Another Deep Dive – LEGO Creator, Sunken Treasure Mission (31130)

As you well know from many of my posts I really have a soft spot for underwater creatures. The Deep Sea Creatures (31088) were one of my favorite sets back then – very affordable and well designed – and even compelled me to create my own octopus MOC. This year’s Dolphin and Turtle (31128) weren’t bad, either and in-between I’ve reviewed a number of submarines, a fish tank, you name it. Therefore it was an inevitable certainty that I would get the Sunken Treasure Mission (31130) one day as soon as I heard about it, which is the subject of this article.

Contents and Pricing

LEGO‘s logic when it comes to their in-store exclusives completely eludes me and on a rational level just doesn’t make any sense beyond reeling in casual shoppers passing by in a mall. However, even that is not really the case, given that these small sets aren’t even displayed in the shop window. Anybody who has a LEGO store near them knows this. Worse yet, often these packages are simply not available and sold out because they’re not stocked sufficiently. You know, it’s this odd situation where you can buy a 400 Euro Star Wars spaceship, but not simple stuff like this. It frustrated me massively back then with the Crocodile (31121) an it’s no different here. Yes, it’s one of those friggin’ exclusives they keep to themselves, at least here in Germany and only on the third trip to the store was I able to score a purchase because you couldn’t even order it online at the time.

With that in mind there is of course zero room for price discussions, as you don’t get any discounts. The question therefore become whether 30 Euro for 522 pieces is a good price and the answer is a definite “Maybe!?”. Personally I’m inclined to give this a pass for once because I love the subject matter so much, but more objectively it is perhaps still a bit overpriced. While the size and volume are there, my main peeve are the man, many 1 x 1, 1 x 2 and 2 x 2 elements this is mostly built from. The larger parts just don’t compensate the amount of small, finicky items. Therefore seeing this at 25 Euro would have been better and 20 Euro after discounts would then make this a fantastic offering.

That also might have encouraged me to buy two packages instead of just one despite some of the parts not being that interesting for my potential future custom builds. Also one of those weird things about LEGO‘s policies. It’s as if they don’t want you to buy more even if the combined revenue could offset any discounts. As it stands, I only got a single package, after all, as I didn’t see myself investing 60 or 90 Euro only to end up with a ton of wedges and bubble canopies that I rarely ever will use.

The Minifigures

The minifigures aren’t anything special with a standard skeleton and an operator for the submarine(s)/ diver. Initially I was under the impression the torso print would be new, but no, it has been used in a Stuntz set already. So LEGO just combined what they already had, anyway. However, there’s a small treat here in that the helmet is the first time that the revised Classic Space helmet is available in Dark Bluish Grey. I’m sure nostalgic fans have set their sights on it and you could fetch a good price for it as long as it is this rare.

The Octopus

The main model or rather set of models are based around the octopus.

The first of those three is the safe. It comes in a very classic Dark Green, a color traditionally associated with banking, communicating reliability and integrity. In fact so much that it has become sort of an insider joke in movies, including one of my childhood favorites the Danish Olsen Banden series. Anyway, it’s a very efficient small model that benefits from the 2 x 4 dual jumper plate introduced a while ago for a more compact appearance without an extra reinforcing plate on the top. The door is a new 2022 color for the 4 x 4 dish as oddly enough it has never before been done in Dark Green.

The submarine is a surprisingly realistic take on those deep sea exploration vehicles with this type typically being slaved to a long cable since it has limited buoyancy and storage capacity for fuel and ballast. It’s really a nice model in its own right and I genuinely did not expect it to be this good. The only thing I’m missing is perhaps some ropes and a net plus perhaps an emergency buoy in Coral.

The drive section makes use of the new steering wheel element to portray the protective cage around the propellers and again for the time being the Yellow variant is exclusive to this set.

The interior provides room in the aft section as well as the cockpit so you could even sneak in a second minifigure from your collection, e.g. a diver that egresses from the back hatch when needed to do his thing.

The most obvious shortcoming of the octopus itself is exposed right away: Once again the arms are way, way too short. Even if you account for small species like the Blue-ringed Octopus, which I’m sure this isn’t even meant to represent, the ratio between head size and arm length just doesn’t match actual proportions. That being the case my first request to LEGO would have been to include at least two more segments per arm. That, however would have exacerbated another problem. The tentacles aren’t connected with ball joints except where they are attached to the main body and instead use simple clips, so posing them is severely limited. That means you can basically only sensibly pose it in the “umbrella” stance depicted here with its “cloak” (the skin between the arms’ roots) spread out evenly and only little variation.

The suction cups represented by the Bright Pink 1 x 1 studs to me feel superfluous. They’re a pain to plug on to the plates and hinges and since they aren’t the proper scale, anyway, just having some full coverage plates in their place might even have looked better.

The mantle, tubes and eyes are simply large wedges, slopes and round elements attached to a central SNOT block. It’s certainly sufficient, just not very detailed. I always prefer more granular builds using smaller elements that approximate the variations in surface curvature better. Overall it just looks a bit too symmetrical for my taste.

The Lobster

The second model is a red lobster with some more extra builds.

The underwater ruins with the gate are a way or putting the many slopes to use that previously were used upside-down on the submarine plus there’s some pieces from the safe/ money vault as well as you can clearly see. Simple, yet effective.

