In a one-horse open Sleigh… – LEGO Santa’s Sleigh (40499)

…or a four-reindeer open sleigh, rather. Yupp, it’s that time of year again where we need to talk about Christmas and prepare for it. Personally I’ve never been much into seasonal decorating and my flat is too small to go all in on it, anyway, but my mom certainly loves to dig out all her precious wood-carved figures, reflective baubles, lights, nutcrackers and all that. From time to time, though, even I can’t resist buying that super-cute polar bear or snowman and ever since taking up LEGO as a hobby it also sometimes is nice to combine these things and have something to build with a seasonal spirit. Santa’s Sleigh (40499) is exactly that.

Pricing and Contents

The main reason I even got this set was that it appealed more to me than this year’s official Christmas village set the Santa’s Visit (10293) house. It’s not bad at all, just a bit too ordinary for my taste and I may rather pick it up next year with a bit of discount once it becomes available more widely just like I did with the Winter Village Station (10259). Of course there will be lots of people who in contrast to myself have less restricted funds and they will simply buy both sets (or even multiple boxes of each) and eat their heart out going crazy with this. Sleighs with eight reindeer are an easy modification and I’ve also already seen MOCs/ MODs merging two of the houses into a bigger one.

The sleigh set itself comes with “only” 343 pieces and costs 36.99 Euro officially. Since it is exclusive to LEGO stores (or their online shop, respectively) there’s no real debate about discounts or any of that. Either you want it and pay or you don’t. However, I’ve observed that people ask crazy prices way above that on Bricklink or marketplaces like Facebook groups and I would warn against that. Unless you really, really have no other option, try to pick it up at your regional LEGO retail store. Even if it may frequently be sold out online, those physical stores often have sufficient supply.

As for the general pricing considerations you in particular have to keep in mind that this comes with four large-ish animals made from two different materials. On their Bricks & Pieces page LEGO themselves are asking 5.85 Euro per reindeer currently. Even if the manufacturing cost may be more like 2 Euro, those four animals still could represent one-third of the overall value of all elements. This makes their inclusion a good value, even more so once you consider that some people have spent a small fortune on buying extra reindeer when last year it was first included in the Elf Club House (10275). I couldn’t help but gloat the tiniest bit about this perhaps not being the best investment they ever made…

The rest of the set is okay, but just normal stuff you could scrape together from other sets with one exception – the curved hinge panel used in the front of the carriage is an exclusive item and has been recolored Red for the first time. Other than that I was particularly disappointed that not more effort was spent on including some unique gift items, but more on that further down.

So is the price a good deal, after all? That’s a definite “Maybe?!” At the end of the day, despite the points I raised, this feels more like it should have cost around 30 Euro. At the same time the price isn’t so much out of whack it would be ridiculous and considering that you always pay a premium on these store exclusives, it’s really not that bad.

Minifigure and Extras

As you would imagine from a set called Santa’s Sleigh the old man himself is included. There have been several versions of him over the years, of course, but this is actually the first time he got real black boots thanks to the legs being dual molded. The other interesting fact is that they opted for a very old face print from 2013, but it’s surprisingly fitting. There’s a printed tile with a “Nice List” and if you try hard enough you can read the names, but overall this feels a bit lackluster. The fake 3D paper scroll effect just doesn’t work that well and a more conventional tabular list might have been more appealing. That or a custom part for the scroll…

As mentioned earlier, the presents leave a few things to be desired as well. there’s a batch of buildable packets, but for instance there’s not a single round one or for that matter an “original” one using a new part that has come out in the last two years. A repurposed Toad cap from the Super Mario series with a custom bow print on it could have been amazing. On that note, they didn’t even include any of the old 2 x 2 tiles/ inverted with such prints, which really is a bit lame

The minifigure accessory based gifts don’t fare much better as the clearly are just pieced together from existing overflow stock. I could so go for a Dark Red guitar or some blue skis with some snowflakes printed on. Even the teddy bear could have benefited from a new design or color combination. Point in case: To me it’s those little details that breathe the love and while this set sells like hot cakes, anyway, would have made it even more desirable.

The Sleigh

The model is built in the order I present it here, meaning you indeed build the carriage first and then attach the reindeer and their bridles to the finished main vehicle. That’s a welcome deviation from many other sets, where you are asked to assemble minifigures and accessories first and then they float around while you’re dealing with the main item.

The pieces for the sleigh are distributed across two bags, making for two main build segments, respectively. There’s no specific exotic pattern here. You really build from the bottom up, beginning with the plates at the base and then work your way to the top. Most of the curved elements and gold decorations are in the second bag while the first step really focuses on building a solid chassis and box. A few things are a bit finicky since they are built “with air”, i.e. with open areas underneath and studs only left and right. This can make placing the plates and bricks that bridge those areas a bit of an exercise when things are not aligned 100 percent, but it’s nothing you couldn’t manage.

