Alright, we got the unofficial Famicom game out of the way, so I guess it's back to form with some unofficial Pokémon building bricks! And what better place to start than with a set that includes custom Pokémon minifigures?! These are LEBQ Pokémon GO minifigures! ...Yes, I know what you first thought that said. I'm not making any jokes about it in the review, so move on!
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Name: Pokémon GO Minifigures
Brand: LEBQ
Model: 1801
Pcs: N/A
Two years ago, when I did my last Pokémonth, the whole event was themed around brick sets! ...Mostly because that's all I had back then. As I explained back when, Pokémon hasn't had any sort of Plug n Play release, either in console(besides what's possibly an unreleased prototype) or cartridge for another system. So, since I wasn't featuring knockoff games back when I first started, that left me with only brick sets. ...Which themselves were a little tricky to come by.
Pokémon has had official brick sets released by several different companies over the years. Mega Bloks and Nanoblocks, in particular, had produced Pokémon-themed sets for years! ...But mostly in Japan.
When it came to getting Pokémon brick sets anywhere else, our options were quite limited. Before 2017, the only major and most commercially available option was from Ionix, the same company that made Tenkai Knights sets. I even featured some of their products last time, both of their minifigures, and a small set with a few other characters! ...And, considering that they were some of the worst officially released sets I've ever seen in my life, you can imagine how desperate collectors like me were to get some Pokémon brick sets with some semblance of quality and creativity!
Nowadays, Mega Construx owns the license to produce and market Pokémon-themed brick sets and characters. And, considering the mass volume of both that has come out since they started at the beginning of last year, I'm going to take a wild guess and say they've done it right, providing collectors with high-quality, complex-yet-fun building sets! I even own a few myself, and we might look at them if we have time!
...But as late as two years ago, if you wanted something creative based on Pokémon that resembled Lego, your only option was to take the more UNofficial route and flock to China for your fix! Since supply was a little lacking, underground manufacturers sprang up to meet demand! For a while, you could get pretty much anything! Minifigures, buildable figures, Nanoblocks, even a few full sets were all produced without Nintendo's authorization, all waiting for someone to journey over to AliExpress and discover a hidden treasure trove of high-creativity, low-cost goods! ...And for that someone to be fine with waiting several weeks for a product that might have its box smashed, its parts missing, or otherwise be hilariously low quality. ...If it arrived at all...
Unfortunately(at least for a collectors of the unofficial like me), finding these unofficial sets nowadays is a little harder. Ever since Mega Construx made high quality Pokémon sets easier for the consumer to find and purchase, the demand for pirate sets has shrunken. If you look on a shopping site with inventory from overseas, you may find the occasional listing for a set of unofficial Pokémon minifigures, but you won't find anywhere near the variety China once offered us...
Except, of course, for Nanoblocks. Nanoblocks will last longer than diamonds! ...Why do you think they're also called Diamond Blocks?
Luckily, back when there were so many unofficial Pokémon brick options, you could swim in a pool filled with unique sets, I managed to find and buy a large quantity of different minifigure lines. And this month, we're going to be looking at as many as we can! After all, as the show and games have taught us: Gotta Hoard 'Em All!
Let's start with possibly the most ambitious line out of the collection: Pokémon GO minifigures! ...Ok, ALL the sets I have to show are labeled Pokémon GO, thanks to the popularity of said mobile game, but that's all the description any of them come with! ...I'll just call these LEBQ's Pokémon GO figures. ...Which will get even more confusing if I find another Pokémon line from LEBQ...
Speaking of which, that's the company behind today's sets: LEBQ. I already mentioned them WAAAAAAYYYYY back in my Racing II Mario Kart/Guardians of the Galaxy bootleg review, as well as last year's fake Minecraft figures look, and there's really nothing to say I haven't said already. They're a company that straight-up bootlegs existing Lego figures, and this is possibly their only "original" production. Similarly to the Dargo Pokémon minifigures, which I showed off way back when.
