Explorer-ing… The Deep (again) – LEGO Explorer Magazine, June 2022

The wait for the latest LEGO Explorer felt extremely long and the last week I wasn’t even sure if I hadn’t missed the date and it would come out at all. But here it finally is the June 2022 issue, so let’s have a look at it.

This edition once again focuses on exploring the depths of the oceans, which is a bit of a repeat already, since one of the first issues already had this as a subject. Not terrible, since this is a broad topic that could fill volumes and volumes of books and in turn have me nerd out about it, but regardless it illustrates to me how the publishers are just meandering about with no real long-term concept. Similar to the issue from way back then we get a rather random selection of deep sea animals like octopuses, starfish and various fish species.

There’s a dedicated section on coral reefs, but that, too, in and of itself kind of reiterates my point: They could have done a whole mag about just that. I’m sure kids would have fun learning about different coral types and getting a buildable sea anemone as an extra…

As written in the previews reviews, I have no issues with the comic’s graphical style, it just lacks in substance and feels out of place. That also goes for the various puzzles, quizzes, coloring page and other activities, which feel too much like filler where more interesting editorial pages could have been instead.

The poster is more or less just a shameless advertisement for the expensive Ocean Exploration Ship (60266) set, which isn’t even available anymore. This feels like just another pointless exercise by the editors “just because they can” and doesn’t even make sense as a marketing gag.

The extra is a small submarine. Well, at least that’s what it’s supposed to be, but it mostly looks like a barrel. Of course the biggest issue is using a flat dish instead of a proper bubble canopy, but if you still have it floating around, you could try the one from the alien UFO a few issues ago at least or another 4 x 4 dome piece from your collection. It would also have been wonderful if the mid section would have been built from two of these cylinder pieces instead of just a turntable brick. It would have extended the length and made it look less stubby. Then again, though, I guess LEGO producing pieces in a new color just for a magazine freebie is too much to hope for…

Unfortunately this is just another rather mediocre issue and things just aren’t looking well for this magazine. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the year they announce the cancellation of the whole shebang due to insufficient sales. Cause and effect, you know…

Axolotl Fun – LEGO Minecraft, The Guardian Battle (21180)

As I’ve said a number of times here on this blog I’m totally not into Minecraft – I know that it exists, I get what the appeal may be and I acknowledge that millions of people play it, but personally I never got hooked. That is pretty much the same in the LEGO world, though as I mentioned in my blurb on the recently launched LEGO Minecraft comic magazine, I’m always keeping an eye out for interesting parts from that range. That’s how I ended up buying The Guardian Battle (21180), after all, so let’s see what it offers.

Contents and Pricing

If you have been following these things more closely than I do and for much longer, then certainly the set will feel familiar to you. The building is sort of a spliced out segment from the original The Ocean Monument (21136) released in 2017, representing a gate or just some random ruin section, embedded in a bit of reef. Wiser minds more steeped in the lore will actually know what it is supposed to represent. The puffer fish on the other hand are an almost 1 : 1  recreation of the ones in the original set. The real difference is the minifigure, defined as a diver, and the little guys that come with it, so this could indeed be a scenario where the original temple long has been destroyed and only pieces of it are still there decades or centuries later.

The set itself retails for 22 Euro and having literally bought it three days after its January 1st release, I did not get any discounts. If you do your math and take into account the usual 20 to 30 percent discounts this will get after a while you’ll arrive at around 15 Euro. That’s okay for a 255 pieces set, but regardless you have to keep in mind that you are paying a for a few standard bricks and lots of small elements. On the other hand that’s certainly much more affordable than the 120 Euro ocean monument and even people who have this older set may consider getting this one to have some extra stuff.

Minifigures and Animals

The single most important reason why we are even here reviewing the set are the Axolotls. I just couldn’t help myself from thinking “Oh, how cute!” when I first saw a picture of them. As far as I understand, they have special magical or healing powers in the game, so it seems one would take care to not lose them or gather as many of them as you can. Two of them are supposed to be attached to the minifigure as if they are swarming around him and protecting him, but I found that construction clunky and way to heavy, so the diver tips over backwards.

The little newts are a new mold, which can be attached onto a regular 1 x 2 plate from the underside. If they ever come out in more regular colors like Tan, they could make for nice decorative elements on buildings. LEGO have done that for some of the heads already to be used as lamp shades or stucco on facades of Modular Buildings (Police Station [10278] for instance), so I’m optimistic that this may happen one day. The heads are separately printed 1 x 1 plates and there’s a spare for each of them in the package.