The stowage area consists of an open cargo bed in the top and a slide-in drawer trunk, the latter of which is perfectly flush in its closed position and thus hidden pretty well. not much actual space in it, though, and the carrot and pretzel you’re supposed to put in there are pretty much it or else the drawer can get blocked.

The upper deck has a few extra hollows due to using a few panels and that lofty building style I already mentioned. There’s no real technical reason for it and they could just as well have used regular bricks, so it’s merely a measure to reduce parts count and cost. I find that it doesn’t necessarily help since stuff can get jammed and lost in these crevices when you fill up the cargo area with the gift. The same goes for the floor not being tiled over. Getting a ski stick that’s stuck between two rows of studs out of there is fiddly if you don’t want to just turn over the entire sleigh.

Team Reindeer

As mentioned prominently already and as is visible in the images there are four reindeer. All of them are identical, so if you were hoping for a red-nosed Rudolph those hopes are crushed. It would have been a bit too tacky and obvious, anyway, at least for my taste. The downside to that is of course that everything looks even more static, but developing different prints or even including differently colored creatures would no doubt have been unrealistic and very cost-prohibitive. Therefore the most viable option to add some interest might be to modify and accessorize the “saddle” area and the tow bars like substituting the plain red elements for Dark Red and Dark Green ones and adding a few Pearl Gold 1 x 1 here and there. If you have some spare reindeer you could also try an asymmetrical formation or even without that quite generally re-rigging the tow setup.

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Concluding Thoughts

It’s not particularly excitement-inducing to say something is solid, but this set really is in that category. It does a lot of things right and while certainly several things could have been improved or done differently, none of those little things are annoying or make you feel that something is really missing. It would just have been nice if LEGO had stepped up their plate and put a more love in some of the details to make it something truly outstanding.

If you’re feeling even a tiny bit festive or want to get in the mood I would recommend you try this set. It makes for a relaxing evening build and unlike some other Christmas stuff that LEGO has churned out this one doesn’t look too kitschy and will integrate well with more conventional seasonal decorations. The only real showstopper could be that by the time you read this it will already be very hard to find.

2020 – A Space Tragedy – LEGO Star Wars, Nebulon-B Frigate (77904)

Today we are going to have a look at a set that most of us actually never will get their hands on as a real, packaged set in a nice printed box. This is of course due to the specifics how the LEGO Star Wars Nebulon-B Frigate (77904) came into existence and the circumstances surrounding its limited availability. So without further ado, let’s have a look at what brought us here.

The Haves and the Have-Nots

When it comes to this set there is a huge divide between those that were lucky enough to get an original package, those who didn’t and the large rest of the community, whose only option is to rebrick it from scratch. I belong to the latter, pretty obviously, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter, regardless.

Originally intended as an exclusive only sold on-site at what was supposed to be this year’s San Diego Comic Con, inevitably there were ever only going to be limited numbers of this set out there. This has been the case with other sets in the past years as well, and while it always has rubbed me the wrong way not having access to them, I was mostly fine with that, given that they were small sets that would, though fun to rebrick, not necessarily be something I would go crazy about. that and of course that without the equally exclusive minifigures just rebuilding them would not have the same value. I may not like it, but I do get the mechanics of a “collectors” market, if you get my meaning. However, with the Nebulon-B Frigate things were a bit different and perhaps that why things went sour so quickly when due to the Corona pandemic things changed.

With Comic Con being cancelled, but the sets already produced (due to the long-ish lead-in times required for manufacturing and logistics), LEGO had to look for a different way of distribution and wouldn’t you know it – sadly all too predictably they did so in the most stupid and moronic fashion possible. They only distributed it through their own web shop and Amazon – both times only in the US, apparently. So far, so good. However, what then aggravated many American fans even was the way it was handled: There were no clear dates of availability announced, so people never knew if and when they could actually order their copy, yet somehow scalpers managed to order sets in bulk off Amazon long before. Similar things happened on the LEGO online store, where the set appeared out of nowhere for one day and was quickly sold out.

See where this is going? Yes, many fans ended up empty-handed and even YouTubers like Jangbricks rightfully criticized how this was handled, as even he struggled to get a box for his reviews. As a result, this ended up being a situation of those who have an d those who haven’t and everyone was jealous of their neighbor who was lucky enough to snatch a package. This situation could probably not have been entirely avoided, given what the product was originally intended for, but it certainly could have been mitigated with better planning and communication, leaving a lot more potential buyers a whole lot less frustrated. In fact one wonders why LEGO themselves didn’t deal with this better, given that it caused quite a shitstorm of bad PR for them.

To rebrick or not to rebrick, that is the question!

