Hiya brick fans! I'm back to share another shopping experience from Temu with you today.
I've got an ongoing project to move all of my Lego compatible modular buildings over to raised baseplates (aka MILS plates). For this you need two types of baseplates, the original thin Lego style single sided baseplate and a top baseplate on which you build your modular building. In between the two baseplates, you sandwich some 2x2, 2x4 or 2x6 bricks, spaced apart, in between to form a rigid structure.
While the single sided thin baseplates are relatively easy and cheap to find on Aliexpress, Amazon and recently Dollar Tree, the double sided stackable baseplates are a lot harder to find and cost a bit more. You can find them for sale on Aliexpress on Amazon for about $5 CDN each.
On Temu, I found a store that sells a six pack of 32x32 stud 10" double sided baseplates for just a bit over $19 CDN. That works out to a little over $3 each for baseplate which I think is a really good deal. Temu offered free shipping on orders over $20 (it has just gone up to $25 recently), so I needed to buy something else to top up my order.
Minifigures are cheap and abundant on Temu, so I looked through a lot of listings. I mean you can find great deals on multipack generic minifigs for your Lego city, or you could fill up on the latest Star Wars or movie themed minifigs such as LOTR or Harry Potter, but I wanted something a bit different this time. I found the above listing and thought , whoa, these are different.
I did a bit of research and found
this article about Bearbricks. So anyways, I wasn't sure about the quality of the minifigures, so I bought one to both fill out my order to satisfy the free shipping requirement and also to see what the quality is like.
I placed my order on March 28 and my package was delivered on April 10, exactly 2 weeks in duration, so yeah superfast. Typical orders from Aliexpress these days take about 3 weeks to Canada for comparison purposes.
Right after I placed my order, I checked the reviews for the store and found that some people ended up receiving single sided baseplates instead of double sided. Yeah, I should have checked that before I made my purchase, but I was excited to find double sided baseplates for a low price and hit the buy button right away.
I reached out to Temu customer support and just wanted to leave a message with them to confirm that I wanted double sided and not single sided baseplates. They got back to me right away and confirmed that's what I would be getting. I took a screenshot of the chat box just in case.
I'm pleased to report that, yes, I did in fact get what I ordered. The Lego compatible baseplates are branded NextXToys and I even got a free brick separator included. So about that Bearbrick minifigure ...
Here he is. He's simply known as Bear 13 on the package. He looks more like a mouse than a bear to me. He comes with two black swords as accessories.
The print quality could be sharper in my opinion. The black lightning bolts on his head look a bit ragged.
The biker or varsity jacket design is pretty cool with the hybrid Japanese/skull and crossbones motif. His jacket has the word "naoping" on it, not sure what that means. You can see from the previous picture that he even has arm printing. The sleeve cuff is a nice touch.
However, I'm disappointed with the legs, being clearly all scuffed up.
Turning Bear 13 around we find a huge skull and crossbones tattoo on the back of his head with the back of his jacket adorned with a Japanese lady head, two samurai sword handles and the caption "samurai".
Fortunately, the Bear 13 minifigure is Lego compatible in construction and size. When I get tired of the giant bear/mouse head, I can replace it with a standard minifigure head I think.
If you haven't tried Temu yet, go ahead and give them a try. Get 30% off and free shipping for your first order. I'd be very happy if use my affiliate link for your Temu purchases! Just click the image above and start shopping!
Thanks for visiting and see you next time! Bye!
