Lawnmower | Mylenium's Brick Corner

The weather has been much more regular this year with more rain making for a fresh, flowery spring and wouldn’t you know it, the grass is growing rapidly everywhere just as well. Everybody is dusting off their lawnmower tractors and since most of them can also be fitted with other utility attachments such as sweeper brushes this makes for an interesting story hook in the LEGO City magazine for July 2021.

This little twist gets another twist with the comic being based around some mysterious rainbow-colored mass, identified as ice, flooding the city and needing to be cleared out. Not only are people encouraged to eat as much as they can, but this also requires some technical assistance with the mentioned little tractor. Not the most credible story, but there you go.

The more interesting thing is the actual rainbow theme itself. With June also being (LGBTIQ+) pride month, this is either the weirdest cosmic coincidence in the universe or the boldest prank someone pulled on his editor in chief under his very nose. It’s of course not that relevant for the kids and one shouldn’t get carried away with too wild theories, but as a gay person myself I just had to giggle and had to mention it here.

The whole thing is repeated on the poster and I was half expecting the protagonist to wave a rainbow flag. On the bright side, they feature a wheelchair-bound character and inclusion and integration of special needs people is just as important a societal issue, so props for that. One would hope that things like that become more frequent in the LEGO world as some kind of “new normal”.

Unfortunately the little tractor makes for a rather lackluster buildable extra, as really nobody went out of their way here in a very obvious fashion. This is as basic as they come. The model is way too stubby, meaning too flat and too short and feels more like a DIY conversion of a small pushable lawnmower (such as they use them for those weird fun racing contests) than a genuine utility tractor for serious work.

If it wasn’t for the rainbow theme that really gave me some kick and put a broad grin on my face this would be an utterly forgettable issue. It really hasn’t anything extraordinary to offer and doesn’t even try to do something special. You know, they could have thrown in a bunch or random 1 x 2 plates in all those rainbow colors or even as transparent versions for the tractor to clean up at least. You’re really not missing anything if you decide to skip over this issue…

It only seems like yesterday, but February is a short month, after all and with the LEGO City magazine now being published every month, here we are again already talking about the April issue.

Lawnmowing season isn’t in effect yet since it’s still too early for that here, but as I wrote last month, I was looking forward to this due to the little tractor being included. Of course you shouldn’t expect something marvelous – it’s by no accounts as fully formed as it possibly could have been and you can see where corners were cut with the bulk of the value being in the wheels and undercarriage parts. I for one wish they had at least included some bricks and curved slopes to form the typical snout.

The magazine itself is built around a football/ soccer theme with the comics and games taking a play at this, but for me that’s a complete miss. I simply don’t care much for this particular sport. I guess it’s okay, though, as clearly at least here in Europe, it’s the most popular pastime of many people and they have clubs even for toddlers. I suppose this shows how weird I am. *giggle* Anyway, I’m sure the target demographic gets its value out of it…