Things being what they are, most would-be customers that might have bought the set were faced with the question of either buying it for a whole lot of money from them scalpers or rebricking it from scratch using their own parts. This is usually a tough decision, as rebricking a set can be many times more costly than the original package. This in particular happens when a set contains specific minifigures, rare parts or rare color variants of a piece and you have to scrape things together from multiple sources, including expensive additional purchases from Bricklink and similar sites.

However, fret not! Surprisingly, rebricking this set is quite affordable. German site Stonewars.de did the math using LEGO‘s official Bricks & Pieces service and arrived at a total cost of around 55 Euro. This may change a bit depending on where you live and what exchange rates are for your own country’s currency, but all things considered this is not bad and a far cry from the insane amounts of money I feared this would cost. This is perfectly manageable even on a limited budget and even I might have considered it, despite my reluctance to ever even rebrick official sets or build other people’s MOCs. Also the set does not contain any minifigure at all, so you don’t have to go out there and buy expensive old figures just to kit-bash/ fig-barf together that Rebel officer that might have been included.

However, what really won me over despite my usual reluctance to rebrick official sets or build other people’s MOCs, is the fact that I knew that I had a considerable number of pieces already in my repository, including some more elusive ones like e.g. the new binoculars/ droid head and the single (!) grey skeleton foot I had. Funny enough, after those last few years my buying weird Friends sets and LEGO magazines seems to have paid off at least a little. Knowing that I could get about  70 percent of the way soothed my nerves and made the whole operation viable.

Going through my boxes and picking out sometimes tiny parts was still a pain in the butt, though. It costs a lot of time to sort this stuff into their little partitions and then just as long to fish them out using tweezers when they hide in that corner you can’t get your fingers in. In addition I still had to order some elements, most notably a bunch of those brackets in Dark Bluish Gray. I have tons of them in other colors, but LEGO only did the darker grey version in some sets last year, none of which I had bought. I also threw in some other items such as a bunch of studs and the Fez cones for the engine exhausts (had a few from the Hidden Side Ghost Firetruck 3000 [70436], apparently, but not enough), but nothing too dramatic.

For other items I decided right out of the gate to substitute colors or not bother about any of that, because they either wouldn’t be visible at all or the different colors would not affect the overall appearance. I did so after carefully studying the digital instructions and in fact later during the build realized that I could have taken this even further. For instance many of the Dark Tan 1 x 2 plates are merely used as fill elements underneath other pieces and you can basically use any color your have at hand. You only need to go with the original suggestion for a handful of locations where they are genuinely visible and help to convey that rusty, slightly rugged look.

Some elements I would have liked to replace, but things didn’t coalesce in a favorable way, meaning mostly I would have had to waste another 10 Euro on shipping costs on buying a few tiny pieces from another Bricklink seller, so I didn’t. One such piece are the many 1 x 1 teeth elements used to hint at streamlined coverings, hatches and protrusions. I used the Pearl Silver ones I had in many places instead of the Light Bluish Grey version, the latter of which – you guessed it – is kind of rare and thus not readily available in sufficient quantities with every of my favorite parts dealers. I might fix this at a later point, though.

The Model

After my long-winded ponderings let’s have a look at the actual model for a change. What can I say? I think it’s beautiful in every way and manages to hit the right balance between looking like an adequate representation of the original, capturing the scale and proportions and yet still recognizably looking like a LEGO model. Hard to say what exactly it is, but it simply looks very elegant with its long center beam section and the greebly surface.

Some of the elegance of course has to do with color choices. The original, while not exactly flamboyant and mostly a flat grey, has a few colorful areas, but the model designers instead opted to give it a classic “paper” look and pretty much keep everything in Light Bluish Grey, with a few Dark Bluish Grey and Dark Tan highlights peeking out here and there. This no doubt has to do with a) LEGO not having all the correct colors in their portfolio, anyway and b) the so-called “scale effect” where colors despite technically being exact matches look different on differently sized objects. More to the point it seems they realized that going with those greens, yellows and browns sprinkled in that you can find on the original movie models things would have gotten too noisy and distracting. I’m also pretty sure they even tried this out on their prototypes and it looked kind of wrong.

With that in mind, it’s clear that the appearance is defined by the surface structure much more than actual colors and to that effect they essentially throw every small part (and the kitchen sink) into the ring. There’s a ton of 1 x 1 studs and modified plates, similar 1 x 2 plates and tiles, including the ingot piece as well as some of the weirder stuff I already mentioned. Additionally, there is a considerable number of tiles, slopes and jumper plates and some of them have only come out in the last two years, so no matter how you skin it, this model couldn’t even have been done in this way, shape and form until recently. I guess one could say they had all the pieces in place (no pun intended) just at the right time.

The model itself is around 30 cm long and about 20 cm tall. In terms of scale it fits what in the model ship building sphere would be the 1/350th or 1/400th scales, meaning every detail would be pretty tiny and thus simplifications and creating the illusion of geometry with light and shadow are common techniques. Thankfully this set does not have any prints or special stickers to take this even further, or else rebricking it would have been even more of a pain. Could have been cool, though, to have some numbers, badges and squadron insignia as well as perhaps some tiny dots for the windows on some elements.

