Yes. Lego + mecha, twas only a matter of time. So, do I need context? Building bricks, or to acknowledge the brand leader, legos, are something which I imagine everyone knows even if they don't take an active interest. Even if you don't build yourself, the odds are you know it as THE multi-franchise toy merchandising brand, with an unusually good 2014 film. However, the Lego company proper did not make this, their patents expired in 2011, although there was legal drama. A company out of Taiwan made this, one of no doubt dozens easily dismissed as bandwagon jumpers. MyBuild does however seem to be something of an innovator, although I don't have much experience with third party bricks or proper lego, so I could be wrong.
Now, the main thing here is the "Mecha Frame", a name both generic and completely accurate. It's this that imparts the fundamental robotness of the enterprise, granting some impressively robust joints. I did have a concern at first that this would somehow be cheating, and yeah, it does a little. The cockpit block is a V shaped piece of only one obvious use, but the bits that actually move are adaptable as real legos. This holds true for the set in general. For comparative purposes, this was more than twice the price of those Superhero mechs Lego does currently, but seems to be closer to their £18 price bracket in terms of complexity and quality. Part count was surprisingly high, and while I suggest shopping around, this does feel like a product aiming to exceed Lego in a fairly specific way, not merely undercut them. There's even hints of an anime-style fiction on the box.
As an experience, this as not so much "up my street", as "awaiting at my door with take-out food”. There's a feeling like, I dunno, some lego competition winner was approached by the company and given free reign to design around the frame. It is impressively complex, but never intimidating. There's a big focus on exploiting plastic colours, giving it a digital camouflage look, with mechanical greeblies in the corners. I did have some problems matching said colours to the manual at times, but nothing serious. Posability meanwhile is largely ideal, being able to balance on one leg without issue. And then there's the features. You get to build two submachine guns, a rotary grenade launcher, a largely decorative bayonet, some kind of paratrooper kit, and options for variants. I've spent a lot more to get less. The only complaint I have is that the set omitted a pilot figure, which prompted a scrabbling through my desk drawers. It's now used by Julius Caesar.
Then I got another!
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