Sluban flower capsule review

Now this is a funny - and admittedly long- story. 

A long long time ago, when my children were still small and budget was tight, we owned a Sluban princess castle. The legality of these alternatively sourced 'lego' bricks was, at this point, still debatable. Sluban was, along with Ligao and BanBao, one of the first brands that tried their hand at this. 

These first bricks were of dubious quality. They either felt (and sounded) too hard or too soft, they often broke prematurely, the gripping strength was nothing compared to the real deal, and there was a lot of tension between bricks, and especially between bricks and plates. So much so, that your building might occasionally explode. 

Our princess castle has since disappeared into the depths of our spare bits bin, and the legality issues have been settled. Since Lego only registered their brand and mini figures, but not the bricks, it is now completely legal to produce Lego-like building bricks, as long as you make your own designs and minifigs.

I just want to mention, that the building sets you see so often advertised on AliExpress and Temu, are, in most cases, illegal. This is because they are using copied Lego designs, and copied building instructions to sell their sets.  But, let's get back to Sluban. 

We scrolled past a Sluban advert, or website, and were honestly surprised that the brand still existed. And we sent a, might I say, daring email. It went something like this:

 "We really didn't like your brand before, but maybe you have improved?"

And that's how we ended up with sales manager Roel de Jong at our kitchen table, having a cup of coffee. Roel took us up on our challenge, and told us about the history of the brand (they used to make things like leak trays for under your washing machines), the legal agreement they have with Lego and about the direction the brand is taking now. 

Sluban has distinct lines for little builders, fans of army vehicles and realistic scale models, and young adults that like kawaii decorations or anime dragons. Roel also left us with some products to review and give away, of which we will discuss the first here. 

So we are reviewing two flower capsules, a lily and a peony variety. These come in 18(!) different species. They retail for 19,50 euro or around 22 dollars. We have calculated that is roughly a third cheaper than those of the big brand. And you've read correctly, capsules. What in the world have capsules to do with flowers? I'll explain. 

The capsule these come in you can use to store your bricks and your building instructions and keep everything that belongs to the set neatly together. We like that idea, however that's not all there's to it. 

The cap of the capsule is a brick. Which means, you can exchange it with other bricks. It comes with a piece to turn the capsule into a narrow vase, but also with pieces to convert it into a vase with a larger opening. This allows you to combine your flower brick sets and create your own bouquet. 

Building the set, the first thing we notice is that the bricks look and feel like those of the big brand. There is no discernable quality difference. The gripping strength is excellent. Our first impression is very very good

We encountered two minor flaws: of the 'peonies' set there was one piece that was a bit hard to put together. But then again, we'd rather see our bricks tight than too loose.   In the lily set, the bud was a bit heavy and tended to drop off it's stalk when you moved the piece around. Since it's a display piece and not a toy, we are willing to forgive this. 

Conclusion:

Great budget Lego alternative with innovative capsule.  Great gift idea, also for people that are not normally into bricks. If you like this set, you might also like the Treehouse music box (http://www.sluban.nl/en/artnr/m38b1169/sluban---treehouse-music-box). 

9/10

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