Despite the model looking relatively straightforward, building it isn’t always that simple. The most obvious limitation is that you are often dealing with very long, but also very thin parts just one stud wide. This means that handling is delicate and things are not always as stable as you would like. This is in particular the case with the forward section, which uses a lot of 1 x 1 bricks with studs on the sides that are stacked into small towers and then only stabilize once you add the plates on the sides. It’s not a big deal, given that this is a display model and some fragility has to be expected, but some attention and care is required. I had some of these bits fall off a number of times.

With regards to the many smaller elements it pays off if you spend a little time orienting the pieces so they have uniform and straight gaps and run in parallel or perpendicular to the edges and surface they are aligned to. I’m sure I still missed quite a few, but it really helps or else your model can look pretty crooked. On the other hand there some limits to this with many elements literally only hanging on on stud and thus remaining movable later. I also was particularly irked by the slope pieces used to shape the upper deck of the rear section not fitting as close together as I would have liked. That’s one of the areas I might have constructed differently if this were my own MOC. Of course that’s always easy to say and other options like using for instance this brick instead may have other disadvantages. you never know until you try, obviously.

There are a few other slightly annoying things like the frontmost upper antennae always falling off easily due to the binoculars piece they are plugged into not even having a full depth anti stud to connect to the jumper plate that holds it, but overall everything is where it needs to be and you’d be hard-pressed to find alternate solutions to some design problems.

The Stand

As you already may have noticed, I constructed a slightly different stand for my model than the one proposed in the original instructions. This came about for a number of reasons. For one I didn’t have the curved slopes they used in their version just as I didn’t have a sticker or a printed tile to use for the plaque. Therefore the forward protrusion with the hinge mounts would be redundant.

Second I also think the original design is simply slightly too large for what is necessary plus that weird construction at the top with the curved slope standing out so much just looks ugly to my eyes. I’m not claiming my solution is the ultimate achievement, but it feels better to me. You can of course come up with a million other designs just as well as long as you keep the general positioning and structure intact. The model is very front-heavy and thus in order to balance things out the stand’s pivot also has to be very close to the front section.

At the same time you don’t need a super large pedestal as long as it has enough surface area and is reasonably heavy so the model doesn’t tip over because the center of gravity is too high. I would even wager you could construct something pretty small from a bunch of 6 x 6 plates and Macaroni round pieces, if you add some fishing lead inside. Well, whatever floats your boat will do in a pinch.

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Concluding Thoughts: Everything wrong with LEGO Star Wars

In my headline I called this a tragedy and sadly it is – just not in the way you may think at first. The point here is that this set on so many levels illustrates what is wrong with LEGO Star Wars by getting so much right. It’s a well thought-out model that looks amazing, is reasonably enjoyable to build and at 40 Euro is very reasonably priced. Most importantly it brings something entirely fresh to the whole line by representing a vessel that previously hadn’t officially been done and to boot, it does so in a very collectible scale. This would have sold like crazy as a regular retail set!

Now compare that to the umpteenth X-Wing or TIE Fighter, half-baked “Battle Packs” models of iconic scenes and locales that are barely recognizable because they have been reduced to a mere shadow of the original. Need I go on? To me, the Nebulon-B Frigate is a perfect example of how things could/ should be vs. the crappy reality of what we actually get. The model shows that it’s absolutely not the fault of the designers – if they can come up with this, they sure could crank out a whole armada of vessels in this scale – but rather that the decision making further up the chain is to blame, be that LEGO or Disney/ Lucasfilm.

With all that in mind one would hope LEGO have learned some lessons from this little debacle and are working hard on it. Re-issuing this set as a regular one would be a start and I would even buy it, despite already having rebricked it and then from there they could move on to all those other big crafts like alternate Nebulon variants such as the Y-shaped C version or the Empire‘s armored one, a Tantive, a Hammerhead and yes, of course all the Star Destroyers you could want.

I certainly wouldn’t mind having a line-up of approximately equally sized models on the shelf in the 30 cm range even if it means different actual scale, not dissimilar to what Eaglemoss did with their collectible Star Trek vessels. Am I hoping for too much?

The Not-AAT – LEGO Star Wars, Armored Assault Tank [AAT] (75283)

My love-hate relationship with LEGO Star Wars is really getting weirder with every set I buy as I’m realizing that despite new stuff being added e.g. based on the The Mandalorian series I realize I care less and less. I totally blame this on the sets becoming less attractive in terms of construction and how they ultimately look while prices reaching crazy levels. That is at least in the lower price tiers I move around.

