In General
Dollar Tree
Kits
Minifigs
Elements
LIDL
ALDI
Walmart
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I debated for months as to whether or not I should include a section of Lego clones offered by the Dollar Tree, LIDL and ALDI grocery stores, and (finally) Walmart. After much agonizing over the idea, I decided, what the heck.... Let's go for it. I was looking for a cheap source of spare parts, and not being a "Lego snob", I started by buying a few of these for spare parts - they work well with genuine Lego elements. So we've bought a bunch of them. If you like green, the Harvester is a great deal with 81 pieces - It even includes two packages of parts!
Almost everything, they offer only costs you
$1.75. In the whole
scheme of things, that is "nothing". If you are not particular in what
you use to build things with, buying these kits and basic brick elements can
be a cheap way to grow your empire. In late 2024, they started
offering a series of cars and a few buildings for $3 -- then the tariffs
came, and many started appearing at the
$5 level. I've even seen the same kit at two different prices
side-by-sideYou can buy these kits and parts from the Dollar Tree website, but they have a minimum purchase of 24 or 36 of them, depending on how they come packaged from the manufacturer. There is no discount on the price for buying them this way. You can have them sent to your home or to your nearest store, FOR A DELIVERY FEE of around $25.
All boxes are yellow except for one (so far - as of 2/22/25) and have the name "Make-It Blocks" on them. The exception is the Harvester, which has the "Best Lock", and the box is green instead of yellow.
All of the bricks are well made, they assemble with no problem, and things like wheels (so far) spin freely. Tolerances are good enough that the parts mate with each other without coming apart.
I have not had any problem with any of "their" parts inter-mixing with those made by Lego or any of the Chinese clone manufacturers like Mould King. I have noticed only one problem so far in dimensioning, and that is with some of the 32x32 base plates - they were ever so slightly large, and needed to be filed down in order to mate with the better produced stuff from Lego and Mould King.
BTW, every kit sold includes printed instructions, and ALL of them are well lithographed, in color, and follow the Lego convention with graying out the parts already assembled.
Somewhere in each kit and each bag of parts, will be one part stamped with "Greenbrier International".
By the numbers. There are three different numbers associated with the products Dollar Tree sells. There is a 6 digit SKU, which does not appear on all products. There is the standard barcode. And there is a 20 digit number that I'm going to guess is their stock number. Since there is no one unique identifying number for each product, I've decided to do away with my normal numbering of the parts and kits. I have seen only one instance where the bar code is used for three different kits, and those are the three ZOMBIE kits. Two of the Zombie kits also have the same stock number - I dunno how the Dollar Tree's inventory system handles ordering product with multiple kits having the same number(s), seems like it would be a red flag to me :-)
Acknowledgements:
The Dollar Tree boxes and website
Websites and other additional information sources of interest:
https://www.dollartree.com/toys/building-blocks-sets
Dollar Tree Elements / Building Block Basics
The Dollar Tree offers a number of assorted items to help a budding brick builder with a number of cheap options.
As of early 2024, this is what I have seen:
-- 32x32 Base Plates in green, brown, gray, and blue.... $1.25 for a quantity of one.
-- 16x16 Plates in green, brown, and gray.... $1.25 for a quantity of one.
-- A 25 piece bag of bricks and plates in brown, gray, blue, and white.... $1.25 (finding the white bricks is really, really hard - not seen since 2023)
-- A 16 piece bag of bricks in brown, gray, and blue.... $1.25
-- A 25 piece bag of bricks in assorted colors.... $1.25
Towards the end of 2025, they increased ALL $1.25 items to $1.75.
In the early weeks of 2026, they started carrying white bricks again.
On their website, I did not see three things: 1) Any white bricks, 2) the smaller 16x16 plates, and 3) the mixed bags of elements other than the one shown below that contains only bricks - In the past, I have purchased bags that contain plates in them, but have not seen them for a while..
They also offer boxes to keep your parts in, they come in two different color combo's.