Though I will point out that there's much less LEBQ stock nowadays than a few years ago. ...Or, at least, less OBVIOUS LEBQ stock. They either closed up shop, or, more likely, they changed their name for the third time in 5 years. The risks of illegal brick manufacture. It's a hard life in the underground of toy making...
One of the best things about these sets that you'll notice right off the bat are the front illustrations. Like with the Dargo minifigures, each box features the trainer and his included Pokémon, posing in front of a different environment for each of the six boxes! One's posed by the sea, one's in front of a lighthouse, one's sitting on a fence next to a windmill, one is hanging out by a fence with what looks like Princess Peach's castle in the upper-left corner, and so on.
However, unlike the more "realistic" art the Dargo figures had, where they tried to make you think they were the actual minifigures posed in impossible poses on the front with some stolen artwork from the games/show in the background, these are much more cartoony. It does still look like they were trying to draw the actual minifigures, but the artwork is much softer and airbrushed with bright, shiny colors and exaggerated shading They look much more like art the comic book tie-in would have, than something trying to represent the actual product you'll be getting.
The backgrounds are also much more "cartoonish" and flat than the shaded and detailed art from Dargo. I'm sure they were still stolen from something, but it's much harder to tell from where, and it matches the look of the figures in the foreground. On the whole, I like Dargo's artwork better, but I can at least say that LEBQ has given these boxes a unique style. ...Even if it's probably not theirs...
The boxes are even color coded to the color of the Pokémon they have inside! Never again will you mistake Charmander's box for Poliwhirl's!
The one thing that bugs me about the artwork is that, while they attempted to give their drawings of the trainers life and personality, they clearly just drew in the Pokémon figures as they look in plastic form. What? They couldn't get an actual Pokémon in that day, so they just used a life-sized plush toy? ...Because that's how that works...
Though they make up for it by telling us to "Come And Catch Your Own Elf!"
Way ahead of you!
It's actually a pretty common trope for bootleggers to mistakenly call Pokémon "Elf" or "Elf Monster". Apparently, Pocket Monster is known as "Fairy Monster" in China and the surrounding countries, and it always translates back to English as "Elf". Therefore, all the Pokémon in the games are known as "Elves".
...Which is false advertising, as we all know that only Jynx helps Santa make presents! Ask Blastoise to make you a present, and you'll be blasted two regions over!
In the top banner, covered by the totally-not-ripping-off-LEGO LEBQ logo and the Pokémon GO logo, is some promotional art for a Pokémon movie.
Which is repeated, reversed, and a little easier to see on the back. Unfortunately, the presence of another Pokémon GO logo makes it impossible to do an image search. I clearly see the Pokémon Keldeo and Oshawott, but manually searching for whatever this came from has proven fruitless.
This poster on the side, on the other hand, is for the original Japanese release of Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction. That's another thing these boxes share with Dargo's take. They feature posters of Pokémon movies that have nothing to do with the sets that were released decades after the first generation of Pokémon they're making toys of!
The rest of the back simply features the entire line. Just in case you, for some reason, wanted to buy these one at a time and you want to decide which to get next. ...Of course, by the time you've made up your mind, they're gone, with how fly-by-night these manufacturers are. Lesson #1 about buying bootlegs: Never hesitate!
The other side simply has the LEBQ and Pokémon GO logos next to the same image of the trainer and Pokémon from the front.
While the bottom of the box contains all the boring warnings in every language they could fit on the box. ...They forgot Klingon...
Let's not forget the "0-3" warning
And the 6-12 age range
Anyone between or over those ages is forced to play PETA's take on the Pokémon series. ...And then they'll jump off a cliff, as all joy in their world will have been forcefully sucked out by extremist, humorless propaganda... And the gameplay sucks.
These are minifigures, so it'll just take a minute to set them up and put them together. Go outside, get some fresh air, and catch an Eevee while you're waiting.