The Armored Assault Tank [AAT] (75283) is one such case, unfortunately. The version, or more specifically color variant in this set, can be briefly seen in the Revenge of the Sith Kashyyyk attack sequence in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment and I’m pretty sure it also appears in The Clone Wars and other later materials based on the prequels. The more regular ocre-/ tan-colored version is of course more prominent, be that the final battle in The Phantom Menace or other such occasions. However, despite all this there is surprisingly little information on the vehicle, except for one thing that is certain:

AAT mini Mk. IV e or what?

The elephant in the room is of course that this has nothing to do with a “real” AAT as actually present in the movies and series – not by any stretch of the imagination. If at all, this would qualify as a heavily redesigned next version, a smaller side version or simply a newly constructed vehicle based on the same principles. The irony here is that in fact I quite like it to some degree, as the larger turret and less ellipsoid overall appearance give it its own unique and distinct look, but it just bears zero resemblance to the original vehicles. It might still have looked cool next to its bigger brothers, though.

The Minifigures

One of the reasons I got over myself and bought the set are – drumroll – for this rare occasion the minifigures. As you know from other posts I don’t proactively collect them, but if I stumble upon one that I like and may want to use later, I keep them around.

Of course the main appeal here is Ahsoka. she had been done a couple of times in the past, but I feel that this is the first time ever her specific appearance with in particular her striped hood has been captured correctly. Can’t help it, but the figure just is extremely nice. Predictably, its popularity can only grow now that the character has appeared in The Mandalorian and a dedicated Ahsoka series has been announced for Disney+ as well. I’m pretty sure we’ll see lots of different versions from here on, but this is a good basis, no matter what.

In addition to Ahsoka herself we also get her personal bodyguard/ companion clone trooper for the first time, making this even more desirable. I’ve seen people on Facebook buying the set just for that and prices on Bricklink are also pretty crazy already. Finally there are two more Kashyyk droids, which are also kind of rare and fetch a good price. Earlier this year I sold some to someone intent on building a diorama with entire squadrons of them and apparently he had swept clean a lot of the market from the more affordable resellers already. So for all intents and purposes, it could be pretty easy to re-finance the whole set if you find people interested in the figures that you could sell them to.

Parts Cornucopia

In my world figures are nice, but parts that expand my portfolio are better, so let’s have a look at that as well. As you may guess from the sub-headline, the set doesn’t fare badly in this department. Many of the pieces, while not necessarily exclusive to this set, are relatively rare and either appear for the first time at all, have not been available in a long time or only in a handful of sets or are included in more significant numbers than previously in other sets. The individual parts are:

• Bracket 1 x 1 in Dark Blue
• Hinge Plate in Dark Blue
• Arch 6 x 3 in Dark Blue, only used in Rex’s Rexplorer (70835) from The LEGO® Movie 2 before)
• Plate Round 1 x 2 in Dark Blue, previously only part of the Programmer minifigure from the Collectible Minifigure Series 19
• Wedge Slope 4 x 4 in Light Bluish Grey, which LEGO haven’t used in over ten years in this color
• Brick Round 6 x 6 in Dark Blue, which is a new color and should become just as popular as its Dark Green counterpart for Hotel entrance canopies and similar

As always the point for me is to get as many of those pieces in one place instead of having to scrape them together from Bricklink or other sources at even greater cost and in that regard this set delivers. For me even more so since it has a few other parts that I didn’t have before like the curved wedges in Light Bluish Grey or the Dark Blue dishes. It’s all good stuff to have around just in case you may need it one day and you can’t go wrong with it.

The Price is still wrong

In light of the previous two chapters one might think that this is good value for money, but sadly it is not. For a bunch of pieces that essentially would fit into the volume of a slightly enlarged Rubik’s Cube, meaning a very small model that without its protruding gun barrels is 15 cm long, 15 cm wide and 15 cm tall, LEGO want you to pony up 40 Euro. That’s a big “No, Sir!” on my part and I can only once more conclude that they are pulling the prices for their sets out of their asses or throwing the dice in a drinking game. It’s just not worth that and seems ridiculous.

So once more I was biding my time until the set was closer to what I wanted it to be. At around 27 Euro I took the plunge, though I would have preferred for it to drop below the 25 Euro threshold. However, in the craziness that the year 2020 that seemed unlikely, given that there are genuine supply problems with LEGO vs. an extraordinarily high demand and so I didn’t put it off too long in order to not lose the advantage. Still, let me make it clear that I think that 25 Euro is actually the “real” price I would like to see this being sold for. Aside from a few larger parts and the minifigures there’s just not enough volume to justify more.

Deceitful Appearances

The reason why the model lacks volume and by extension thus can never be even close to an accurate representation of the real thing quickly becomes apparent when you swivel around it and view it from different angles. What looks okay from the front such as the big curved armored hull quickly falls apart when viewed from its rear side. It lacks all the transitional areas and worst of all exposes the raw underlying construction. This continues throughout the mid section of the turret, which similarly only looks good from the front, but when viewed from behind just looks like they ran out of pieces to cover it up.