The little submarine is another interesting spin on the subject. More to the point, I believe it’s actually an underwater scooter, meaning it’s mostly just a means of motorized transportation, not a fully isolated environment. You’d sit inside it with your diving gear and still get wet since it isn’t pressurized. I vaguely recall something like that popping up in one of the older James Bond movies. All the necessary details are there and one is willing to buy that this could actually work. Small side note: As you see the model is raised from the ground, which isn’t my doing to enhance the photos or anything of the sort. Indeed you are supposed to add two brackets as skids according to the manual. For “correct” play one would simply remove them.

The crayfish is structurally much more simple than the octopus, but the build feels just as repetitive. Now some of that is inevitable, but if they could change anything in this set, it would be to add a bit more variety. Had they e.g. thrown in a few of the small 1 x 2 wedge slopes for making the octopus’ mantle look more refined, they could be re-used here for some of the feet, the clippers and even the mouth. Likewise, the sides of the body could have benefited from actually having SNOT studs onto which those curved slopes and wedges could be plugged for better vertical rounding. This would also have helped to disguise the grey ball joints.

 

Another change I would have loved would be the inclusion of Red fishing rods for the antennae instead of just regular bars. Those would then of course also need to be placed in matching Red clip holders, not Light Bluish Grey ones. This shouldn’t have been much of a stretch as those little buggers exist ever since they were introduced as a recolor for the Chinese New Year sets. Clearly, throwing in two of those little buggers wouldn’t have made the budget explode.

The fishing rods and additional slopes might have been a different story, but as you may have observed I’m not a friend of “half-assing” things. I’m more of the mindset that if you do such things and it doesn’t take too much effort you go the full mile and don’t stop halfway. All things considered, this is perhaps why this lobster doesn’t feel all this great. This point is also reinforced by the considerable amount of leftover pieces that aren’t even used. Those range from some larger parts originally required for the submarine and octopus to the numerous small plates, many of which were buried inside the models.

The Manta Ray

The final model in the package is a Manta Ray with a side of a small section of reef.

I’ll admit I think the reef is a pain in the butt. It feels like the designers were actually forced at gunpoint to come up with something so there wouldn’t be to many unused or extraneous pieces. While I was building it it seemed like I was doing it for hours. It’s all piecemeal stuff – a 1 x 2 brick here, then a 1 x 2 plate on top of it and then another at an 90 degree angle to connect it with a neighboring element and so on. It was extremely tedious and just dragged on. There’s per se nothing wrong with this and if you don’t have that much LEGO you’d likely even build it this way yourself, but gosh, do I wish they’d just thrown in some 2 x 4 and 2 x 6 bricks to build up volume much quicker. only a few 2 x 4 bricks needed. It looks the part when finished, but the assembly wasn’t very enjoyable in my view.

The Manta itself is okay, though the proportions suggest that this is more a baby than an adult. The wingspan is not proportionately large enough and it appears too thick and compact, thus also making the mouth look too large and kind of cute. The wingtips feel a bit odd. I get what they were going for, but all things considered a Manta genuinely is just a large rhombus shape with sharp corners. Throwing in some Dark Red 2 x 4 wedge plates would have looked a bit more realistic.

In a similar vein there could have been more wedge plates to create the tapered transition zone for the tail. It’s not just plugged on as it appears. On that same not, of course it should have more segments and be slightly longer.

An interesting observation about this model is the use of some direction inversion techniques. This can be clearly seen with the mouth and its upside-down mudguard piece and continues to manifest itself on the underside with actual surface detail, including some hinted-at gills. The disadvantage here is that during the build process it is rather flimsy and really only begins to stabilize once all the layers of plates have been stacked. To me this is yet another situation where it clearly shows that LEGO’s refusal to introduce actual direction inversion plates gets in the way of building models more efficiently as already pointed out once.

For the leftover pieces there’s a lot of overlap with the ones on the lobster, but also a few notable substitutions. Once you veer away from the main model the parts usage really isn’t that economical.

---

Concluding Thoughts

Yet again this is one of those sets that gets in the way of itself. That is, LEGO are making it hard to give this a perfect score with the circumstances surrounding it. People with more money to spend than I will easily get over the price, but the overall difficulty in actually finding this set to be able to buy it is a bit of a show stopper. It just seems unnecessarily complicated to the point that people not as engrossed in LEGO will simply miss out on it. They’ll either never notice it in the first place or just give up the chase.

The sad state of affairs aside, this is another pretty good Creator 3in1 set for this year. Seems like the LEGO designers are on a roll and made some good decisions what to pick and throw out among the crowds. If there’s the slightest chance for you to pick it up, I’d definitely recommend it. You should keep in mind, however, that this is a “builder’s set” and the models are not collectibles.

If you don’t plan on spicing up the default models or re-using the parts for your own builds it would be a costly investment compared to more refined actual collector models. Inevitably buying a second or third model would skew this even further with so many parts left over. That basically is also the only real shortcoming – the way the parts that are there are used is not always very efficient and at the same time I feel that there are a few bits missing that would have enhanced the experience.

