From what it looks like, this is going to be the last day of the heat wave that has been making my life miserable those last three weeks, so it’s time to sit down and finally write this little review for the LEGO City Ocean Exploration Submarine (60264).
This is one of those “Maybe/ perhaps/ possibly some day” sets, that had me pondering a purchasing decision back and forth for quite a while. The reason is of course that that are some interesting things in this set, but I’ve never been greatly into City to begin with and, let me spell that out right away, the set overall looks somewhat bland despite being actually reasonably filled with stuff.
A major contributing factor for my hesitance was the price. We all know that LEGO has this weird piece count x 10 Cent logic and I can acknowledge that there are a few large pieces in here that may cost a tiny bit more to produce, but overall 30 Euro just didn’t feel right. It’s too mundane and ordinary to make me go “I’m going to accept a small surcharge for the coolness factor.”. So ultimately I once more waited for the price to drop below that magic 20 Euro threshold and only then jumped on to it.
The minifigures aren’t much to write home about. For a play-centric series like City they are okay, but have very little collector’s value. It’s not that they’re bad, just not in any way outstanding. The Sand Blue and Dark Red combo for the regular guys is pretty common and even the divers literally feel like what they appear – astronauts that took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up underwater. As they say, this is neither here nor there, as for a genuine diving expedition at the depths presented here they would have to be hard shell pressurized suits, not those semi-dry industrial diving suits.
Moving on, the reason for this becomes easily apparent: The species of Angler Fish depicted in this set typically live way beyond the 200 meter deep ranges any mainstream diving suit would withstand, hence you likely wouldn’t encounter them on a normal expedition, let alone a casual scuba dive. So basically the set gets this aspect completely wrong.
The fish itself is of course one of the main attractions of the set. I was surprised how large it actually is – almost the height of a minifigure. The overall proportions and anatomy are recognizable, but the lantern whip is kind of in the wrong place. It should be above the mouth/ on the forehead and point backward.
As much as I wanted the fish, I always had serious doubts about the coloration and those weren’t alleviated now that I have the set. I do get why they opted for a “glow in the dark” effect along with the Lime Green, but ultimately the result is to limited to really warrant that choice. Therefore it seems more conventional colors would have been better. Since this is dual molded, it may not have been possible to make it fully transparent (Trans Black) like many of the real deep sea fish are without exposing the mold edges, but I could have totally gone for Dark Bluish Grey with Trans Neon Orange or Trans Neon Green teeth, fins and eyes.
The cove/ cave/ grotto or whatever may be the correct term is just a run-off-the mill small rock build with nothing specific to it. It looks nice enough, but clearly could have benefited from some more love. Most disappointingly it would and should have been easy to include a pack of the mini fish and creatures introduced for the animal rescue Friends sets one year ago. This would have enlivened the whole scene, small as it may be and having this pack of extra in another color would just have been cool.
Another shortcoming that tickles the engineering half of my brain in all the wrong ways is the flimsy mechanism meant to pull the fish back and forth. It’s not so much that it exists at all, but seriously, just locking in the transparent liftarm with only a single plate? It just wobbles around and is more or less useless. If you hand this to your kids, I would recommend you just leave it off and let them hold the fish directly.
The bulk of the set, not in terms of the number of pieces, but overall volume, goes into the exploration submarine. The build captures the typical overall structure and appearance of these vehicles quite nicely – ballast tanks that could also double as skids to sit on the ocean floor, the actual pressure cell, the large float/ stabilization tank(s) on the top (filled with fluids so they don’t collapse under the exterior pressure), the omnidirectional propellers, the robotic manipulator arms, the large bubble window. They even included a small underwater sled for the drivers to hold on to. It’s just that it looks all way too perfect and smooth.
Ultimately that is the biggest failing of this set: everything looks so pristine like it has never actually been used. Now of course this is a play set for kids and considerations for simplicity, stability, ease of assembly and so on may take precedence, but it honestly shouldn’t have been too difficult to integrate some greebly stuff.
Those vehicles get repaired all the time and modified on the spot to optimize them for a given task, so they show some wear, have extra rails and ropes bolted on, may carry additional exterior air supplies, lighting rigs or specialized sensor buoys. There’s just so much they could have added. Even something simple like replacing one of the Yellow window frames with a Dark Orange one to indicate a replaced segment that simply wasn’t painted yet along with boarding up the window with an opaque insert might have added just that bit of interest and still would be perfectly safe.
The lack of details unfortunately also extends to the interior. The cockpit doesn’t even have a single printed panel, only the secondary radar operator has something to show for. Again, this is another case of where it would have been easy to add a few SNOT bricks or brackets and plug on some printed tiles at least.
On a more positive note, this set has one good thing going for it: It brings back the Yellow 1 x 6 x 2 arch, which until not so long ago was quite rare. I mentioned this in the review for the Winter Village Station (10259). So if you were ever keen on building just the yellow bus or for that matter a school bus or here in Germany an old-fashioned postal truck this set would be a good basis, even more so since it also includes the two large hood pieces and also two of the roof wedge pieces.
As should have become clear, I’m far from in love with this set. It is okay as a play set for your kids and I certainly got my value out of it from the parts, but at the end of the day this is a very sub-par set. The irony here is that it would be just fine if LEGO had concocted this as a 20 Euro set of their own, but it is unworthy of a NatGEO collaboration. It literally reeks of those cheap licensing deals where nobody cares beyond just slapping on the logo. Simply disappointing.
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