Kits
Military
Zombies
Lazer Blocks - light up kits
City Block Collection - 8 small vehicles
The Harvester
City Block Misc
Fire and Police
Construction
Birds
Animals and Dinosaurs
Store Fronts - small versions
Store Fronts - large versions
International Sights
Cars
Flowers
Fidgets
Minifigs
Obviously, for a buck seventy-five, you're not going to be getting a lot. However, in an effort to comb my area to see what the various stores were offering, I came across a store after New Year's 2024 that had a few additional kits. One was a "huge" kit at 81 pieces to build a "Harvester" (a type of farm machinery), and three kits that include a battery/light module (the Lazer kits)!
Military:
Fighter jet / 30 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Helicopter / 26 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Battle tank / 25 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Zombies:
The Zombie collection is not shown on the Dollar Tree website as of early January 2024, nor in early 2026,. Will they do another run of these???
Grave, headstone, zombie minifig / 49 pieces
Headstone with plants, headstone with cross, zombie minifig / 51 pieces
Funky black headstone, black headstone with cross, zombie minifig / 55 pieces
Lazer Blocks:
These three kits include a battery module with two LR41 batteries and a flashing RGB LED. At first, I thought the switch on the light module is momentary, but after much persuasion, it will latch in the ON position.
Lazer Blocks spaceship / 26 pieces
Lazer Blocks helicopter / 38 pieces
Lazer Blocks racecar / 39 pieces
City Block Collection:
There are 8 vehicles in the City Block Vehicle collection, altho I have never considered a train engine a vehicle :-)
City Block Vehicle: Crane on Yellow Truck / 57 pieces
City Block Vehicle: White towtruck / 56 pieces
City Block Vehicle: Red Fire Truck
City Block Vehicle: Yellow Taxicab
City Block Vehicle: Blue Car
City Block Vehicle: Pink Delivery Van
City Block Vehicle: Blue Jeep
City Block Vehicle: Green Train Engine
The Harvester:
Harvester / 81 pieces
This kit is not on the Dollar Tree website as of early 2024.
City Collection Misc:
Bench, mailbox, lamp post with base / 36 pieces
Gas station pump with roof with scooter / 44 pieces
Traffic Light, motorcycle, hydrant, box, base / 28 pieces
Fire and Police:
Police Helicopter / 25 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Fire Rescue: Fire hydrant and fire extinguishers on a rack with a shovel and 2x6 base / 24 pieces
Fire Rescue: Mini-Fire truck / 22 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Fire Rescue: Vehicle and minifig / 52 pieces
Fire Rescue: Boat and minifig / 52 pieces
City Patrol vehicle: "Police robot" with "grabby" arm / 28 pieces (can be assembled in two configurations)
Construction:
Construction: Compactor on wheels / 24 pieces
Construction: Cement Mixer / 37 pieces
Construction: Crane on platform with base, shovel, and cone / 34 pieces
Construction: Mini-Bulldozer with fencing, shovel, and "dirt wall" / 36 pieces
Construction: Steam roller with minifig and shovel + / 57 pieces
Construction: Helicopter and minifig / 52 pieces
Construction: Heavy Duty Crane and minifig / 56 pieces
Birds:
Coming
Animals and Dinosaurs:
Purple Stegosaurus / 19 pieces
Yellow Triceratops/ 18 pieces
Green/brown Allosaurus? / 20 pieces
Green Pterodactyl / 13 pieces
Yellow Stegasaurus? / 18 pieces
Dark Blue unknown dinosaur (kinda looks like a turtle :-) / 10 pieces
Lion / 30 pieces
Pterosaur / 30 pieces
Triceratops / 34 pieces
T-Rex / 32 pieces
Eagle / 30 pieces
Shark / 30 pieces
Small Storefront Building Sets:
Large Storefront Building Sets:
Coming
International Sights:
Berlin
San Francisco
Venice
Cars:
Coming
Flowers:
There are four kits in their flower series.