Cheap Blue Sea – LEGO Creator, Dolphin and Turtle (31128)

As you know, I love underwater life. Not all forms of it, but I sure could get lost for hours just observing whales, sharks, octopuses, reef fish and so on. That’s why my recent excursion to the SeaLife & AquaDome in Berlin with a buddy of mine felt too short. You know, you almost wish that elevator inside the cylinder basin would get stuck so you can just watch the fish swimming around you for longer than those eight minutes just as I would spend more time inside the exhibition without someone hurrying me. Anyway, this little trip reminded me that I still had my photos from the LEGO Dolphin and Turtle (31128) set, that somehow slipped off my radar and I never published an article, so it’s now time to do just that slightly belated.

Contents and Pricing

Regrettably, in recent years the pricing for Creator 3in1 sets has been all over the place with some seriously overpriced sets damaging the trust in the once very affordable staple of LEGO‘s product series, so I’m all the more happy to report that this one is a very affordable affair.

At 137 pieces its suggested retail price is 10 Euro, which is pretty reasonable. However, anyone is right who would point out that it really doesn’t look like there is actually so much stuff in there because the “hero” models of the dolphin and turtle look tiny. Another caveat on all of the three out-of-the-box models is that a good number of elements are only used for the base and its decorative adornments, thus not contributing to the volume of the creatures.

This can be slightly offset by discounts which bring the cost down to around 7 Euro in many online shops and physical retail outlets. During some crazy promotion shortly after I had already purchased mine, one vendor even fired out the sets for 5 Euro only, which would make this a total no-brainer. That is to say buying this set in triple to build all models at once would be reasonably doable, with or without those discounts.

The Dolphin and the Turtle

The primary build is of course the dolphin and the turtle as advertised on the box art. The reason I opted to present everything separately is not just visual clarity, but also the fact that mounting the creatures on the stand doesn’t really work that well and looks odd in terms of scale. The panels would need to be much higher, but even then the limbs of the animals get in the way of each other. That and of course if you were to assume that based on the size of the eyes relative to the body this would be a baby sea turtle, the size of the dolphin would be unrealistic and implausible. Even newborn dolphins are much larger already. Therefore your best option is probably to indeed keep them apart to not give people ideas…

The base is constructed from a bunch of round quarter plates in Tan, which at least is a useful generic color. I guess nobody would have been surprised had they gone with some crazy color like Coral. I have a feeling that Medium Blue would have been an interesting color, though. It would have looked like some distant sand bank whose color has been shifted by the light being filtered through the water and floating particles. The details on top feel a bit sparse and don’t really convey the idea of underwater vegetation or even a coral reef. It would have taken much more pieces to make this more lively.

The turtle immediately reminded me of the polybag set 30476 from 2017 that used a few similar techniques and was about the same size, even though it represented an adult specimen. Inevitably just like this version it suffered from the ball joints not having been recolored. At this size there’s simply no good way to disguise the grey elements and it limits how good everything looks. Mind you, it’s not that terrible here as in particular the gaps between different groups of pieces are small, but I still wish LEGO had gotten over themselves and colored the items in question in Sand Green or similar.

The dolphin shares the same issue with the color of the joints, but some effort has been made to at least bury the central one with in the body. At the same time, though, I feel that these connections are redundant, anyway. The body is too short and with so few segments there’s no good way of creating some dynamic and dramatic poses. Or in other words: As far as I’m concerned, this could be as solid and stiff as a bathtub toy for kids. Of course you could improve the design, but that would require more parts to create more segments, different wedges and slopes for more slender, elegant shaping and so on. At the end you’d probably end up with something completely different that barely bears any relation to the version from this set.

The Fish

I have to admit that the first alternate model, the fish, is actually my favorite from this set. It’s one of the few I actually kept around and it’s sitting on the shelf next to me looking cute, joined by the turtle from the first build. The fish itself is just some non-descript generic variant that could stand in for whatever is your favorite. From something as mundane as a Sea Bream to your most-liked variety of Scalpel Fish any interpretation is valid. Of course things would be even better if this actually used bright colors like real reef fish. Imagine how stunning this could look using Yellow, Blue, Orange or Coral contrasted with some Dark Bluish Grey or Black.

Because it happened to come out around the same time as this set, I got myself a couple of the Tropical Parrot (30581) Creator 3in1 polybags as well to compare the fish in there with the one from this one. The little red fish is notably more crude and simplified, but does not look at all that bad next to its bigger brother. In addition, the smaller offering comes with some actual leaf elements and a few wedge slopes, the latter of which even perfectly matching in their Lime Green color, which could be used to enhance the larger fish or the scenery around it.

Since we’re already here, here’s also a look at this bag’s main hero, the parrot. It was released pretty widely, including some cardboard promo boxes in regular grocery stores, so it should be easy to find and even be obtainable for 2.50 Euro or less sometimes. Another of those little gems that you should not miss out on.

Back to the main subject of this review, there’s a good amount of leftover pieces that aren’t used. Not too dramatic in absolute terms, but in relation to the size of the set still notable.

The Seahorse

The third model is a little seahorse and next to it its companion sea slug/ snail. The upper body half of the little vertical swimmer is reasonably proportionate, but the tail is way, way too short. This is one of those situations where throwing in ten more pieces or so could have made a huge difference even if the tail was presented coiled up. Also, since these little critters are latched on to a grass blade, plant stem or even just a piece of material floating in the water it would have been nice if there had been some elements to mimic that.

