Lego has developed many great sets over the years. But there is more out there! My Own Creation are sets developed by the Lego community or external companies.

From Lego Ideas to Lepin

The Lego community has come up with many great build too. Just take a look at the official Lego ideas site. You will find many intrigued designs which fit to the existing Lego categories like modular building. Some develop their own categories which are often turned into new Lego categories. Lego Ideas allows you to vote for the nicest sets. Popular sets are considered for production in the Lego Ideas line. A lot of designs unfortunately are rejected. They are too difficult to build or contain too many elements.

Lepin have picked up on some of these to produce them as sets. Unfortunate Lepin is doing this without paying tribute nor paying license fees to the original creators. In particular the large sets which contain more than 3000 pieces will and can be produced by Lepin. Some examples are: Dinosaur Museum Modular Building (5003 pieces), the Apple Square University Modular Building (7968 pieces) and the Technician Classic Volkswagen T1 Camper (4337 pieces).

Rumor has that Lepin is preparing a new range of MOC based models for which IP (intellectual property) rights do have been arranged accordingly.

Specialized in MOC’s: Xingbao

Probably triggered by the courtcase of Lego vs Lepin, the mother company behind Lepin (Meizi Model) has started a new brand called Xingbao. It specialises in producing sets from famous designers/designer groups. The first sets that appeared in Q2 2017 were designed by The Arvo Brothers, Firas Abu-Jaber, Paul Boratko (CrowKillers), and Bangoo H. Currently they focus on modular buildings, vehicles and figures (of which IP probably is not fully settled). In particular their asian modular building category contains many well made sets. We predict that they quickly will become sought after collectables.

Trailing Brands

A company with more limited resources, Sembo Block, produces some very specific MOC sets. Mostly they specialise in mini/micro-modulars which are either mini-figure compatible with 2 stories or smaller than mini-figure size. Their most interesting sets are the Apple Flagship Store (1116 pieces) and the MacDonalds Restaurant (1729 pieces, hard to find). Product development seems to stagnate recently though.

Sluban is the oldest China brick brand with a clean record. All their sets are developed by themselves. Unfortunately their target group is primary children and therefore the sets usually are not very intricate and mostly focussed on City.