Fidgets:
I believe they offered two of these, they came in a bag. Here is one......
They are cute little kits, dunno why they didn't keep them around longer! :-(
Dollar Tree sells mini-figs in two different packaging options: five-packs and three-packs. The five-packs characters have a common theme. The three-packs cover a slightly wider variety of characters, and don't appear to be duplicates of those found in the five-pack sets. While none of these will ever be worth $20-30-40, they are a cheap way to populate your build, city, or space-port!
The 6 five-pack sets.
The 6 three-packs.
Detail of one of the three-packs.
Firemen
Police Force
Space
Military
Medical
Construction CrewFor the Christmas 2024 toy sales season, LIDL came out with a number of block kits. All of them assemble well, the parts are very well molded - it's like putting Lego stuff together! The kits they offered were:
-- A police station with a helicopter and police car
-- A fire station with a helicopter and ambulance
-- A police boat with two minifigs
-- A police car with two minifigs
LIDL has also come out with several other items of interest to help Building Block fans, especially if you are a die-hard builder and like to have spares around:
One item is a set of drawers that come in two flavors: one has 32 small drawers and one large full-width drawer on the bottom, the other is a cabinet that has 8 small drawers in the middle, and 8 larger ones - 4 on each side, and again, a full width drawer on the bottom.
-- Both cabinets come with dividers, altho not enough to put two in each drawer.
-- There were two runs offered, about a month apart, with the two runs coming from different suppliers.
-- The drawers between the two runs are interchangeable because they are the same size.
-- The cabinets from the two runs won't easily stack, since the alignment "nubs" are different.
-- Whomever they got to make the first batch had quality control issues, as most of the small drawers are warped.
Towards the end of 2024, they came out with a series of parts storage tubs that one could immediately tell they were for building block fans, for the tops of the have a 22 x 22 grid of studs on them - however, they are poorly sized because the studs are just a tad off in proper spacing, making it hard to put any parts on the lid.
-- Inside there is a tray with 4 compartments, and underneath is ample storage.
-- They were sold for $7.99 in the U.S.
-- They had two versions with red and yellow lids.
-- In early 2025, LIDL came out with another series of plastic storage tubs in L, M, and S sizes - I only bought the L (on the right in the pix below) and M (on the left) sizes, the smalls were too small for my needs.
In February of 2025, the 12th to be exact, Aldi's came out with two block sets. One is a model of an Aldi's grocery store, very simplified and no roof, and an Aldi's 18 wheeler truck which does a creditable job of copying the real thing. I visited two stores: Timonium and Cockeysville MD, and both stores carried eight of each. I guess this was kinda like "testing the waters" to see how they would do, and it appears that by the 14th - 2 days - they were both sold out. Neither Aldi's or LIDL plan on restocking the kits as of this writing (FEB 24, 2025).
The models assemble well - you "feel" like you're assembling real Lego kits. Both kits include decals. You need nerves of steel to put the four large decals on the sides of the truck so they get aligned well enough not to see the seems. If you have an unskilled kid putting them together, you may wanna help out here.
So far, as of February 2026, Aldi's has not introduced any more "Lego" kits.
For the Christmas 2024 sale season, Walmart decided to offer a number of simple flowers and two styles of vases (red and white) to put them in. They are manufactured by BRICKCRAFT and use the name BRICKTANICALS. Walmart carried five varieties -- each costing $5:
- Dahlia - 100 pieces
- Mistletoe - 90 pieces
- Amaryllis - 102 pieces
- Hydrangia (blue) - 121 pieces
- BlueBonnet - 96 pieces
I didn't notice any non-Lego stuff during the 2025 Christmas season.
In addition, and I didn't notice these until after Christmas (2024), that Walmart was also carrying two MTV sponsored items: A tape cassette, and Boom Box with a removable tape cassette and an opening door.
https://brickcraftofficial.com/
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RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
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