The number of leftovers is rather moderate, though following through with some plant-like structure for the little guy to cling on could have reduced it even further by e.g. using the yellow blossoms on a coral twig and hiding the crab underneath.

---

Concluding Thoughts

While it doesn’t get me quite as excited as the Fantasy Forest Creatures (31125), this is still an excellent little set. That is, if you remove the somewhat nonsensical forced combinations of elements and the resulting scale issues from the equation. More or less the animals should be viewed and treated as separate entities and treated this way while you dispense with the rest. The uninspired presentation is really the biggest issue and it may be worthwhile to invest some time in building pimped bases if you feel so inclined.

Otherwise it’s a very enjoyable experience. The builds don’t take too long and aren’t in any way convoluted, yet still look good, which makes this a good option for kids. The finished models are also reasonably robust for play within their design restrictions, so your little tyke swooshing around the dolphin, turtle or fish is perfectly possible. I’d definitely recommend this package. Even if you don’t have a particular interest in underwater creatures, it is relaxing fun and the set is very affordable.

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…

Explorer-ing the Deep

It’s currently so hot outside, I sure wish I would live somewhere by the sea or underwater even, so it’s not at all that bad the latest LEGO Explorer magazine deals with the creatures of the deep and the exploration of same.

The overall structure of the mag still feels a bit too random for my taste with an “everything and the kitchen sink” vibe being prevalent. It feels like they are simply trying to stuff in too much and in this particular case couldn’t make up their mind whether to focus on the actual real creatures, their brick-modeled counter parts or the exploration vehicles. Dialing things down a bit sure would help and might actually be beneficial to the overall learning effect for the kids.

Again several commercial LEGO sets make an appearance, including my beloved Deep Sea Creatures (31088). this makes things a bit more palatable to me, but overall I’m still not friends with this sort of over-commercialization, especially since it’s not bolstered by extra content like comics or a genuinely nice dedicated custom poster. If you will, it feels a bit too cheap and obvious.

The included model is an octopus – of sorts. If you know my Octopus MOC you know that I’m a bit obsessive about those creatures and thus very critical of any rendition. On the positive side, this one truly has eight tentacles at least. on the other hand it at best looks like a baby calamari or sepia to me. The pointed tube just doesn’t look right for an actual octopus. I also wish they had gone with a different color than Black. Keeping everything Red would have been a good start, but Dark Tan for everything would probably have been the best option. I also gladly would have traded the 32 White single studs for the suction rings for longer tentacles.

Again this issue shows that they still need to work quite a bit on formulating the actual value of the mag and having a consistent style. Most disappointing is the fact that there is just not enough exclusive content. Everything feels like it was chopped together from the LEGO archives and the usual stock content libraries. One can only hope that this improves over time…

Revisionist Krakken

As happens so often when working on a project for too long you can’t see the forest for the trees, as they say, so a few minor issues crept into my octopus MOC instructions. Nothing major and by no means a deal breaker, just small oversights. I’m pretty sure I had all the best intentions of fixing them way back when, but then somehow forgot about them. Therefore I’ve now sat down again and got to it. I’ve edited the original post and updated all the links. The specific changes are as follows:

• Fixed a bunch of spelling errors/ typos in the German version.
• Changed the color of the 3L bar in the eyes to Black to correctly reflect availability (it doesn’t exist in Trans Neon Green and the one included in set 31088 is actually a 4L one)
• Split up the 4 x 1 brick with sideways studs used at the top of the mantle into two 1 x 2 bricks because again it only exists in this form in Dark Blue. If you use other colors this will be irrelevant.
• Fixed a DPI mismatch on the BOM pages that would make them appear larger than the other pages in non-DPI-aware PDF applications, e.g. in browsers.

For your convenience I’ve also created a MOC page on Rebrickable. This should make it simpler to sift through the parts inventory, compare it to parts you may already have (if you maintain your list on there) and provides a convenient way to order the missing pieces easily if necessary by pre-selecting them in Bricklink shops.

The Krakken has risen!

Important Note: Download at the end of the article! / Wichtiger Hinweis: Download am Ende des Artikels!

---

At long last I managed to finish my free instructions for my octopus MOC. Yay! I’ve been a bit under the weather last week so it still took me one week longer than promised, but I hope now that it’s here everything is fine.

I’ve written about some of the challenges in my last article on the matter already and despite all the bugs, quirks and flaws of the programs I used I hope I managed to cobble together something decent and tasteful. The preview of some random pages should give you an idea what to expect inside the PDFs without actually having to download the whole 16.4 megabytes. That should make it easier to make up your mind before burning valuable bandwidth and download quotas on mobile devices. On that note I also kept things as barebones as I possibly could within the limitations to keep file size down, so you may have to wait a bit e.g. for page thumbnails to be generated.

 

 

 

As I have hinted at multiple times, this set of instructions contains some alternate build variants. This is meant to help you save a bit of money if you are not able or willing to procure a shed load of extra parts e.g. from Bricklink. Still, with the mantle and upper “cloak” section of the tentacles being integral to the whole construction and always using the same pieces, at the end of the day you may not be seeing that much of a difference. Of course you can do your own re-engineering to optimize this further and perhaps if you come up with more efficient alternate designs might be willing to share it. I’d sure be interested to learn how other people might approach this. For your convenience I have also created a Rebrickable page to check the parts for the main most complex build and order missing parts from there if you feel like it.