Worse, still, this section is not accessible from the rear because due to the small size of the model they had to use the space for a double-width window frame that acts as the support for the top section.

As hinted earlier, the turret is way to big, most notably simply too wide. However, you have to give the designers some props for at least trying. The problem here is that on the real thing this is a very complicated shape with complex curvatures situated very far aft on the vehicle. In fact from a “real” military standpoint this probably would not make a lick of sense on an actual tank with it tipping over every time the turret is rotated off-center or from the recoil when it fires a charge. It’s one of those fictional things that would easily be defeated by actual physics.

Anyway, for all intents and purposes the turret should not be any wider than the extended handle it’s situated on and I feel that this is a typical case where the LEGO side of things got too much in the way. I think they were too bent on making the cannon movable and then ran into trouble getting enough stability in there, so they had to make things bigger. See what happened here?

The gun can be elevated and swiveled around 180 degrees, but as I mentioned that probably isn’t realistic to begin with and in the movies I haven’t seen the tanks fire anything but directly forward. It’s a nice play feature for the kids at least, but really not much more than that. On some level that also extends to “those other guns”, which are actually range finders and small lasers for self defense. they look rather crude on the model and the ugly black color doesn’t help. At least I’m glad they didn’t eliminate all antennas because, as you know, all the droids are remotely connected to their control ships in orbit. The silver rapier sticks out a bit too much, though.

Adding to the play value is the ability to at least place the two droids that come with the set in the interior. Not in the technically correct positions, but let’s be grateful for small things.

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Concluding Thoughts

Unfortunately this set fits the recent pattern of overpriced Star Wars sets whose value is primarily driven by the minifigures included while the models at best are adequate, but not great renditions of the originals they represent. This scheme becomes even more devious when figures are scattered across different sets. That is thankfully not the case here at least with no other specific The Clone Wars sets being available and requiring you to take out the purse just to get some company for Ahsoka, but this doesn’t make the situation any less unfulfilling.

As I already wrote, the tank itself is just fine. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the Star Wars universe and even on it’s strict LEGO merits merely comes across as an uninspired run-off-the-mill job more than anything the designers put much effort in. It’s what in the media and graphics design industry we would call an “intern job” hacked together on a lazy afternoon, or in this case a recycled design from a few years ago that wasn’t correct then and isn’t correct now despite minor modifications and updates thanks to new parts.

The irony here is of course that I can neither advise pro or against the set, as it has its merits. Some will love the minifigs, others like me may see this as a good chance to rake in some interesting pieces and all the combinations inbetween. The only thing you really need to wipe from you mind is that the model has anything to do with a Star Wars AAT and in that regard it’s a complete fail.

Jedi Fighter – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, December 2020

After the craziness of the last issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine – I’ve literally seen pictures on Facebook from people having bought twenty or more – we’re now back on more normal, more mundane territory again.

The main comic takes us back to Endor and portrays some hijinx that believably could have happened off-screen in The Return of the Jedi. I definitely prefer this type of story rather than some wildly crazy, concocted stories that don’t fit the story and lore as I know it. The second comic is just that and inevitably ties in with the extra that comes with the mag, Obi-Wan‘s Jedi Interceptor.

The model of said fighter is okay, but pretty unspectacular. That were of course true even if you bought a bigger set and an inherent strength or weakness with the slick, yet somewhat boring overall design. After all, it’s just a big barrel cockpit with some wings and huge flaps. Therefore for me the only real value in parts are the Dark Red ones. Not particularly rare, but it’s a nice color to have as it’s useful for many different applications.

A highlight this month are the posters, which satisfy my designer’s taste buds. They’re nice graphical designs and reasonably balanced with the only caveat being whether or not you could get over LEGO‘s version of The Child‘s all too alien-baby looking black eyes. I really wish they’d include those hazel-colored irises to make it look a little less terrifying.

Not much going on in the activities department this time around, though, with only some super simple games providing a bit of engagement. As it is, this issue enjoyable enough for a few minutes, but offers no longer-lasting distraction from the current misery around us.

Lucifer-ific!

It literally took forever – the LEGO Disney Princess issue no. 4 (July/ August) was originally previewed in the last edition for June 6th, but only came out this last Saturday, meaning 1.5 months later. Lucky enough I was on the road for a doctor’s appointment and was able to snatch up a copy without much delay this time.

I was rather keen on this issue for the buildable parts because of course Lucifer, the deceitful cat from the Cinderella animated movie. It has only been in two or three sets recently and those are ones from the 4+ range, thus most adults won’t buy them, and it’s therefore nice to get the figure this way. The other parts are useful, too, with in particular the white arched window and a matching arch on top standing out. That’s always nice to have for MOCs. Even the 1 x 4 roof brick in Dark Blue falls into that category. The small window corner also goes well together with the Cinderella Mini Castle (30554) polybag set as illustrated in the photo.

