrixx are quite cheap. The Blue runner came to ~€18. Think of the Tron-bikes of Lego, which have more bricks but come to ~€50 – You know what I mean.
So far, I had heard only good things about Bluebrixx, so I decided to try it. I ordered the model in their shop, paid with Paypal, after a few days it arrived. Everything was fine.
It’s finally there – Down to business
The model came in an unimposing cardboard box:
But that’s fine – In the end, the car is on the shelf, not the box. The box contained a few plastic bags. Lego groups them by step 1, step 2, and so on. Here, there were apparently packed randomly. At least, I couldn’t imagine any other purpose than not to get them scratched – But I’ll come to this in a minute.
You can download the manual online can read it on a tablet, which is perfectly ok. Unfortunately, on some pages, it’s not entirely clear what to do.
At first sight, the parts looked very good. But with the time, I realized, that the price is connected to compromises. That means:
- There is not a single brick with a smooth surface that is not scratched
- Both window bricks are scratched
- 50% of the bricks are loose while the other 50% were at least ok’ ish
This was extremely disappointing. Nevertheless, I started building, and at the beginning, it was even fun. But with some components, I got the impression that the designer knew how to make it look good, but he didn’t care about stability. Here and there, it’s evident that a small change would have led to a significant improvement. It the end, there are some parts that you have to be careful not to loosen it by accident.
Despite all the drawbacks, the model looks good in the end. There is a stand made of transparent bricks (scratched, what else?) and it’s definitely something you can put on your shelf – If your wife accepts it 😉
Conclusion
First things first: This is one model I bought from Bluebrixx, so it may not be representitive for their entire portfolio.
Pro
- Idea
- Price
Contra
- Quality of bricks
- Construction
Last but not least
Unfortunately, after watching a lot of reviews and reading in other blogs, Bluebrixx seems to have problems with a fluctuating quality of the bricks. Some are good, some are bad. Responding to a mail, I sent them about this problem, I got written that it can happen and they try to improve.
But at the moment, even though I’d like to try out other models from Bluebrixx, I wouldn’t spend money on them. I will check it out again in some months because their ideas are often very promising – There are are some “references” to games and movies, too.