 

 

 

The instructions are 100 percent free, but if you like them and think I should get something in return I’d sure appreciate being able to tick off some items from my wishlist. Just get in touch! 🙂 Feel free to post links to this article on forums, blogs and wherever you may be roaming the Internet to drum up interest, but please keep the copyright intact and don’t mess with the PDF files themselves by doing things like repackaging the pages with your own branding and redistributing them under your own name.

---

To download the instructions click on the image or the link below it. On mobile devices it may be necessary to keep your finger pressed down a bit longer in order for a menu to appear that may offer options on where to store or open the files. On desktop computers you typically should also be able to use a right mouse click and selecting “Save link/ target as…” to pick a specific folder for saving. If necessary check your browser configuration’s default download options to avoid confusion and having to download over and over again.

Octopus MOC, Instructions, English

---

Zum Download der deutschen Version auf das Bild unten oder den Link darunter klicken. Auf Mobilgeräten kann es notwendig sein, den Finger länger gedrückt zu halten und entsprechende Option zum Speichern oder die Übergabe an eine bestimmte App auszuwählen. Auf Desktopcomputern kann die Datei in der Regel auch mit Rechtsklick auf den Link und „Link/ Ziel speichern unter…“ direkt in einen bestimmten Ordner runtergeladen werden. um Verwirrung zu vermeiden und die Datei nicht immer wieder neu herunterzuladen, überprüft die Browsereinstellungen für Downloads wenn nötig.

Oktopus MOC, Anleitung, Deutsch

An Octopus will surface near you soon-ish – finally!

I know I have been promising this for way too long to have much credibility left, but trust me, it’s really going to happen. Yes, at long last the finish line on my free instructions for my Octopus MOC is in sight. After my last update in July I had hoped to finish it sooner (and I mean a lot sooner), but after it got off to a rocky start and what was supposed to be a quick two-month project already had turned into something else, there were some further setbacks, in light of which I then decided to take my time and figure things out and be as thorough as I can. Feel free to skip this boring part, but here are some reasons:

• As I already wrote back then, I’m not a healthy man, so this summer’s extreme heat coupled with some temporarily escalating generic health issues turned me into a lazy slob. Yes, a pitiful excuse, but that’s just how things are.
• My own drive for perfection got in the way. Being a graphics designer has the unwanted side-effect that one tends to think in very specific terms, meaning that page layouts have to be almost pixel-perfect and just look nice. That meant that I spent way too much time doodling around and trying to figure out how I could get LPub to do something at which it is notoriously bad. Speaking of which…
• The aforementioned program is pretty obnoxious and just bug-ridden. I also filed a bunch of bug reports and improvement suggestions, but suffice it to say that the developers behind it appear not particularly focused on making it actually user-friendly or at least best in its class in the sense that as a minor it could possibly be the best of many pretty terrible options. Trust me, doing instructions can indeed be a long exercise in frustration in pretty much any of the programs available currently. Let’s leave it at that.
• To somewhat mitigate those shortcomings, I had to spend lots of time developing workarounds. This means that my published file will be based on having multiple models in different states in the LPub file and on top of it it will be chopped together from multiple sources. I even spent good amounts of time copy & pasting things together in external text editors. At least that’s one of the few benefits of the text-based file format.
• As if I wasn’t in enough trouble already, I also decided to design a set of custom icons to use in the instructions because – let’s face it – the default icons e.g. for model rotation look less than exciting. You will see and hopefully like my interpretations and additions.
• Finally, amidst all of this I participated in a bunch of building contests in the hopes of winning some cool stuff. This naturally also consumed some time on my end because I literally spent entire evenings brooding over some minutia and conceptualizing the models in my head before actually assembling them. I might do a round-up post once the dust has settled on all that and I know in which places I qualified (or not).

On the bright side, all of this trouble has made me much more resilient and I learned a good share of new tricks along the way that may make things easier in the future. I also can say with confidence that now that I know what to do and which pitfalls to avoid there is a definitive ETA on the instructions so you can at least make the model and stocking parts for it part of your Christmas shopping list. Just give me another two weeks and I’m hopefully able to pull this together at last. Funny enough I just had another little setback with one of my hard drives crashing, but thankfully the files were not affected and thank the good lord I also do regular backups, so I can at least present a preview of the cover with my skin intact:

I need to fix the broken drive, naturally, but should be able to resume work quickly after that. Stay tuned for the pertinent announcement…

No-Good Octopus – Funny Octopus Ride (41373)

Being a lover of oceanic sea life, LEGO sets themed around this subject are of course high on my list even if they are only tangentially related. That’s why the Funny Octopus Ride (41373) from this years alternate-ish boardwalk fun park series in LEGO Friends ended up on my table.

First Things first

To get the obvious out of the way before digging into the details, given the title I chose: No, this set isn’t good. So many things with it are so wrong in so many ways, that I’m going to sound like a negative Nancy all throughout this article. Of course it’s up to you to make up your own mind and draw your own conclusions, but perhaps consider this a sincere warning about what you may get yourself and your kids into.