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And now, for your eyes to behold, the LEBQ Pokémon minifigure collection! Ash, Ash, Ash, Ash, Ash, and the lesser known member of their group, Ash, are all here to parade their Pokémon for your amusement and entertainment! ...Though the trainers don't realize that what's even more amusing than their Pokémon are their own molding and paint jobs!
These figures(right) are clearly copied from Dargo's original copy job(left), which we looked at in the first Pokémonth. Same clothes, same colors, same facial expressions, it's pretty clear that LEBQ's figures are a copy of a copy. ...And, as is the case with rushed copy jobs, the quality is MUCH worse!
While the quality wasn't spectacular, as is the norm with most third-party and knockoff minifigures, I at least gave Dargo credit that their product wasn't as bad as most other pirate jobs. LEBQ's figures, on the other hand, are covered in the usual problems that plague knockoff minifigs. The limbs are either too stiff or loose, the hands won't fit in the sockets, the legs aren't the same size, the head is too big for the neck, all the obvious problems are here. And it gets worse the further you dig and compare.
While Dargo's paint job wasn't the best, I could at least give it credit they tried. And they probably did the best they could, given the materials and equipment they had to work with. There's still a bit of splotchiness and off-center paint, but it's convincing enough for me to adopt it as the most "official" unofficial paint job for a Pokémon trainer minifigure.
LEBQ decal work, on the other hand, is MUCH rougher and splotchy, with obvious holes in the paint, some paint covering up certain elements, and clear defects in the molding process for the plastic underneath. Also, while it's probably hard to make out in the picture, the colors are lighter and faded, making it obvious they just copied one of the Dargo figures they had lying around on a cheap scanner and used that image as the decal.
They didn't even bother with the back of the jacket! ...A feature that'll become prevalent throughout the rest of the line, as we'll soon see...
The faces also suffer from a cheap copy job, with LEBQ's features being much thicker and crooked, with small details like the lightning bolts under Ash's eyes becoming no more than smudges. Also, it's all black, leaving out the brownish-red coloring the Dargo figures were nice enough to use to highlight features.
And what a shock that they didn't bother to print the colors within the boundaries! ...Though they ironically straightened out the eyes better on their figure than Dargo's...
Also, obvious plastic runoff is obvious...
Including sprue reside on some of the hands, making it impossible to fully insert into the arms! ...Not that the mismatched sizes of the hands and arm holes make it any easier...
The hands are embarrassingly badly molded! Not only are they longer than most other minifigure hands, making them slightly too long to fully fit in the socket, and they're either too wide or narrow to comfortably insert into the arm, but they're bent near the hand!
This results in hands that look like they're slowly melting, never pointing straight with the rest of the arm and making it awkward to place accessories! ...Considering the cheapness of the plastic, they might actually BE slowly melting! I'll give you an update in about 10 years.
Not to mention the extremely poor layering for some of the hands of the figures...
As is common with knockoff figures, the hats fit too tightly around the head, making them extremely difficult to take off. Especially since the head fits too loosely around the neck and you'll pull it off without even trying! ...And Ash isn't the kind of person to know Shakespearean quotations!
And while Dargo was nice enough to include matching hats for each of Ash's outfits
LEBQ's hats come in 2 flavors: Vanilla and Licorice. They match none of Ash's actual hat designs, so it's likely they just printed a Pokéball silhouette against two solid colors to avoid having to actually attempt an actual pattern...
Or maybe The Punisher has them in his sniper's targeting, since he's dedicated to upholding the law no matter what and he's decided the production of bootleg toys is a serious enough epidemic now? ...Or he just needs a hobby while he waits to not be black anymore. ...No, really, that happened...
Speaking of outfits, since there are SIX different Ash/Trainer minifigures for this line, LEBQ had to come up with two other sets of clothing for them to wear. So besides the Original Series, Advanced Generation, Diamond & Pearl, and Best Wishes variants we saw with the Dargo figures
LEBQ also included these two outfits I can't identify! They're not from any of his incarnations in the show, so I don't know where these designs came from. If I had to guess, the blue one on the left slightly resembles Ash's XY outfit, with the blue jacket and white outline. ...However, XY Ash's jacket doesn't have a pocket area at waist-level or a button near the top, as this minifigure has, so they might have just traced a sweatshirt someone in the studio had for all I know....
