Veggie Wagon – LEGO City, Farmer’s Market Van (60345)

I don’t put up reviews of LEGO City sets that often, but that doesn’t mean I’m not buying any at all or don’t like them. Most of the time it’s just that I buy small, cheap stuff that is not worth turning into an article unless there is a specific reason like when I elaborated on the new Neon Yellow color. Apparently this must also be the case for the Farmer’s Market Van (60345) then, don’t you think? As a certain Juno Birch would say: Yes, that’s happening! 🙂 So let’s look at what we have here.

Pricing and Contents

This package is part of this year’s farm-centric line-up that also includes the Chicken Henhouse (60344), Grocery Store (60347) and then Barn & Farm Animals (60346). Apparently it’s been ages since LEGO had such sets in their portfolio, so it was about time and these sets have generally been welcomed. However, there’s a an ugly dark cloud in this scenario: Except for the 10 Euro chicken pen (which I also got in the meantime, by the way), these sets are prohibitively expensive. The store has a MSRP of 60 Euro for only 404 pieces and at 50 Euro for 230 pieces the farm house doesn’t fare much better despite containing many desirable molded animals.

By comparison this makes the van the cheapest in the whole sub-series with 30 Euro for 310 elements. This pricing logic doesn’t make any sense on any level even if you figure in factors like large pieces or 4+ sets always being more expensive. It doesn’t make this little truck a steal, but by and large the most cost-efficient of the series. That’s even more true once you factor in the discounts. I got mine for still relatively expensive 24 Euro, but as of now you can find offerings for around 21 Euro.

As you can see in the photo there are many smaller parts, so there’s ultimately not that much “volume of stuff”. That does not only extend to the field/ plot of land but also the car itself, which is quite hollow (not in a bad way, though). Point in case: While the models look good, you don’t have much in your hands in terms of pieces once you break them down again. The pile really isn’t that big. That’s why aside from my usual very cost-aware attitude I feel that 25 Euro is really more in line with what you get and any additional discounts sweeten the deal further.

The Minifigures

The set comes with three minifigures, which isn’t bad for such a small and affordable offering. The figures themselves don’t look anything special, but interestingly the girl with the blue hair has not only said hairpiece in Blue for the first time but also a new and unique torso print. Inevitably, the “farmer guy” called Horace also had to have a custom print with an imaginary logo on his dungarees. If you look hard enough you can see a slight color mismatch to the Lime Green leg piece. regrettably this seems to be more the norm than the exception with LEGO‘s prints these days. Also included in the set is the small rabbit, for the first time in Light Bluish Grey when before it was only available in White. A nice expansion of the color if you ever plan on building your own little brick farm.

The Field

One of the main attractions in this set is undeniably the field with the green stalks on it. There’s so much new to find here and that alone could make it worthwhile. The use of green minifigure candle elements is not new and has been seen in the Spring Lantern Festival (80107) where it was used to emulate bamboo stalks. However, this has been heavily expanded upon here. The most obvious addition is the new branch element that fits into this system and onto which then more stuff can be added. In this set this includes Red horns for peppers, Dark Purple bubbles/ ice cream scoops as berries (first seen as wine grapes in the Heartlake City Restaurant [41379]) and the new dual molded corn cob piece. The stalks are fixated in Bright Green round jumper plates that were only introduced in this color earlier this year (see Antonios Magical Door [43200] for instance). Finally, we also get a Medium Nougat barrel, yet another recent recolor.

The field is built from two structurally identical segments that can be connected with pin bricks, so in theory you could expand this if you buy multiple packages. In such a case one would likely also consolidate the plant stalks into sensible groups. Personally I would have preferred the set contained more of these pieces from the outset and one could build at least a second row or ideally a fully decked out square plot with up to sixteen plants. That would also have sensibly allowed to throw in a wheel barrow for harvesting and perhaps more rabbits and some chickens sneaking through the greenery and “pull out” carrots as indicated by the little slightly hidden mechanism that flips over to reveal the carrot in place of the former stalk. For me a massive expansion of the field would have been one of the few occasions where I then also would have accepted having to pay more simply for the fact that those plant elements can be used to such great advantage elsewhere. With that in mind I also hope that the branch element will soon enough come out in other colors so we can start building nice trees or branching water pipes.