I myself had been pondering whether to get this set on and off so many times. The pro argument to pursue a purchase was of course once again my desire to get some good parts for my stock and funny enough the set delivers on that front. there are a number of unique parts in the form of re-colored elements that didn’t exist before, there’s a lot of Dark Pink elements, some of which like the smooth pin connectors are also a first and of course then there’s the balloon shells which I wanted to add to my collection, being that I didn’t have one of the older Friends or Elves sets they were featured in in the past. I have vague plans for a model in my head that I might actually need them one day.

It also so happens that quite incidentally the set also contains the exact four rounded plates in White that I might need to rebuild the smaller promotional Gingerbread House (40139) from 2015. With the official Winter Village Gingerbread House (10267) available and me indeed considering buying it eventually, this seems almost inevitable. I also like the transparent tubes. They could be a great way of decking out a better Hidden Side ghost lab or something like that. And finally there’s that printed 1 x 1 popcorn brick. I never bought the small Popcorn Cart (30364) polybag even when I had a chance, so it’s good to catch up on that, too.

Engineering Degree Failure

The actual construction of the model is super simple and ultimately that’s the biggest failure of the set. It’s really not pretty to look at and as someone who started out with Technic and through his 3D work has a working understanding of some of the finer points of mechanical engineering (at least that’s what I like to think) it just feels wrong, wrong, wrong. Sure, it’s for kids and the build needs to be straightforward and easy, but it still doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Point in case: Someone forgot that there is this little thing called friction and ultimately the whole “system” (in the physical/ engineering sense) is totally bogged down by it. No, unfortunately it’s not as easy as turning the knob at the top of the octopus’ mantle. I as an adult struggle to overcome the initial “stickiness” (static friction), my mom can’t do it easily and I don’t even want to imagine how a first grade school kid will have to make quite an effort to even get this going.

There are two main issues here: First there’s the Technic elements used on the arms themselves and by extension the internal axis inside and turntable below the balloon-y body. It’s all a case of the overall forces becoming to strong no matter how much you wiggle the bushes around to loosen up the connections and reduce tension just like there is no good way of dealing with a 10 units and 12 units long axle plugged together and sticking them into stacks of axle holes at the top and bottom. This, BTW, is yet another exercise that requires so much force that it may be beyond a kid’s capabilities. There’s just no way to get this perfectly balanced so everything moves lightly and without getting stuck.

The second and by far just as critical an issue is of course the corrugated hoses vs. the arms themselves. If you think about it for a second, what you are creating here is a ratcheted mechanism with four (!) “teeth” burrowing themselves in the crevices of the hoses. Even if they do so only superficially it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how this adds up to considerable resistance. What’s worse is that even if you assume that part would work, there’s still this little problem with plastic sliding on plastic. Ironically the friction here is too insignificant to ensure that the connectors actually smoothly roll on the ridges of the hoses, and when they don’t, they just scrub along. After a while both the connectors and the tubes will get dull and show scratch marks. That much is certain.

Animal Pods or Pod Animals?

What makes this so sad is that the passenger pods on the merry-go-round are actually quite neat they nicely illustrate that if the set wasn’t betrayed by its shoddy cheat mechanics it could have been something great. The shark is particularly nice and if you replace the foothold piece for the figures with a tile you could re-use it in many scenarios once separated from its mounting plate. It would even fit into the Dolphins Rescue Mission (41378) as a shark circling the ship wreck just as it might fit e.g. as decoration on the Pirates Theme Park Rollercoaster (31084). The highlight here is of course the little 1 x 1 modified hinge plate in Dark Blue, a new and thus still relatively rare and expensive re-color of this element.

The clam shell isn’t nearly as complex, but for what it is supposed to represent sufficient plus you get another load of the Bright Pink 1 x 1 heart tile.

 

 

 

 

 

On first sight the crab looked a bit weird to me until I realized what this was actually supposed to represent. Aside from the way too short “legs”, which really are only stumps, I guess the failure is the lollipops/ paddles not being in Yellow plus there being no claws. In a way this makes the whole thing look more like a bug.

 

The turtle is basically just another variant of the one in the Turtles Rescue Station (41376) and the poly bag variant mentioned in the article or for that matter even the Elves one.  Depending on how you interpret it, the basic ingredients are always the same as is the building style and whether one’s shell is Dark Azure and the other’s Reddish Brown ultimately makes little difference. in the end it’s probably down to there only being so many ways to skin a cat, i.e. building this model, if you want it to be at a specific size. Similar to the shark here at least another re-color of that little round hinge in regular Green making this worthwhile. A small complaint would have to be that they easily could have included angled 1 x 2 wedges (29119, 29120) to represent the flippers, given that they already have the 1 x 1 modified plates with the clip in Bright Green in place. This would not have interfered with the rest of the model and made it so much more “realistic”

Stranger in a strange Land

In yet another anecdote of LEGO‘s quality going down the drain these days, this time I actually had a completely wrong piece in my set, meaning an utter fluke that doesn’t even remotely resemble any item that the set actually uses. The part in question is a 2 x 4 curved slope part in Dark Orange from the Deep Space Rocket and Launch Control (60228) set in the City line of products where it is used on the large central booster sections.

