A local toy store here has one set of shelves filled with Sluban (about ⅓ the size of their Lego offering), and it's just bleak to see. The shop focused their Sluban offering on military hardware for some reason (perhaps because Lego doesn't do any of that), so you end up with drab boxes of greens and browns, in addition to looking just off in terms of accuracy of the parts.
There's also a bunch of the 'fake' stuff on AliExpress, where you can tell the quality of the bricks is crap just by looking at the low-res photos. Getting the fit of bricks right is apparently quite hard to do if you want to offer lower prices than Lego does.
> I think LEGO has done a great marketing job here... never buy something that is not LEGO, it might be bad quality or scam.
I don't think that was LEGO. I think that was just the off brands being pretty university awful and people caught on.
I'm going through a bucket of loose parts right now, separating the off brands from the LEGO. There are at least 6 different brands in there. The difference is almost always obvious.
And when it's not and the part sneaks its way into my main collection, I can instantly tell when I use it because it either doesn't fit, or fits incorrectly.
There's also a bunch of the 'fake' stuff on AliExpress, where you can tell the quality of the bricks is crap just by looking at the low-res photos. Getting the fit of bricks right is apparently quite hard to do if you want to offer lower prices than Lego does.