Wishuponastar.... you make a very valid point about Parents who cannot afford LEGO, I tend to agree with this, however it does not make it right that Counterfeit LEGO, blatant copies of the Genuine product, should be allowed to be sold, it is illegal! There are plenty of similar brick/building block products to LEGO that are legitimate & are cheap, essentially they have their own ideas & designs & offer the Parent, who may not be able to afford LEGO, an alternative, without buying illegal product. Take for example a person who can afford a BMW, not everyone can afford this, so the alternative is a different brand with their own marketing etc, perhaps a Holden, or Hyundai. If there were Fake BMW's for sale, first of all they would unlikely have the same safety standards & actual quality, they would just look the same and be of cheaper standard, they would still be illegal! I am not arguing with you, as I agree with you, I just wanted to clarify the fact that it does not make Counterfeits right!

It appears I have missed your point; my apologies. Counterfeit products are another matter altogether. I was refering to other known brand names that manufacture plastic blocks that are not copies of Lego sets. Many will state they are compatible with Lego which is reasonable if they make it clear that what they are selling is NOT Lego.

Counterfeits are rife. I sell a well known international brand of favours, that are not permitted to be sold on ebay so I only sell the discontinued items on ebay. The images are beautifully presented by the supplier, who encourages retailers to use them to sell their products (they have a downloadable image library on their ordering website).

There are numerous non branded items that are essentially passed off as the brand name item using the identical image. In many cases the packaging, which is an important factor in presenting the items at weddings etc, is remarkably different in the non branded items and nothing like what is shown in the images.

It is unfortunate that more is not done to stop the sale of counterfeits and goods that "fell off the back of a truck" and so forth. Lego, and other brand owners, should be taking action against these businesses. I wonder how many of them are fly by night businesses?