The irony here is that this single piece gives me so many ideas, I almost wish they had mixed up an entire bag that contains all the eight slopes used in that other set. If you look at it long enough, you just can see how this would make a perfect padding for an ocre-ish colored leather sofa or padded seating bench in a restaurant, bus or train. With this yet again being a new re-color of this part for the first time exclusive to the set you can see how this would be valuable to a guy like me who’s always thinking about the next possible project.

and what was the part it was actually supposed to be? Of all things a Dark Bluish Grey 4 x 4 round plate used on the socket of the octopus mantle! See how neither the shape nor the color relate to one another? Those sorting cameras at the LEGO factory really must have had a bad day. Anyway, thankfully I had a few of those pieces in my stockpile and in fact the color doesn’t even matter because the parts are mostly invisible and any of them would do, but if I hadn’t, I couldn’t have finished the model that evening. It’s one thing if some small 1 x 1 tile is missing that you can add on later, but it’s a different thing when a critical structural part is missing from a bag.

No Fun in the Fun Park

While I’m certainly not a fan of entertainment parks and fun fairs, I can get behind the concept as a technical and artistic challenge in the LEGO world. In fact I have been tinkering with such mechanisms on and off and if I ever finish them, one day some pretty awesome contraptions might come of it. Yupp, it sounds like self-indulgent  boasting, but at the very least it’s going to be better than this. A lot (presumably). It shouldn’t be too much of a challenge to surpass the hacky cheat mechanics, if you allow me to put it that way.

Overall I don’t know how to sum up all my frustrations with this particular set. It’s neither a good example for overall design and aesthetics nor for engineering. It just falls short of even the lowest expectations and is for all intents and purposes quite terrible. Unless you have a specific use case like myself for scalping the parts and/ or are willing to put in some major work to improve the details, you are not doing your kids or yourself any favors. I paid 25 Euro during an Amazon flash sale for this, but at the end of the day this feels too much for such an awful set. Paying the full 40 Euro would be totally crazy.

I didn’t want to look at this abomination for much longer and couldn’t disassemble the set fast enough to salvage the components while they still were pristine. That’s how bad it is. Clearly the mess with the missing/ wrong part did nothing to improve my mood, either. The only things that gave me some joy are the little pod creatures, but that’s just not enough, unfortunately.

Update x2

The heatwave in the last few weeks and a few other things haven’t made it easy to actually get any work done, but now I’m actually a bit closer to getting the instructions for my Octopus MOC done.

It seems a funny coincidence that as I was dabbling around in the likes of LPub3D, putting up with its quirks and trying to figure out a few specifics for structuring the instructions, a new parts update was released. The octopus doesn’t use any of them, but I’m more than happy to finally have the new bracket types available. As you well know, I’m obsessing about this stuff all the time. Just to prove it and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about here’s a little Stud.io render for you:

While it may take me still a while to get the instructions actually finished, which mostly is to blame on my desire to make them look nice and professional and thus requiring lots of manual intervention in the formatting, here’s a preliminary listing of the parts used in the build (a.k.a. BOM – Bill of Materials) to get you started on stocking up and giving you a chance to order additional parts on Bricklink if needed.

Remember that this project originated based on four sets of the Deep Sea Creatures (31088). It will not be necessary to buy four sets as well, but it sure helps if you get at least one to obtain some of the parts, in particular some of the Dark Blue pieces. Also keep in mind that you can do color swaps and e.g. the Red parts will be invisible. So feel free to use whatever you have at hand.

This BOM represents the maximum variant as shown in my photos, but the final instructions will also contain some alternate building using a few different parts. Of course you can also save greatly by using shorter tentacles and thus reducing the number of slopes and ball joints. More on that as things progress on my end…

Krakken Alert – An Octopus MOC

Back then when I was writing my review of the Deep Sea Creatures (31088) set I was quite enthused as you may have noticed, yet something was missing that I would have considered essential – an octopus model. This compelled me to actually sit down and create one of my own. That may sound simple and obvious, but of course there’s a specific twist to the whole story, so allow me to tell you a bit about the thoughts and design process behind this project.

The Objective(s)

Before I even started to actually construct the model I knew how I wanted it to look and feel eventually. How to get there was a different story entirely, so I had to establish a few rules and parameters.

Size Comparison with the original Squid from the Deep Sea Creatures (31088) set

The scale should match the generalized “squid” model one can build with one of those sets. This would not only reduce parts count to something sensible, but also keep things manageable since I wanted to include tentacles with a realistic length and on top of it all eight of them as you would find them in nature. Ideally I also wanted them to act and look naturally with some tapering and possibly also the “wings”/ skin webs between them at least hinted at.

It also set up a nice challenge in that it would require some strategic thinking to capture the shape of the creature, build a robust and stable model and still keep it poseable. If you get my meaning – building a large model and getting a good approximation even of complex surface curvatures is easier, but the real crunch comes when you have to express them with a limited number of pieces crammed into a small space.

The model itself should be based on the four sets I ultimately had bought as much as possible, meaning it should use the parts contained therein without having to throw in too many extra parts. This would save cost and avoid too many leftover bits clogging up drawers and storage boxes. Resorting to some additional parts from my collection should be kept to a sensible minimum, though I was aware that I possibly could not avoid it entirely. Some elements I planned on using are just not part of the original set.

The two factors combined resulted in a third prerequisite presenting itself: The overall parts count would and should be in a region that equals that of a commercial mid-range set, i.e. the accrued cost should ideally not exceed the combined value of the initial four sets plus some minor spending for the extra parts. Reigning in the cost would make it feasible to create instructions for the model and publish them so others could possibly re-create it without going broke in the process.