The singular minifigure is a bit of a head-scratcher. Obviously there could and should have been two at least, even if they were the same, but I’m also concerned with how it looks. The Dark Bluish Grey and Olive Green just don’t pop enough on the Dark Orange body and at the same time the bright face looking through the round glass window stands out too much. It would likely have looked better with different colors. There’s also quality issues with the prints. No, for once not that they aren’t opaque enough but rather in a way the opposite. The paint here seems to have been a bit too pasty and the prints have notable ridges/ stamp marks. If I were collecting these figs, I’d likely request replacements.

The Temple

The temple fragments and reef parts are the simplest build you can imagine. It’s literally a case of “My 3-year-old could have come up with it!” with simple stacked bricks and plates with the only real bits of finesse being the vines/ plant stalks interwoven as extra supports. By that I don’t mean to imply it’s bad, just simple. It certainly could have been a bit more elaborate with perhaps some debris lying around or the reef parts being larger with more flowers and all that. The squid with only four very short “tentacles” perched on top of the archway is also odd, but not knowing better I have to accept that this is probably how it’s meant to be.

The Puffer Fish

The puffer fish are essentially simple cubes with a bunch of appendages and protrusions. The larger blue one is based on a 3 x 3 x 3 SNOT construction using the 1 x 2 clip plates as the basis. Regrettably LEGO did not recolor those clips in Dark Tan of Blue, as would have been desirable, so they stand out a bit despite their “neutral” grey. While the fish is pretty much a 1 : 1 re-creation of the one already used in the ocean monument, there is a small enhancement in that the tail uses the new 1 x 2 modified plates with a horizontal clip instead of the less directionally stable 1 x 1 version. More on that in the extra section on the notable pieces.

The smaller puffy is constructed around a 2 x 2 x 2 cube arrangement and for its spikes reverses the underlying principle with the hinge plates being on the body and the clips forming the appendages. Naturally, for any of it to look good you have to spend some time orienting the spikes on both models.

Piece Mania

For a set this small the selection of notable and new parts is amazing and of course this was part of the plan after having studied the digital PDF instructions. The orange clips aren’t new, but technically still sort of exclusive, as they have only been in the previous The Ocean Monument (21136) set and a Nexo Knights set. I’m sure MOC builders will appreciate their reappearance. The 1 x 2 plate with the horizontal clip is already appearing in many new sets released since last autumn and here you get two of them in Tan. Apparently at long last LEGO seem to have realized this gap in their parts portfolio since the 1 x 1 counterpart tends to slightly rotate on its single stud, even when butted against other plates around it. Having this available definitely should make some constructions more stable while at the same time reducing the number of elements needed. the fish tail is a good example for this, actually.

LEGO have long been extremely reluctant to produce certain items as transparent pieces. Their rationale always has been that it’s not good for models due to friction and tension working differently and thus those pieces being more prone to damage. That and of course things like cracks, fogging and gilding being even more apparent than on opaque parts. It seems they are finally coming around and easing up on this strict stance, so we now get the 2 x 2 jumper plate in Trans Dark Blue and a Trans Clear 1 x 2 vertical clip plate. the latter is part of that clunky block you are supposed to attach to the minifigure’s back to hold the Axolotls. Insignificant as it may seem, there is also now a Blue 1 x 1 round flower plate/ stud. So far they have been mostly produced in greens, yellows and pastel tones and I’ve forever wondered if we’re going to get a few more colors. This is a good start, but how about browns and Black for withered and charred flowers?

The element that will no doubt cause the biggest sigh of relief by many is the 2/3rds or two plates tall 1 x 1 brick, depending how you want to see it. This is not an essential element by any stretch of the imagination, but a) other manufacturers have had it since forever and b) it solves one big annoyance, that being having to stack 1 x 1 plates to get uneven heights. This can be particularly frustrating on areas where they need to be aligned perfectly to give the illusion of a solid surface, so this new element should indeed facilitate such builds considerably. In this set it’s included in Olive Green, but it can already be found in some others in Medium Nougat and Dark Orange. It will be pretty standard in no time and should be available in a wide range of colors then.

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Concluding Thoughts

This is a lovely little set and in a way I’m surprised myself how much I like it. There is soem decent value here and unlike many other Minecraft sets it has a certain elegance about it and doesn’t look too crude and blocky. The only real complaint would have be the skewed value. A second minifigure certainly would have provided a better balance as would have some extra bits and bobs on the reef. Overall one can’t complain, though.