There’s a small add-on by ways of some crates mounted on swivel hinges. This segment connects to the field in a similar fashion thanks to Technic bricks providing the necessary pin holes. Unfortunately LEGO are cheapening out again, as clearly there is plenty of room left to fill the boxes. This would have been yet another good opportunity to sneak in a few extra corn cobs, but they reserved that little trick for the expensive supermarket. A third apple, Lime Green bananas or a Tan/ Bright Light Yellow pumpkin might have been other ideas that would have made this more interesting.

The Van

The transport vehicle is pretty much a “Seen them once, seen them all.” thing. This for me includes the Surfer Van (31079) for instance, but I could just as well point to others I have either reviewed here on this blog or built, including of course from other series like Friends or Creator 3in1. that’s not meant to put blame on anyone, as after all there’s only so many ways to skin a cat, but I really yearn for some variety. Just doing the mudgard pieces in an unusual color like Yellowish Green would totally make my day, considering that the majority of them are still one of the greys, White or Black. LEGO are oddly conservative in this matter and reserve other colors mostly for police vehicles and fire trucks, give or take the occasional exception from the rule.

For what it represents the car is not bad, just a tad mundane and boring. As I mentioned earlier, the build is pretty spacious with a lot of room on the inside and this shows during the assembly. All the side walls stand openly nearly until the end when you add the top plates and wedges, which makes them fragile and has you believe something is wrong because there are larger gaps left until adding the force of the plates pulls everything together.

The build is not completely symmetrical and uses a few different techniques to accommodate a hinged sidewall on the right hand side of the van and a sliding window on the left side. To me this seems a bit of an odd choice as it’s more likely that this would have an flap swinging upward and doubling as a protective roof when selling goods at the weekly groceries market. Slide windows are more appropriate for food trucks, after all.

The interior is sparse, to put it mildly and slightly disappointing. There would have been plenty of opportunity to spruce it up like again adding a (small) create with corn cobs or other fruit, a small glass door fridge with soda cans in it and so on. It’s also unfortunate that you cannot easily remove the roof due to how everything is built and held in place by it. Mind you, it’s not that you cannot access the inside, it’s just not as easy and efficient. This also applies to the small deck behind the rear doors. You know what it is supposed to represent, it’s just not that terribly useful in light of the absence of something to put there.

The door itself is made from the 6 x 6 window frame introduced a while ago and the new 3 x 6 door elements that came out this year for easily creating double-winged doors. I’ve blathered on about the novelty and use cases for the elements of the field, but there’s a few more hidden gems in this set. More specifically the big carrot uses two significant elements: One is the 3 x 3 cone, which only once has been done in Orange so far in a Nexo Knights set and next to it there is its companion 3 x 3 dome. Those large chunky pieces are not what you would use everyday, but it’s nice to know they exist and are available just in case you may need them.

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Concluding Thoughts

This set certainly doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but is what people call a solid effort on LEGO‘s part. Most importantly it reintroduces a theme that has long been underrepresented or even totally absent from the City series and this should help to familiarize and popularize the subject with younger audiences who hadn’t seen it before. For adults there’s of course the rich harvest (cheap pun alert!) of new and unique elements that could make it worthwhile. In conjunction with a straightforward assembly and the result looking nice this is a relaxing and fun experience. My only gripe really is that there could have been more agricultural stuff and by that I mean a lot more of the veggies and a larger field to “grow” them on.

