I bought my very first not Lego back in December of 2013.
I was on ebay and I saw that you could get a set of assorted superhero minifigures for about a buck apiece. I didn't know that they were considered as bootleg at the time, I just thought it was some alternate brand producing minifigures.
Decool was the first brand of alt Lego minifigures that I bought. The quality of the minifigures varied but mostly they were so-so. Around the same time, I discovered another brand called Sheng Yuan or SY for short. These two brands pretty much dominated the alt Lego minifigure market up until 2016, I would say. Maybe they made other themes, but my focus was always buying superhero minifigures from Decool and SY. Typically you would buy them in sets of 6 or 8 minifigures, as it was more economical than buying a single minifigure at the time.
Back in 2014, you could buy whatever building block sets you wanted on ebay. They were mostly inferior building block sets coming from China and they were dirt cheap. I remember that my first building block sets that I bought were little fire truck sets from Kazi. They came boxed and when you removed the pieces from the box, they smelled like gasoline. Kazi sets were also branded Loomen.
Around this time, I also bought building block sets from brands like Enlighten, Sluban, Wange and Bozhi. It's interesting to note that Enlighten, Sluban and Wange had their own designed sets and were not knockoffs of Lego. Their sets included minifigures and they were already proprietary in design. Sluban minifigures were slimmer and were kind of a hybrid of the standard minifigure and the lego friends minifigures. Wange minifigures were squarish in shape , even their heads, and were probably the original predecessors to minecraft style minifigures. Just awful.
Speaking of Wange, I would buy their small two storey buildings and vehicle sets. The buildings were poorly designed and ugly, but cheap. Some of them appeared to be Lego knockoffs, especially the Wange Villa series, which you can still find on Aliexpress even today.
Enlighten produced several police and military themed vehicle sets. I think some of them were copied from Lego designs.
To this day, I think Sluban was the only brand that did not copy Lego. All of their building block sets were unique. I especially enjoyed their aircraft series. The problem with Sluban sets was that the plastic used felt different than Lego and their colours were not standard.
When it came to a true bootleg brand, Bozhi was the clear winner. They knocked off a lot of the Lego superhero sets at the time and believe it or not, the quality of the sets was indistinguishable from Lego.
Other chinese brick brands that made their appearance in 2014 included Companion, Lele and Jiestar. I'm sure there were others, but these were some of the ones that I bought. I think Lele sucked, Companion and Jiestar sets not memorable.
Looking back, the main themes I collected in 2014 were Super Heroes, Fire, Police and assorted City vehicles. My most memorable sets for 2014 was the set of Fantastic Four minifigures from Decool, the Iron man lab from Sheng Yuan, and of course the Bozhi superhero knockoff sets.
For anyone who wanders in, this post is a work in progress. I'll share more pictures and elaborate some more about my favourite sets for 2014.
Stay tuned!