Time for some Action…

Building the model took quite some time. I’m a slow builder who likes to take his time to properly check and evaluate each step to begin with and naturally, getting the most out of limited resources presented its own challenges, given that my parts repository isn’t endless and even small changes can cause delays if you don’t have the right piece on hand and have to wait for that Bricklink order to arrive. I’m also a bit obsessive about making things stable and unbreakable, requiring even more thought to go into how you attach individual elements so they don’t fall off easily.

Head in resting Position

Head in swimming Position

Given those circumstances and my self-imposed rules I started out with the main part of the head, the mantle. Visually it is the largest body region on most octopus species due to it being more or less a big hollow sack inflated by water inside. Naturally the main purpose is to provide jet-like propulsion when said water is pressed out through the siphons, but the mantle also plays an important role during mating rituals or in its deflated form for camouflage when the octopus is resting. Incidentally it also looks like a big bulbous nose, which in not so minor parts is one of the reasons I think octopuses are cute. Getting this right therefore was important to me.

The tricky part for this section of the body was squeezing in all those elements necessary for the perpendicular building, so the various slopes could be attached to the sides, front and top. The problem here is not so much that it would be impossible overall, but rather that you have so little room and in some corners three different “flow” directions converge. One has to find ways of fitting in all those different brackets and bricks with studs on sides.

After that was done and I had arrived at a satisfying look the model rested in a box half-finished for quite a while. During this time I dabbled on and off with the aft section to which later the tentacles would be attached. In the process I must have started over and rebuild this segment at least five times, optimizing the various sub-steps over and over.

All eight Tentacles fanned out

Top View, notice the Shape and Volume of the Mantle

The point here is that the eight ball joints for the tentacles needed to be placed in a very specific way. They had to be far enough apart to accommodate the tentacles themselves, yet close enough to keep the body section compact and small to match the mantle’s scale. Additionally I also wanted to retain some semblance of the attachments being placed in a circle.

All of this made this quite complicated, even more so as later this little part would have to be solid enough to not fall apart when the tentacles were attached and exerted their force. In the end I opted for an alternating placement of the square ball joint plates with the longer bar and the regular short versions. This would also come in handy since it allowed for some overlap of the tentacles without them getting canted.

Tentacle Side View

Tentacle Top View

Compared to all that, the tentacles themselves were more or less a walk in the park as their construction is pretty obvious in the first place. Once you have decided on the length and number of the individual elements it’s merely a matter of building the segments eight times each and clicking them together. A bit repetitive, but perfectly manageable. In the interest of easy modifications I kept the design quite generic and the tentacles are interchangeable for different positions. There’s a million ways to handle this, so you could naturally also build your completely own interpretation, vary the overall lengths or build specific versions for each attachment point.

Mission accomplished?

The measure of how well I may have achieved my own goals depends on a few factors.

First, the re-usage factor of pieces from the original Deep Sea Creatures (31088) sets can be anywhere from around 60 percent up to 90 percent. I wanted my model to look “nice”, so I did quite a few color swaps/ replacements by digging into my parts repository and this value is therefore inevitably on the lower end. In particular I shunned all the red pieces from the original sets, if they would be visible. If you can live with that, the number will go up.

Tentacles partially curled up to illustrate Poseability

The same goes for compromising on some structural parts like the ball joints. Unfortunately the sets only contain so many of them and they are not always in the right orientation. Unless you seriously spend at least a bit of money on additional such parts you could swap out some of them with the regular hinge joints at the cost of reduced stability and limited posing options. Good candidates for this would be the tips of the tentacles where the loads and forces aren’t that extreme.

Rear View with open Tentacles (Attack Posture)

The previous point also extends to the overall realism. A good chunk of parts is genuinely consumed by just the tentacles. As it turned out at the length I built them the pieces from the set didn’t suffice in quantity and I had to complement them with additional ones. The more you shorten the arms and use fewer segments, the closer you get to not having to rely on extra stuff. This is entirely up to you.

Though generally I’m of the opinion that the length of the arms is often totally underestimated and misrepresented, there’s no denying that different sub-species of octopi have different lengths. As a general rule you can say the smaller the creature, the shorter the tentacles. This includes infantile and adolescent specimen not yet having fully formed tentacles, but also small variants like the poisonous blue-ringed octopuses appearing more stubby to begin with.

Rear View Beak Detail

With all those optimizations you can trim down the overall parts count from above 600 pieces to 400 and below. You can take this even further and only use six tentacles if you want to match it up with the squid, though then you may require quite some reworking of the aft head section. In any case, anything is possible and more than anything else I consider my model one possible approach and solution with lots of room left for alternatives. In fact even now I’m considering options on how to improve this further.

Instructions are coming?!

From the start I planned to create instructions for this little critter, but as a matter of fact I haven’t even started yet. Given that I built the model physically, I have to go back, disassemble it and back-trace what I actually did at each step. That’s gonna take some time, so bear with me and check back in a few weeks. In the meantime you can always support my efforts by ticking a few items off my wishlist as encouragement and motivation. Lately I’ve had this weird image in my head how the octopus would look hugging the ship in the bottle or something like that, for instance. 😉