My First not Lego order from Temu!

 

Hello Lego and not Lego people!

In February of this year, I learned about a new on-line shopping site called Temu. It was launched in September 2022, and is relatively new being very similar to Aliexpress.  They have different stores offering building block and minifigures, but the selection is nowhere as extensive as Aliexpress.  You get free shipping on your purchases, but you have to spend at least $20 CDN to qualify.

I decided to test them out and made an approx $20 order on Feb 24.  I found a Ghostbuster's Ecto-1 building block set that has 603 pieces sold by Mould King, set number 10021.  I also had a 30% off coupon, which meant I needed to buy more stuff in order to qualify for the free shipping, so I added 4 minifigures to my order.

My Temu purchases included tracking info so you could get the latest delivery information.  And it let me know that my package had arrived on March 7. So, end to end, it took only 11 days for my building block sets to arrive. Wow, superfast!

If for whatever reason your purchases do not arrived by a specified date, mine being March 8, Temu policy is to give you a $5 credit.

Mould King Model Car - No. Ghost Bus 10021, 8+, 603 pieces.  Looks like fun, I'll do a review for this set in the near future.

Three shiny minifigures cost 0.99 cents CDN each and the Star Wars minifigure cost $1.69 CDN.

The shiny minifigures are a good deal because on Aliexpress, they cost over $3 each. There are a total of six colours you can choose from on Temu.

According to the packaging, the Star Wars figure is Cal Kestis XP499.  I bought it for the BD-1 droid.

Here's the link to the Temu site.   Give them a try and get 30% off your first order with my code fav62990.

See you in my next post, bye!

Aliexpress: Lepin 05054 Star Wars U-Wing Fighter

Today, I'm going to talk about the Lepin 05054 Star Wars U-Wing Fighter bootleg Lego building set.  Well, it's mostly going to be me ranting about why the price of this Lepin set has to cost so much.

First let's look at the ship.  The U-Wing fighter is that cool troop transport vehicle from the Rogue One Star Wars franchise.  It's a quad engine gunship that has wings that pivot outwards.  In the underbelly of the ship, it can carry a number of minifigures.  The Lego and Lepin versions of the ship has a cockpit for one pilot whereas the movie version has a dual pilot cockpit.  This set has 679 pieces and comes with 5 minifigures: a U-wing Pilot, Bistan, Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor and a Rebel Trooper.

The amount of bricks in this U-Wing set is almost as many as in the Lego/Lepin X-wing fighter sets.  In my table below, I've compared the latest three Star Wars fighter sets that Lepin has copied from Lego.  Take a look.

Fighter	Lepin Model	Number of Bricks	Release Date
Poe's X-wing Fighter	05004	748 pieces	March/April 2016
Resistance X-Wing Fighter	05029	740 pieces	September 2016
Rogue One U-Wing Fighter	05054	679 pieces	December 2016

So I remember that when the Lepin Poe's 05004 X-wing Fighter first started showing up on AliExpress, it cost about $23 to $25 USD.   And when the Lepin 05029 Resistance Fighter appeared, it was priced at around $25 to $27 USD.

And I was ok with this price point because the Lego versions were and are much more.   Here's a snapshot of how much the Lego 10466 Poe's X-Wing Fighter costs on the Lego.com.   It's $79.99 USD.

I went on to Aliexpress and took this fairly current screen grab of the Lego knockoff Lepin 05004 X-Wing.  You can see it's $22.30 USD.   So the Lepin X-Wing version is about one-third the cost of the real Lego model.

The newer Lego 75149 Resistance X-Wing Fighter set is similarly priced at $79.99 USD.

The Lepin 05029 Resistance X-Wing Fighter is slightly more at $24.35 USD, again it's about one-third the cost of the real deal on Aliexpress.

So, now we are looking at Lego's 75155 U-Wing Fighter.  It is priced at $79.99 like the other previous X-Wing fighters.  But there's less pieces in this set, almost 10% less at 679.  Ok, it's 2017 Lego pricing, I get it.

So when I check Aliexpress, I expect that the new Rogue One Lepin version of the U-Wing fighter to only cost say $27 to $29 USD.  I was willing to pay that price.   But guess what, the lowest price on Aliexpress right now for the Lepin U-Wing is $40 USD!  That's right $40 USD.   That's 25% more than the other models that have more pieces.  I think that's just way too expensive for a bootleg Lego model.  It's not like Lepin has to pay any royalties to Disney or Star Wars.

As much as I want to buy the Lepin version, I'm going to hold off until the price drops to the price I'm willing to pay, which is under $30 USD.   What do you think?  Is $40 USD too much to pay for the Lepin knockoff version of the Lego Star Wars U-Wing?     Let me know, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Sorry for the rant, I just had to get that off my chest.

Aliexpress: Xinh X0151 Star Wars Stormtrooper Minifigure

I think prices have gone up on Aliexpress for bootleg Lego bricks and minifigures because it's getting harder and harder to find really good deals.   That being said, I was able to find this little gem hidden amongst the listing of other minifigure listings.  It's a Star Wars Stormtrooper minifigure made by the Xinh brand item X0151.

It's so cheap at only $0.42 cents per figure with free shipping.  Imagine the Lego like Stormtrooper army you could amass for your Star Wars displays.  I bet if you bought a lot of minifigures from the seller, you could negotiate even a cheaper price.  Never hurts to try.

Here's the link to the set:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Newest-and-Classic-Floor-price-Star-Wars-Minifigures-Jedi-Knight-Han-Solo-Clones-The-Force-Awakens/32713129579.html


Please remember that I cannot verify whether the seller is good or not. Use your own judgement and research before making any purchases.  I have no affiliation to Aliexpress or the sellers found there.