Lucifer himself makes an appearance in the illustrated readable story in the second half and his devilish cunning is captured so well, the pictures would make for a good poster. At least it put a broad grin on my face. The main comic on the other hand feels weird this time. It reminds me too much of those terrible LEGO Friends comics and on top of it it feels stylistically rather disjointed with different graphical elements. I get that they were trying something new, but the result doesn’t look attractive to me.

Speaking of which… the same could be said about the posters. The vertical one looks nice, but the second, horizontal one feels overstuffed and lacking in contrast, making it more difficult to recognize what it is even about.

 

Derived from the comic is a bit of crafting activity. As you can see there’s a rather colorful owl in there (which would actually be cool to have as a physical LEGO animal figure) and you can build a small deco version of it to pin on your wall or door. Unfortunately, and that’s a serious criticism, it’s once again not printed on thicker, more stable stock. So if you and your kids feel like building the little critter you may want to glue it on cardboard or alternatively scan it and print it on photo carton with your home printer.

Overall still a nice issue despite some shortcomings. If you have been paying attention you also already know what’s coming in the next edition. Yes, Belle is featured so prominently in the comic and the poster she will be included as a figure next time. The obvious question is, however, whether we will have to wait just as long as for this one. The current plan according to Blue Ocean‘s web site is to release at the end of September, but whether this date sticks is anyone’s guess…

Cinderella Blue(s)

The unpredictable nature of the LEGO Disney Princess magazine’s release cycle and distribution still rubs me the wrong way. I was genuinely surprised when Blue Ocean announced the new issue on their Facebook page as apparently no planned release date had been given in the previous edition. Since I wouldn’t hit the road this month and thus not come across one of the few newsstands in my area where the mag is sold, I ordered it from their online shop, adding a costly 2.10 Euro for postage on top of the 4.50 Euro price.

The third issue in this still very young series follows the same pattern as the other two that came before. The highlight for me is still the actual written story, which makes good reading for a second or third grade kid or as a bedtime story. Some simple puzzles round off the content along with some acceptable posters. The crafting tip for some ruffled paper flowers is a bit of a head-scratcher. The templates in the mag are just stars, but since they’re not printed on stronger stock they are pretty useless as the real patterns. You better create your own ones from cardboard for improved stability and durability.

The Cinderella mini doll is okay, though obviously my preference still lies with buildable parts such as will be included in the next issue again. I already found out via Blue Ocean‘s web site that it’s supposed to come out on June 6th and if that holds up I should be able to pick it up only a few days later when I have one of my doctor’s appointments…

Not so hyper-active, but still…

As the year quickly nears its end, I figured I better start summing up my activities that so far have slipped under the radar and not been mentioned here for reasons such as obeying deadlines, working out details behind the scenes and not prematurely publishing stuff. All of that is now out of the way and I can share what little activities I have done.

Of course my output pales in comparison to others. I have no issues admitting that. Too many other things going on like making myself unpopular with posting way too much on blogs and forums (not just LEGO-related), dealing with my health issues and way too many other hobbies/ interests. However, occasionally I find myself particularly enticed and highly motivated to get my lazy ass up when there is stuff to win, not least because when there is sets to be had that under regular circumstances would be hard for me to buy due to limited finances. My Ornithoraptor entry for the respective LEGO Ideas contest didn’t go anywhere, but I don’t give up that quickly, so let’s see how I fared elsewhere.

Early in the summer I participated in the Beyond the Brick merchandise design contest. Since they didn’t stipulate any specific rules of course this could be interpreted in a million ways and as someone who built plastic model planes in his youth and always admired the box art I thought I’d try to do something that might evoke a similar vibe with a “plane” zooming by a brick “mountain” peeking out of the clouds. I spent a few afternoons on this in Adobe Illustrator, but of course it’s merely a first draft. Looking at it now even I realize what’s wrong with it and definitely would approach it differently for a final design.

Oddly enough somehow people seem to think that everybody has time during summer and so quickly after that design challenge the publishers of the LEGO Star Wars magazine, Blue Ocean, which of course you are familiar with when reading this blog regularly, launched a celebratory competition to honor their 50th issue. The only requirement was to build your favorite Star Wars scene with the grand prize being an UCS Millenium Falcon (75192). That sounds cool on paper, but the result was a major kick in the balls, to be honest.

To say that the contest was an utter debacle would be putting it mildly. After pre-selecting ten entries user were supposed to rate the ultimate winner on Facebook and that caused an uproar of outrage. The reason why is pretty straightforward: The people in charge seemed too busy to keep up the pretense that their magazine would only be read by kids of a certain age and so they picked a bunch of builds that matched that demographic. I have no problem with that, but this was an open contest and by all means the best model should have won, regardless of age. Worse still, many users commenting reported from their own kids, nices, grand children etc. that they had seen way better builds from them.

