This week mine was homemade soda. Fermented sodas, citric acid + bicarbonate sodas, different juices and flavors like lime + lemon + cherry and pomegranate or mango peach or cola (homemade knock off)
This week mine was homemade soda. Fermented sodas, citric acid + bicarbonate sodas, different juices and flavors like lime + lemon + cherry and pomegranate or mango peach or cola (homemade knock off)
For the past two weeks it’s been Legos. I always wanted to build big kits as a kid, but they’re way way too expensive, even for me today now that I’m making decent money. Well lo and behold, there are tons of knockoff Lego manufacturers, many of whom will just sell you 100% ripped off sets for dirt cheap. I just put the final piece on the new Rivendell set today, and I’m going to start the millennium falcon UCS here soon. Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait until my thumbs heal up from all the damage - placing tons of bricks really chews up the tips of your thumbs and index fingers
The damage to your digits might be due to the knockoffs. They are cheap and look like Lego, but Lego is still way ahead of them. Worth the extra money is debatable, but try grabbing even a cheaper Lego set to compare. The knockoffs haven’t figured out the tolerances and possibly also haven’t figured out the materials themselves, so pieces might take more force to place and still not sit as well.
You’d be surprised! I have a few smaller Lego sets (and I have tons of spare from childhood), and the quality of some knockoffs is basically identical to the real deal. Trust me when I say the knockoffs have figured it out in 2023. The real differentiator comes in packaging and quality control. It’s not uncommon for a set to have a few missing or incorrect bricks, which you need to order or replace from your own collection. In the end ABS is ABS and this molding tech is literally 50+ years old; there’s nothing holy about Legos process.
If you do a quick search you’ll also find tons of people complaining about sore thumbs and fingers, particularly after putting together large sets. There’s plenty to flame the knockoffs about, but this ain’t it
Not at expert myself - but according to my sources including the German youtuber “Held der Steine” Lego is not the top quality brand. Sure the very cheap ones are likely worse, but e.g. the polish brand “cobi” has as far as I heard better quality (I mostly heard about the difference in colouring though).
Oh there’s an online auction like eBay just for Lego bricks. Edit to say you’ve probably figured that out by now lol my bad