O is for 'Other Brands are Available'!

A quick 'new production' box-ticker with a space theme . . .

I bought this Block Tech set a couple of years ago in Poundland I think, or the now defunct 99p Stores, they're still in Poundland from time to time and in various configurations, with adventurers and road workers and such like.

I held them back meaning to photograph the contents but never got round to it, and it's not as if the pictures I have taken leave any real question-marks over these Hestair Kiddycraft descendents.

Then these turned-up the other day in Wilkinson's/Wilco's (Oopa has swapped shirts with T'klen!), now branded as Blox with a couple of mean orkish-looking characters added to 'smiley-alien' and the NASA types. Wilkinson's have larger sets as well, one has about 35 figures in it for the price of about five Scandinavian equivalents, it should be noted that these - like most clones - have better-modelled feet than the Nordic ones!

If only people would get the idea that all these clones (there are dozens of them now) are just as good as the Danish usurpers, and just as deserving of existence. Canaidia's Mega Blocs are about half the price of Bilund's finest, while the Far-Eastern clones can - like these - be five or ten times cheaper, and kids don't care who populates their creation (unless adults generate brand-prejudice in them), so long as there are lots of them!

Christmas is coming, put cheap aliens under the tree, it's what the little-baby-Jesus would have wanted . . . probably . . .