The one on the right, however, may be based on the original Red's outfit from the games! It's a basic design, with a red jacket over a black shirt, and white pockets on either side. If that's the case, then kudos! This may be the only place to get a minifigure version of Generation 1's main character! ...But with how sloppily it was made, is it worth it to get one?
So those are the Ash/Trainer minifigures. Now let's talk Pokémon.
...No, let's talk ABOUT Pokémon. Not TO Pokémon! ...Do any Pokémon fans nowadays even remember this game existing?
This is the part I was REALLY excited about, and the reason I knew I had to buy this particular line. We've seen takes on Lego-ish Pokémon before, but they were all built out of standard Lego pieces, with faces applied to certain bricks to make them seem "alive".
Unless you count Ionix's god awful attempt* at Pokémon figures! ...Which still boiled down to applying bricks with decals to a "skeleton" to create somewhat of a character...
*Ok, Eevee wasn't that bad. ...Save for the surgically-attached duck bill...
But here, we have ACTUAL Pokémon figures! Each one uniquely molded and shaped to resemble their official counterparts! That is going the extra mile, if there ever was one! And now that I own them... They're actually a bit underwhelming...
Each figure was molded in two halves, which are joined by both a lip and two internal pegs. This makes the figures very light and hollow, but it allows for more detail in molding the details as accurately as possible. Since there's not much of a noticeable seam it's a perfectly serviceable and affordable method manufacture, as long as the two halves fit together well. ...Which they don't in the case of Squirtle, here...
The cheap molding also results in the figures having trouble standing on standard brick studs. They'll stand just fine, but any force will result in them toppling over. ...Best not to bring these instant-faint Pokémon to a battle...
It also makes it impossible to stand back-heavy Pokémon like Squirtle. ...This look just started, and Squirtle already has two strikes against him... He was abandoned by Ash, he's always the second choice behind Charmander for a starter Pokémon, now his toy is clearly the most problematic out of the line. This guy just can't catch a break...
In the order from the back of the box, we have Pikachu, Poliwhirl
Charmander, Squirtle
Clefairy, and Bulbasaur. Of these, Pikachu is obviously the mascot of the franchise and Ash's wingman, while the starter Pokémon Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur were all famously part of Ash's original party in the series, before eventually evolving and/or leaving for different reasons, never to return. ...This show based around "Catching 'Em All" is surprisingly not as pro-hoarding as it suggests...
That makes Poliwhirl and Clefairy the odd creatures out, as while they've appeared in the series and games, their presences were minor at best. However, in the manga series Pokémon Adventures, Red's first Pokémon was a Poliwhirl, while the first official Pokémon manga Pokémon Pocket Monsters featured Red and his talking Clefairy! So, in keeping with the theory this minifigure is actually Red from the continuity outside of the show, maybe they actually made these figures to be included with the Red minifigure? If so, I have to highly applaud them for their attention to the franchise as a whole and for creating figures that Pokémaniacs of the fandom could appreciate! ...If it was intentional. ...They most likely just saw how prominent these characters were on a lot of early promotional Pokémon art and threw them in because they needed six characters. I can't prove either theory. ...But neither can you...
I was going to go over each Pokémon individually and give my thoughts on each one. ...But, after finally pulling these out of their boxes and getting a good look at them, there's really no point. Each one looks like the Pokémon they represent, with the right colors, a similar body mold, and faces and stomachs that all match their official counterparts. That's all the detail they provided, that's all they really need, so what else do I have to point out?
I guess Poliwhirl fared the worst out of the line. He's a rather gray version, with biscuit dough hands, and cans on his feet like he's a kid from the 1930s. ...But, he still has that spiral on his belly, so if you stare long enough at it, you'll forget the problems you had with his... What were we talking about?
