Kreo vs Lego

We have a 5 years old Lego boy at home. Seriously faithfully addicted to Lego. Helped us a lot in buying Christmas and brithday and whatsnot presents. 

So, when GroupOn has an offer on Kreo, we bought a box for him. Kreo is compatible with Lego, or so they claimed. We have not checked this though.

When opening the box, he was wide eyed with wonder. All sorts of new joints and shapes to explore. Kreo really has a lot of brick type variety. I know that Lego also do have not-joking breath of design, but Lego's beginner box contained standard types mostly. We bought the 700+ pcs of Kreo bucket, but I saw parts that I've never seen before. 

Then, boy boy proceeded to copy one of the vehicle on the bucket. Only then we realized the lack of manual. I do believe to encourage creativity in children, no need to rely on manual. So we goes on.

So I guided him. Carefully opening a little packet, keeping my finger crossed that Kreo packed everything we need for a creation on the packet. After staring at it for quite some times, my engineer self decided that they are not that kind. Each figurine parts were packed in a little plastic, thankfully. Seems like other parts were bagged randomly.

Opening and searching everything. 

Found there's at least one missing part. On the pic, there are two of a kind of brick. But we only got one.

Broken hearted, dear son stopped playing. Now, the Daddy is the one putting up the puzzle, where must go where. Good luck, Hubby. Do us proud.

One more thing, Kreo joints are more loosely connected than Lego. Plus side is that it doesn't require much strength or tricks to prise open. However, it causes the creation to fall apart easily.

All in all, I do think it is a good product. Workmanship is ok, though Lego's finer. You can still see some tiny sharp points on the Kreo bricks. But the marketing strategy needs a lot of work. Though written for age 4+ on the bucket, I seriously don't think that a four year old can take joy in it independently. Serious adult help is needed.

Well, though I don't think so, could also be that my son is the one 'slow'. We are also spoilt rotten by Lego fantastic no word needed manual. With the almighty manual, son have managed to set up everything by himself (written age 11+ on packets). Please share some comments/tricks if you have one. How to make use of that bucket sitting lonesome at home?