After I discovered the quality and joy of building with alternate brands earlier this year, I’ve been looking around to source parts for MOCs. At first I was still a bit on the fence because alternate brands had a bad reputation. After reading a bit online I decided to give a couple a try with some small orders to see what I would get. Below I’ll give an overview of some of these experiences and give the pros and cons for each of them. None of these suppliers have sponsored any orders.
BlueBrixx
When ordering sets from BlueBrixx I occasionally added some parts packs. And honestly, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. They have some really nice parts not available from the others mentioned here, or the obscure Danish brand some people may be familiar with. The clutch for the parts is very tight and strong. However, the color compatibility isn’t fully on par with others. White bricks have a bit of a bluish appearance when used together with other brands. The prices vary wildly. Sometimes you get a great price for parts when calculated per piece, other times it will be a lot cheaper to just use Bricklink. With BlueBrixx you can only buy part packs in predetermined (bulk) quantities. Unless you live in Germany of course, where their stores have a parts service similar to PaB walls. This means you might have to buy somewhere between 10-200 pieces per pack while you might not need quantities that big.
Another negative is the availability of parts. Recently I noticed that a lot of parts had disappeared from their website. So this makes me question if long term availability of their parts is secure enough to switch over to this brand (and therefore I tried out the others in this article).
But the parts I did get were really nice, to show some of the highlights:
The black rings can be used to reverse plates or tiles to build in different directions. The green and trans-clear (hard to see) double plates have a similar function. The reddish brown octagonal plates are useful for trees etc. and the bushes I needed in tan for a build buying a used one on Bricklink was almost as expensive as buying 20 new ones from BlueBrixx and to be honest I can’t tell the difference. The white one is weird however, since it has a bit of a weird color and shape.
The best thing they have is the flextube cable. Building with flextubes can be really good, but the tubes can be expensive and hard to get. So buying a 5 meter cable and cutting it at needed sizes is a really good solution. It’s perhaps slightly less rigid compared to other brands but it’s good enough to build with.
Webrick standard parts
Webrick standard parts are the cheapest and fastest way to get bricks from them. The parts are from unspecified manufacturers and it sometimes shows a bit. The consistency can lack at times but I wouldn’t call it bad quality though.
An easy example are these reddish brown stud shooters with quite some color variation. In this case it’s not an issue for me, I’ll be using these for tree trunks and the variation adds a bit of character.
For future purchases however I’ll be mindful however that inconsistencies like these can occur with standard parts. Therefore I’ll be more inclined to pick premium parts if the option is there. In some cases however, certain colors or parts are not available as premium parts. I got dark orange and medium nougat leaves from standard parts as well. The color difference with medium nougat is a bit bigger compared with dark orange, but it’s not horrible to be honest.
The website for Webrick is very user friendly. It’s easy to find parts. It’s a bit cheecky perhaps, but often LEGO part numbers and Bricklink color codes are used to help find exactly the parts you want.
With my first order there was a mistake made with one of the lots, but customer service sent me replacement parts without any problems.
Webrick premium parts
When I first ordered from Webrick, the difference between standard and premium bricks was quite unclear. It was just marketed as better compatibility, whatever that was supposed to mean. It wasn’t clear what brand those bricks were and there were some strange things like having to order in quantities of 40 (or a 1kg bulk). But there were some parts available in unique colors which I’m happy I bought.
Recently however, a major change was made. Premium bricks are now Go bricks. These might just be the best bricks currently available. The clutch is tight and strong, plates don’t have the clear markings from the molding process like some other brands like Bluebrixx have, and colors are similar to the notorious Danish brand. It’s because of this great quality that companies like Mould King and Funwhole (hihi) and a few others rely on Go bricks for their sets. So the news of this switch was quite exciting, since I was already looking for a good Go bricks seller having read about their reputation.
Gobricks colors are basically the same as LEGO and they have a few more of their own colors
Premium bricks do have a longer handling time at Webrick compared to standard parts but great care is taken of orders. Most lots are placed in separate ziplock bags (see pictures for impression of packaging) making it easy for those who don’t like to sort. The price is probably the best I could find for Go bricks too. If you Google a bit or subscribe to their newsletter you will find plenty of good discount codes. A small warning with their newsletter: they go a bit overboard with this, it seems like I get mail from them every other day or so.
Because Go Bricks is a brand with a good reputation their bricks are not the cheapest you can find, but still cheaper than most of us will be used to. Shipping is not free, but in my case probably similar to using Bricklink.
mygobricks.com
Since I’ve already discussed the quality of Go Bricks, I can be short here and just mention the difference in ordering and delivery compared to Webrick. The packing is quite different, everything is in 1 bag and you have to sort yourself. A lot more eco friendly of course because less plastic bags are used. And to be honest, I quite like sorting these kind of orders because I can have a good look at the parts and already get inspired what to do with them. So for me that’s a big plus for mygobricks.com.
The shipping is a bit faster as well, I ordered similar sized orders from them and Webrick (premium) on consecutive days and this service was about 7-10 days faster. However, the site is not as user friendly, when making changes in shopping I often got an error and color names are not the familiar ones.
And being Dutch it’s my national duty to report I couldn’t find discount codes for them online like I could for Webrick. The assortment is a bit different from Webrick premium as well, some parts they have I couldn’t find at Webrick and vice versa. In short: great service, more eco friendly and faster, but you pay a bit more for that.
Love having all these extra color options! And there are a couple more available.
Conclusion
None of these services gave me a bad experience and I can recommend all of them. There are, however, pros and cons in every case. Different people will have different priorities. I hope this blog was helpful for people considering making brick purchases from alternate brands. Happy building!
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