There are numerous companies that make LEGO-compatible brick-built toys and it is not illegal for them to do so since most, if not all, LEGO patents have expired in recent years. But there’s one company in China, known as K盒子 (literally translates to K Box), is kind of pushing it a little in the area of intellectual property rights. However, not with LEGO but with IPs of a bunch of properties, including Formula 1, DC Comics, Warner Bros, Hasbro, and Marvel – just to name a few.
Granted, though it is not as blatant as the now-defunct Lepin. Anyhoo, K Box makes MOC (my own creation) of pop culture objects like Hulkbuster (that looks way better than LEGO’s, btw), Batman’s Tumbler, and Transformers characters like Bumblebee. Obviously, all of those are not officially licensed. Or else the Tumbler wouldn’t be called Rambom. Don’t laugh. That’s what it is called.
Recently, the company set the heart of brick-built fanatics fluttering with a massive model of Jetpower Optimus Prime, called DJ-Rambomman (V5006) (the Bumblebee model also shared this name, btw). It even managed to file a patent for the build in China. Yes. It is one of those WTF moments but as a fan of Transformers and a toy collector, you probably welcome this big guy.
And when say “big guy”, it really is a big guy towering at an impressive 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall. At this height, it’d make the LEGO Optimus Prime looks puny. When completed, it offers some form of articulation, including head movement, hand and wrist articulation, and arms and legs movement. Thought I hardly think it can do any actual poses given the size and heft.
Speaking of heft, the actual weight is unknown but we learned that the shipping box weighs in at 13.6 kilograms, which is almost 30 lbs. Not surprisingly, this brick-built Jetpower Prime is not the most stable on its own, thankfully, it does come with a display platform with a stand to aid in its standing.
While massive, this non-officially licensed brick-built Jetpower Optimus Prime doesn’t have as many pieces as I thought it would have. Possibly because it consists mostly of large pieces, it only packs 8,862 pieces.
The K Box DJ Randoman (V5006) is supposed to go on sale in May 2023 for around 1,099 yuan, which works out to be around US$160 according to today’s going rate.
The set appears to have already spilled into the market at this point and based on the video that we stumbled upon on bilibili, the completed model does look incredibly impressive.
Images: bilibili (积玩世界) [CH].
