MEGA Masters of The Universe Building Set, Castle Grayskull with 3508 Pieces, 6 Poseable Micro Action Figures, 13+ Inches Tall, for Adult Collectors

First up, it's not Lego. The Brick Quality is not as good. Mega has come a long way from the crumbly polystyrene bricks of the early Halo days. They are now using ABS, the same material as Lego. But the feel isn't the same. The bricks have mach sharper edges. It takes much more force to connect and separate them then with Lego. Your fingers will really hurt after building a massive set like this. But in many ways it's worth stepping outside the Lego comfort zone to see how another company designs something on par with Lego's D2C or Ultimate Collector Series sets.A few other words of caution. While yes it looks like that cool playset you had when you were 9, this is very much an Adult/AFOL level set. There is very little color variation throughout the build. It is thousands of very small hard to differentiate parts. Where guessing wrong on a part will have you undoing 2 hours worth of work. This is an Adult tier building set. Even putting the figures together will require an adult. Do not buy this for younger kids. I would say a very advanced 11 or 12 year old, or better yet 13+. With 16+ being ideal. The younger crowd will love playing with it when done, but getting it there is challenging.The set itself is amazing. A magnificent mix of recreation of a classic toy, mixed with some really clever brick building design. It's a lot of really great brick sculpture and architecture, all in muted shades of sand green. The set is huge when completed. Roughly the same size as a Lego Modular Building. It's a Dollhouse design. And it perfectly recreates, and improves on the classic Castle Grayskull playset. Every detail and feature from the original toy is recreated in brick form. And at a scale that allows for more figures in play.Inside the big gorgeous box, covered with wonderfully rendered art the set is broken down into 4 smaller boxes. Each smaller box contains 10-20 numbered bags. So Mega has finally followed Lego's lead in that regard. Be warned, it isn't quite as smooth as Lego's. With each bag you will find lots of parts left over as you move on to th enext. Those leftovers get used and absorbed later into the build. So you are never quite clearing your active parts tray. It's a little harder to keep organized than a big Lego build. The instructions are a massive square bound book that is almost 2' wide. Which makes it awkward to find a surface to sit it on to keep open. Make sure you have really good lighting as well. Some of the part colors are very subtle. You will need good light to tell what is called for in the manual and to tell the pieces apart.The build is an education in clever build techniques. Mega has a broader assortment of SNOT pieces, which they use in some interesting ways. It's a fun build. A little tedius at points, but very rewarding as the various sections come together. Particularly intriguing is it uses some tricks and techniques that you would only ever see in Lego fan MOC's. Not in actual sets. Such as the rounded tower build.The versions of the figures included in this set are from the original He-Man toys and the comics included in the toys. So Teela is in her original Green Godess form, not the cartoon version. Man At Arms doesn't have his mustache, etc. Other figures available in the line are cartoon correct. The exclusive figure to this set is the Sorceress.Overall this is a great set. And will look impressive on display alongside many of your Adult tier Lego sets. Yes it's Megablocks (or whatever they are called this week?) But it's among the best that Mega has offered and well worth adding to a collection.

I am 39, and in the last decade started collecting macabre and skeleton themed toys, rediscovering the joy of Legos when sets that finally ventured into my less conventional tastes were released. Finally my unrequited childhood toy wishes were fulfilled: not just a Lego castle, but a vampyre castle....which i merged with related sets, and surrounded with lego cemeteries. Alas, Lego genres don't always last long...but that's when offbrand brick systems step in. The more generic, the more likely that it will have noticeable defects in compatibility. That is where (frmrly Megablox) Mega Construx seems to be the second best behind Lego. Interesting genres that are sometimes too adult for Lego, or benefit from having more true-to-original figurine designs (as Lego will abstract any character into the main lego man basic form). Coincidentally, I had the Grayskull Castle playset as a child, but tossed it out one day in a an act of pubescent-adolescent refute of childhood...thinking I would need closet space more than cool relics of my youth. So when I saw Mega Construx Castle Grayskull, it was an ideal way to upgrade my missing nostalgia. I would have no use for the original castle, except for display, of which it would require a lot of shelf space. But as a brick system set, it becomes versatilely entertaining and a more fun, worthwhile & more compact shelf occupant. What impresses me the most is that it also being a worthy and faithful simulcrae tribute to the original: Every original detail I remember rendered in the plastic shape of the castle walls is expounded upon by MegaConstrux; instead of just a sticker on the floor as a picture of a dungeon, the dungeon is a cage with four walls and a barred door. The throne also activates a trapdoor as in the original. Windows are rendered as actual windows instead of impressions in a molded plastic wall. Roofs are brown with shingles instead of just more green molded plastic in a single piece. The drawbridge teeth remind me eerily of the original, but the details on the outside of the bridge are fleshed out into actual implements. There is an operational elevator akin to the original. The ladder, weapons racks and doohickeys that spin (god knows what for) look just like the ones i remember, only now in bricks. Plus the set adds on things the 80s grayskull never had: secret passages, rooms for magic, technology and such as fit in the MoTU universe.i bought for 160$ on sale, reduced price...and I have gotten several hours of play/entertainment out of it everyday for 2 weeks. I'm taking my time building it, not rushing or pushing myself past the point where I start getting burned out, which is perhaps the one thing that has 2 edges to the sword: Unlike Lego, which builds up tall walls usually with many panels, this Mega Construx set painstakingly builds everywall with individual bricks. Unprecedented detail.... but it can get a little slow monotonous when working on a tall tower wall... but like I said, I give it a rest when i get burned out, and then I have more to play with the next day when I am fresh again. One last great thing is that construx blox figures are usually interchangeable... so when I take the wings from a Halo bugger, and add them to Skeletor along with his goat skull for a head from his staff, I get a magical skeletor goat fairy. Or replace he-man's left arm with an alien arm, to get Division 9 He-man. Possibilities are endless with bricks. And Mega Construx are cross compatible with Legos....even if their fit may be a few microns less precise, they still hold well together, very strong usually. 4.5 stars altogether