However, these figures have one major problem across the board: No paint on the backs. I told you that would be an issue again...
Even then, it's not horribly noticeable with all of the figures. Poliwhirl doesn't normally have detail on his back, so he gets a pass. Clefairy's mostly a solid color as well, so, if you ignore the fact they forgot to include a tail, it's not too distracting. ...But then you have the lack of color on Pikachu's ears and tail, Charmander's flame blending into his back, and especially Squirtle, with NO color to his shell at all! They bothered to add the shell pattern and his curly tail, but his usually brown-and-white shell has been completely covered by his skin! ...Did a Squirtle kill the designer's family, and that's why he's been constantly getting the short end of the bok choy?
This is, again, a common thing with bootleggers who are the cheapest of the cheap. They paint the front, leaving the back completely uncolored, as Ashens helpfully demonstrated in his Fake Toy Story toys video. They're likely banking on you just seeing the toys from the front and figuring they're legit, and by the time you've ripped them out of the packaging and found the half-assed effort has been halved again, TOO BAD! No refunds, sucker! Hope your kids enjoy the choking hazard when the plastic shatters two days later! ...If the lead paint doesn't do them in, first...
Compared with the rest, Bulbasaur here turned out the best! Since he's a four-legged Pokémon, he's comprised of top-and-bottom halves, as opposed to front-and-back. So the half they decided to give detail to contains most of what you see on a Bulbasaur, while the other half isn't usually visible anyway. What they gave him looks great, with a well-painted face, some green facial spots, and a bright green bulb on his back! Out of all the figures, this is probably my favorite, and the best painted of the lot!
As long as we're all fine with him having no mouth. ...Just don't give him anything to scream about...
Bulba Gump here is also the hardest to click into place. His pegs are located on his belly, but his legs raise him slightly off the ground, so it's virtually impossible to set him securely in a field of pegs. One or two right in the middle slightly work, but if you're trying to pose him on a sheet, he's going to slide all over the place.
Sorry, Bulba Fett, but it look like you'll have to live your life on a crutch...
And that's LEBQ's entry into the unofficial Pokémon minifigure market. It gave me all the joy I was expecting from custom Pokémon brick figures! ...But even more of the laziness and lack of quality I was also expecting from LEBQ...
Still more entertaining than Pokémon Channel!
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Quality: The quality on almost all fronts is abysmal, especially for the minifigures. Arms and legs are either too loose or too stiff, hats fit too tightly or not at all, hands won't go in all the way or won't stay in, there's obvious sprue and plastic runoff, paint is scratched and decals aren't properly layered, all the classic "we-don't-give-a-crap" elements of bootleg minifigures are here. The Pokémon figures, simply being hollow plastic statuettes, fare slightly better, as they don't have any of those features to screw up, but they're still made of cheap, thin plastic, with feet that won't stay on studs and halves that won't stay together. And, let's not forget the major problem with both the trainers and Pokémon: NO PAINT ON THE BACK! That is INCREDIBLY lazy when LEBQ won't bother to add details even most of the worst pirate manufacturers I've come across have given their minifigures! I guess I can say they're not the worst made third-party minifigures I've come across, but, considering how deep to the bottom of the barrel I've dove to find brick sets, that's like saying losing a finger is better than losing a hand. Less painful, but you still don't want it to happen! ...Anyway, the quality's terrible...