Magnetic Dive – LEGO City Magazine, August 2021

It has become standard practice for the LEGO City magazines to go for a dive in the summer-ish editions and this year is not an exception. Yes, pretty much exactly after one year we are getting another underwater-centric issue featuring a diver.

The overall repetitive nature of the subject matter notwithstanding, the story of the comic is okay, though again perhaps a bit too wacky and overstuffed for its own good. I find it hard to imagine how kids are supposed to keep the story straight. You’re on a sunny beach one moment, then suddenly underwater and then there is a weird twist with a big horseshoe magnet. not my kettle of fish, no pun intended.

On the bright side, the oceanic scenes look great and I’m really waiting for someone at Blue Ocean and LEGO to see the light and use those for a poster one day.

Speaking of which… The posters are acceptable and in fact the one on the reverse page is probably even better than the one shown here. Outside that there’s not much to do bar the usual super simplistic puzzles and some promotional pages on sets and some minifigures’ “history”, but I guess you’re not buying this mag for intellectual content.

The diver is interesting in that it appears to be a completely new figure so far not yet contained in any set. Its design is similar to the older Deep Sea Explorer series, but with some notable differences, so I don’t quite know what to make of it. It would be funny if LEGO put out a figure before it was ever properly introduced in a full set. The rest isn’t really worth mentioning. It would have been much cooler if instead of the old and overused big crab they had included the hermit crab from last year’s collectible minifigure series at least.

As far as “summer editions” go, this one is okay, but of course nowhere near as impressive as the one with shark last year. On a general note it seems they should mix up the formula a bit. Clearly there’s enough summer and outdoor activities they can borrow from and from having a guy sunbathing at the beach to the highly desirable swimming innertube to an ice stand there would be so much to choose from. There’s even a good chance people would be perfectly content with the printed “can” or the wheelchair skater from the Skate Park (60290). You know, just something different at all…

Semi-Dry (?) Deep Dive – LEGO City Magazine, January 2021

With the year coming to a close, some of the LEGO magazines are already time-leaping into 2021 and the City one for January is the first of the bunch. Personally I’m not a friend of this “one month ahead” approach, but I suppose they plot this out so long in advance, it just inevitably happens that the relation to specific seasonal topics is lost and doesn’t even matter anymore.

This is also the case with this mag, which once more has to do with diving. Not the typical scuba diving during a vacation, but nonetheless with its depiction of fish and corals kind of evoking that feeling. The comic is quite nice with its bright and glowy colors and I’m still hoping that one day they will give us some nice posters derived from the artwork, not those boring and often technically poorly done 3D renderings.

The actual posters in this issue are just that, with the one featuring what appears to be an unused prototype design for the current underwater series being the better one, if only barely. Both posters suffer from this “Everything and the kitchen sink” approach and are stuffed to the brim with references to other LEGO sets. As much as I love them, I don’t particularly care to have every type of shark they have in their portfolio stuffed in and many kids won’t appreciate it, either.

Unusually, this edition comes with an actual info page (are they taking clues from LEGO Explorer?), but it’s very superficial and not bolstered by additional pages or quizzes building on it. There’s only a more generic questionnaire on the earlier pages. Other activities are also super thin with only a labyrinth puzzle and a color-based logic test.

The minifigure is a an interesting version of a diver with a semi-dry suit and a re-breather helmet, but as far as I understand those things it might not be entirely accurate, as it has a limit on how deep you can go with it. I guess it’s okay, though. The coral piece is a nice addition and one can never have enough of them, but at this point I wish they’d do it in other colors as well. It’s getting a bit boring in Dark Turquoise and Coral, you know. I could totally go for Tan or Dark Red to represent the base color of some corals.

Overall this is a yawn-inducingly boring issue that just doesn’t feel right. The topic itself is full of opportunities for lush, rich content, yet somehow they still managed to pick the wrong options and make underwater life look dull. Not a good start into the new year, for this series at least…

Summer Double

The ongoing Corona pandemic is still messing up the release dates of the various LEGO magazines and it’s a bit of a jumble. That’s why today I’m rolling two of them into one review, the slightly late Friends magazine that was supposed to come out a week earlier and the current City issue.

As has become a bit of a tradition, the summer editions of these magazines are themed around matching activities such as swimming and diving, and lo and behold – we do indeed get another diver. I hinted at this of course already in my last review. The minifigure is from the “old” city series, not this year’s collaboration effort with National Geographic, so except for the colors of the swimming fins and the air tank it matches with the one from last year.