The end of the story? After all the negative backlash nobody ever since  heard again of the contest. I’m sure they were planning on drumming this up big in the magazine itself as well as other channels, but it really turned into a PR disaster that I’m sure everyone just wants to forget this embarrassment. I’m not even sure if any of the group of ten actually ever were picked as a winner and received their prize. I can only hope they learned their lesson and next time come up with clearer rules or multiple tiers/ categories to avoid such a mess.

Finally, and to end this on a positive note, I did succeed in a contest and even made it to the number one spot with my “(E)Island Holiday”. That’s of course a bit of German/ English word play and would translate to “Ice- (Is-)land Holiday” in a very crude fashion. Again this was once more in the midst of the summer and there were no restrictions, so for me at least it was quite a challenge to even get it finished while struggling with the heat wave and sweating like an ox.

I didn’t particularly expect to win, but the idea of a toppled-over ice cone had been in my head for a while and this was the perfect opportunity to turn it into a model. Only after the first reactions began to praise it for it’s originality, I got a little nervous and began to hope for more. In the end it’s of course just another summer-y beach scene like so many other submissions, but I suppose that little twist makes all the difference. In any case, I’m glad it worked out…

 

Green Book Sexism

LEGO, we need to talk! Yes, I’m talking about that male-oriented marketing campaign on Facebook and Instagram that is causing quite a fracas here in Germany. Apparently it was a botched attempt at promoting a specific landing page on the LEGO.com website that already has existed for a while.

Now here’s the thing: I’m apparently a male and I like myself a bit of subtle, subversive, intellectual humor just as I like the occasional lewd, offensive, sexually infused joke when the situation just feels like it. However, referencing the Rough Terrain Crane (42082) and using phrases like “As complicated as women, just with instructions” and “4057 parts – that’s what we call well-endowed” is perhaps not really appropriate.

As a gay man I don’t even need to defend women by proxy even though this is apparently as misogynistic as it gets, but to a degree I’m taking it personal. A certain line has been overstepped here. I could accept those stereotypes (though they’d still be offensive) if LEGO was a home improvement store chain or sell shaving stuff, but clearly they are neither. Just the opposite – they usually go out of their way to present themselves as gender neutral toy company (though we could of course debate if that’s truly the case with series like Friends).

Aside from trivial things like kids possible getting to see the campaign and its distasteful bad jokes, it’s a marketing disaster for another reason: In times of financial struggle and dropping sales LEGO can’t possibly afford bad publicity. Now the old trope of “any publicity is good publicity” may apply, as without the uproar some people might not even have been aware of these things, but regardless, the damage is done.

Speaking of publicity – the LEGO world is abuzz with excitement about the latest Ideas set, the Pop-Up Book (21315), but I don’t quite feel like joining the chorus. Don’t get me wrong, I like the overall concept, but its execution in my view leaves a lot to be desired. Back then when the first news of this came out I made a remark on a forum or blog that it would all depend on how much “story” stuff comes with it for people to create their own little scenes and as far as that’s concerned, I think LEGO just got it wrong.

There’s only two tales – Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood – and while the scenes and minifigures look nice, I simply don’t consider it enough. It reminds me of the many overpriced Elves sets that mostly consist of simplistic, small medieval-looking tree houses that are just facades and then the rest of the set’s “value” is generated by the umpteenth big dragon in yet a different color and a ton of useless minifig accessories.

I feel it’s quite similar here – two-thirds of the parts go into the book/ box, and the rest seems like cheap dressing or an afterthought. If I had my way instead it would be the other way around. I might have settled for a simpler way to build the book and instead would have thrown in a huge “build your own story” bag with tons of parts. In fact I made a similar point already with the Creative Storybook (40291). They could just have re-used that idea. I could perfectly live without the pop-up mechanism.

Instead we now have two quite similar sets that both feel somehow incomplete and unfinished. In the end this could be an expensive proposition if you really plan on pimping this stuff as you might need to buy extra sets or do quite a bit of shopping for parts on Bricklink. I’m decidedly undecided whether I should even consider getting it eventually…

LEGO is car-wet-dreaming again

It looks like this year’s Technic offerings due in August are going to be as boring as the ones from last year, though presumably at least the Bugatti Chiron just confirmed via some inept “Let’s make it ominously obvious!” marketing video on Facebook will cause some car fetishists wet stains in their undies. I get it – the Porsche (42056) still sells like crazy and LEGO would be foolish to not follow-up with something similar, but to me it’s a boring and predictable cash grab. It only furthers my impression that their focus these days seems to be on expensive collectibles rather than truly playable sets. Of course in the wake of this news came some more discussions on the other new models, but that is a discussion for another time…