One of the biggest shocks to the toy market this summer was the departure of LEPIN.
The thing is that LEPIN has long taken its strong place in the market of high-quality Lego analogs, and the ability to buy great sets without overpaying for the Lego brand has endlessly delighted numerous buyers!
Now the fans of the designers are in shock: where to buy analog sets that are not inferior in quality and assortment to Lego, but much more affordable? No panic, friends! In fact, your opportunities have only expanded, and now we will explain how this happened.
The game sets: how Lepin multiplied on King and Queen.
It is rumored that Lepin began its existence thanks to a former Lego employee who was unfairly reduced. The dismissed worker seemed to be able to accurately reproduce the mold of the legendary brick in accordance with the Lego drawings and began production of an analog constructor that is fully compatible with any set of the “head” company. At the same time, the appearance of the sets, the colorfulness of their design, and the assembly technology of the construction perfectly corresponded to the parameters of the Lego company.
And it is certainly known that ABS is the plastic from which the parts of designers are made – the Lego and Lepin factories bought from one supplier. The confrontation between the two companies reached its climax in 2017 when at a trade show in China, Lego’s technical director was unable to distinguish the set of Lepin from the Lego original.
We built, built …
Experienced “designers” need not recall how similar and compatible Lego and Lepin are in the smallest details (except, of course, price and corporate embossing) such popular sets as Ford Mustang GT 1967, Porsche 911 GT3 RS in classic orange design, or Harry Potter – Hogwarts Castle, which at one time cost crazy money, and is now discontinued by Lego and is only available in the Lepin version.
Of course, such a holiday could not last forever. In proportion to the growth of Lepin, legal pressure from Lego increased. As a result, the firm’s own ambitions and the copyright holder’s press led to the logical ending, which, in fact, became the new birth of Lepin.
The reincarnation of Lepin 02008 in Queen 82008
Since July of this year in Europe, Lepin has been sold under two new names – King and Queen. The agreements reached by us in Shanghai have opened this opportunity for buyers in the global market. We are proud that we managed to achieve the status of a distributor of KING and QUEEN in the EU, USA, which guarantees our customers high-quality purchases directly from the manufacturer without intermediaries, extra fees, and other difficulties.
As part of our trip to China, we visited three plants of the MZ Smart holding, which includes Lepin. Among them is the XingBao factory, which produces its own designer sets of designers, rather than high-quality Lego replicas like Lepin. In addition, we visited the production and exhibition halls of other manufacturers of Lego analogs: Bela, Mould King, SY, Decool, Sembo, Kazi. Acquaintance with the samples of their products suggests that after the closure of the Lepin factory, technologies “flowed” outside MZ Smart. And today, a number of previously unprepossessing competitors Lepin have grown sharply in quality and can be quite adequately presented to our customers.
The reincarnation of Lepin 22001 in King 83038.
King and Queen – so from now on and in the foreseeable future will be called sets, previously known as Lepin. Everything is as usual: perfect detailing, full compatibility with Lego, high-quality plastic, elegant packaging. The only change is in the articles and the logo on the boxes. An interesting marketing move was also the monochrome execution of the boxes of King sets at first. In addition to the designer, in this way, the buyer also received coloring. We bought a large batch of these first sets, without waiting for the designers to make new color packages. Now the manufacturer is returning to the traditional color box and they will gradually begin to enter the range, but sets in exclusively black and white packaging are also present in our store!
My serial number
A necessary addition! During the transition period from Lepin to King and Queen, the company’s products were exported inboxes without a company logo, or with any symbolic pictogram. This was done in order to avoid problems at customs, and a number of such unmarked boxes entered the EU and US market and the assortment of our store, respectively. Be sure of the identity of these kits!
Millennium Falcon from Lepin with different logos.
But inside there is the same Lepin, unmistakably recognizable by the five cherished numbers of the article. For example, for the legendary Hogwarts Castle, these numbers are 16052, and the WALL-E robot (from the original WALL-E) passes through article 16003.
Wall-E by Lepin with and without a brand logo.