Design: They're cheap knockoffs of what were already cheap knockoffs. The trainers are designed in the standard Lego minifigure form, with most of their designs copied from Dargo's take on Pokémon minifigures. Faces, decals, colors, all came from Dargo, so I can't give these many points for originality. And with how badly these are molded and how ill-fitting all the parts are, I can't give them many points for functionality either. The Pokémon, again, fare a little better since they screw up less with their features. Plus, the painted faces are quite cute and accurate to the Pokémon they represent. ...However, they still amount to tiny, hollow plastic statuettes with no articulation and paint solely on their front/top halves. These would barely be worth the 50¢ from one of the capsule vending machines at Wal-Mart. I guess I can give them credit for the "original" trainer figures of the line, since I've legitimately never seen their designs, and, compared to the other trainers, they're well-painted(the outfits, anyway...) If that really is a minifigure of Red from the video games, that may be the best part of the entire line! ...It's not good enough to ignore all the other issues, but it still leaves this category with a few extra points. ...Which, in case you were wondering, comes to
Creativity: This is where these figures shine the most. Again, I can't give any points for creativity to the obviously stolen trainer designs, but I CAN applaud LEBQ for giving us Pokémon figure molds that work with the standard brick set! I haven't seen any other brick company come close to what LEBQ produced! Most other pirate manufacturers went with building the Pokémon out of smaller bricks, and even Ionix and Mega Construx have built their figures out of several pieces! These are the first figures I've seen that are custom figure molds! I can tell which Pokémon each one is, and the facial designs are done very accurately to their matching Pokémon(despite the obvious layering problems every figure in this set has.) I'm just THRILLED that I now have actual Pokémon I can use with my brick sets! Plus, again, I need to give them credit for their two "original" figures, especially if that red minifigure is actually Red from several of the main games! And if they intended to include Poliwhirl and Clefairy in the line based on Red's inclusion and their relation to him in the various manga series, I have to give the even higher praise! LEBQ had a REALLY good idea for their minifigure line, and I'm impressed that they managed to create unique Pokémon figure designs and trainer outfits! ...Even if they sacrificed nearly all other elements to present us with a few good ideas... Plus, the logos on the trainer hats are much lazier than Dargo's. I felt I needed to restate that somewhere... Still,
Readability: No instructions came with these figures. ...Not that any additional reading was required to figure out which piece goes where...
Packaging: I find myself liking the cartoonish, spray paint-like art style of the front images, compared to most other pirate box artwork that's simply a screenshot of the product or a "realistic" depiction of the figures in poses minifigures can't make. I'm almost positive the backgrounds are stolen from something else, but with how colorful and cartoonishly flat they are, they gel perfectly with the blurry style of how they redrew each minifigure and their Pokémon pal. At the very least, there's a clear and creative style here, which may prove indicative of the creativity they give you with the figures themselves. The rest of the box is full of the typical stolen artwork and lineup of the other figures in the range, so no huge creativity boost here. Still, I'll give credit to their use of the wonderfully Engrished "Come and Catch Your Own Elf" in place of "Specifications, Colours & Contents May Vary From Illustrationas." ...Though, with Christmas fast approaching, I'll pass on that. Santa needs all the help he can get. ...Unless he's completely switched to Jynx...
Compatibility: If you can get past the minifigures being absolute trash quality, they work just as well as any other Lego minifigure. The Pokémon fit in a little less, with their custom builds that aren't to scale and the fact they can't hold anything or carry a brick on top of their heads, but, if you can live with how they don't securely fit on typical Lego studs, they'll fit in well enough with most brick universes. ...Just don't introduce them to the Mega Construx Pokémon. They'll receive the bullying of their lives...
Overall:
The score's been pushed up a few points for just what a unique idea this is, despite everything else being awful... The quality is SUPER low, especially for the minifigures, and most of the designs are ripped straight from Dargo, a pirate company that actually seems to care about their toys(most of the time), so a lot of the regular minifigures are straight-up trash! However, this is the only line where you'll find custom brick figures of Pokémon comprised of a single mold, and possibly a minifigure of Red! Now if you want to do stop motion or brick art of the Pokémon games, you're not stuck with using a figure that's clearly Ash, and you'll have actual Pokémon to pose! LEBQ may suck at making brick sets, but there's no denying that a few creative minds reside somewhere in their department. I wouldn't recommend these figures for your kids, and especially not as a replacement for the official Mega Construx figures, but if you're a model builder or animator and you'd like some of the most "Pokémon" Pokémon figures for a project, or you're an obsessive hoarder like me who has to own every unique Pokémon set out there, check these out! ...Just have some paint on standby to finish what they started...
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