The shark is a nice addition, but also just the classic mold that has been around for forever. Nothing wrong with that. They just could spice things up every now and then. I would love to have this in Sand Blue (Blue Shark) or in Dark Tan (Sand Shark/ Bull Shark) or maybe they could have added some flair with Black or White fin tips (Black Tip/ White Tip Reef Shark). So many ways! Well, maybe we get lucky next year! 😉

The comic is called “Day of the Tentacle”, which sounds very familiar if you have ever heard of the game of the same name. It deals – of course – with a giant squid and the action surrounding a photo hunt for it. Some of the panels are drawn scarily realistically, so if you (or your kids) are sensitive to that sort of thing don’t read it before bedtime! That could apply to other stuff as well, as for all intents and purposes the creatures of the deep just look weird sometimes and are not for everyone. I happen to like them, so this month’s City magazine is quite nice for me.

Elsewhere, in Heartlake City to be precise, things are a bit more harmless with a cutesy baby dolphin being rescued from an oh so evil shark. There’s really not much more to say about the comic than this tired trope. Most activities are picture-based with trying to find flaws or matching shapes, which i guess might be appropriate for five-year-old girls or something like that. There’s also a coloring image and this time you can assemble a larger panoramic poster from two double-page folds showing the girls’ faces.

The buildable parts come with a small raised lifeguard/ beach watcher seat and the Light Aqua baby dolphin found in last year’s sea animal rescue series, which unfortunately wasn’t continued this year and had to make way for the NatGeo collab around land-based animals as well just like in City. As usual nothing earth-shattering, but still nice to have a few extra parts for the collection.

Construction July

The months keep slogging on in these weird times and I’m still always surprised how quickly those weeks inbetween pass, yet here we go with another issue of the LEGO City magazine, this time for July.

The City theme has become kind of stale in the sense that they are walking on trodden paths all the time with the current subjects of the commercial sets being all too dominant, so I for one at least am glad that instead we every now and then get some diversity. Construction workers are a trope unto themselves, of course, but at least it’s not the umpteenth police officer.

This one comes with a ground compactor and some extra mobile fencing. Lovely stuff for an actual play scene. I also realized that until now I didn’t have a single of the 2 x 2 pillar-stile round bricks in Dark Bluish Grey in my collections. The wonders of incidental LEGO purchases! The name of the little guy is weird, though. Harl? SRSLY? Neither Harley nor Harlow or any derivations thereof are common names in German and it just doesn’t work for me. It certainly feels forced to squeeze the alliteration of the letter H in the name.

The rest of the magazine is pretty well-rounded. There’s lots of activities and while the puzzles, games and coloring image are not overly complex, they will keep your kids busy for at least an afternoon. I even like one of the posters. not that I would necessarily put it up on my wall, but as a graphics artist I have to say that its composition and execution are up to a certain standard that makes it perfectly acceptable. The comic doesn’t do much for me, but I guess that’s due to my general lack of interest and knowledge about soccer/ football.

The next issue will be a kind of dèja-vu, as it gives us another of the divers we already had in last year’s summer issue, just with variations on the accessories. It will also include a shark, but the old standard mold. Would have been nice to get the hammerhead from the just released new underwater series  instead… 😉

July Dive

It’s some of the hottest days of the year with a heatwave ravaging Europe and everyone is looking for ways to cool their heads. Naturally amongst those could be taking a dive in a lake or climbing up mountain glaciers, so it seems fitting that the LEGO City magazine this month caters for this in a way.

The icy cold is taken care of by a promotional comic marketing the Snow Groomer (60222) set and the watery parts are brought home with equally matching comics and of course the included minifigure and buildable pieces.

The latter are a bit lackluster with the figure featuring only the simplest of prints and the parts consisting of small pieces. I’m not saying that a Dark Tan cropped corner plate and a Reddish Brown 1 x 1 hollow round stud (as found e.g. in current Harry Potter sets) can’t be useful, but once again the limited selection furthers the impression that LEGO and Blue Ocean are trying to cut corners to keep the cost as low as possible. At that rate, one day you’ll be glad if you get a single 4 x 1 brick… They could at least have done the crab in a different color to provide a better incentive.

The rest of the mag is the usual mix, though incomprehensibly to me they have reverted to those awful CG-based posters instead of the more attractive hand-drawn ones. I like that they include more puzzles and more challenging ones at that lately, though. Keeps the kids busy for longer and provides at least a bit of a challenge for the grown-ups as well…