Azure and White Excursion – LEGO Creator 3in1, Camper Van (31108)

When it comes to my love for nature, I’m full of contradictions. I enjoy long walks by the lake or in the forest, yet not to the extend where I would derive pleasure from crawling through the underbrush. All the same, I have this weird thing where I would enjoy the solitude of the wilderness in a lonely log hut, but only if I had all the comforts like electricity, satellite TV and Internet. Weird? For sure. That’s probably why I have this odd fascination with caravaning as well, despite very limited actual experience with it and maybe my love for similarly themed LEGO sets is just part of this dichotomy and a way to live out my dream as long as I’m not actually able to afford one of those luxurious RVs. Who knows? Anyway, let’s have a look at the Camper Van (31108) and see what its qualities are and how it fits as a surrogate for my pipe dream.

That Money Thing again

I’m beginning to hate it myself, but first we again need to talk about the monetary value of the set vs. its actual content. The proposed street price for this set is 80 Euro, which, to put it directly, is just completely and utterly bonkers for a set of this type in the Creator 3in1 series with around 750 pieces. I’m not much of an advocate for that inaccurate price per piece metric, but anything above 10 Cent a piece is clearly not a good value, even more so if, as is typical for this theme, those pieces are 99 percent common standard elements, not expensive specialized parts.

This is ridiculous and outrageous at the same time and clearly feels like someone at LEGO went completely off the rails when setting the final price. The proof for this is in the pudding – I patiently waited for several months until retailers were desperate enough to reduce the price down to the 50 Euro mark just to get rid of their stock after initially this set recognizably didn’t sell very well. Even the typical news outlets that do their reviews right after release and get their samples free from LEGO were not shy to point out that they thought the set was massively overpriced if you had to buy it.

Now it may sound like I’m in permanent complaint mode, but if you look at the above image you can easily ask yourself: Would the contents be worth 80 Euro to you? I’m pretty confident that most people would say “No!”. I’m not saying that you don’t get plenty of stuff, but the volume/ bulk just isn’t there. You know, it’s that old thing where ultimately something like a Star Wars TIE Fighter feels more valuable simply due to its impressive size, even if it may have a lot fewer pieces and cost less.

Minifigures and Creatures

The perceived lack of value for this set can no doubt also be attributed to the lackluster minifigures. There are just three of them and they are very, very mundane with their legs and torsos having been used a million times in other sets. There isn’t a single new or original print and even the faces and hair pieces feel very run-off-the-mill. It just lacks that tiny bit of originality we all love to see, let alone the numbers. Point in case: Given that there are a number of side builds, there could easily have been double the number of figures ore more to populate those extras. Another group of wanderers passing by and sitting down at the table is really not that far-fetched, you know.

There are also a bunch of critters built from bricks, in this case a skunk and a beaver, but on that one I stand by my old criticism: It really wouldn’t hurt if LEGO included custom-molded animals in this series just like they do elsewhere. Yes, extra molds cost money, but it should not be much of an issue in the day and age of computer-based manufacturing processes. And even if they didn’t produce new molds – dragging out an old bear mold or similar would have totally worked for this set as well.

Side Builds

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the set comes with a couple of small buildable extras, contributing notably to this feeling that something is missing or incomplete in the minifigure department because ultimately they end up being lifeless scene decoration.

The first such bit is a picknick table like you can often find it in national parks and wilderness reserves, either completely built from logs and raw wood, or as in this case, from pre-fabricated concrete elements with a bunch of wooden plates bolted on. in this case it’s apparently supposed to be near the edge of a lake with the fishing rod and all, but this idea is conveyed pretty poorly simply because there isn’t enough of a discernible shore line. The blue parts would have needed to be extended quite a bit along with some more grass or sand beach around the table. That might also have allowed space for adding a trash can and fire cage, which would have made the scene more interesting.

Undeniably the most superfluous bit of scenery is the pine tree. At this point I really think this has been done to death and there have been uncounted variations on this in every Christmas or nature themed set, including in the various LEGO magazines. On a general level there’s nothing wrong with that, but they really need to shake up the formula. In this case the tree could at least have been part of a group of many such younger trees on a clearing or in the opposite direction, they should have opted for a huge tree. The way it is in its current form feels neither here nor there.

The canoe isn’t that great, either. I get what they were going for, but to me this is similar to the point I made about the animals: Why not simply throw in one or two of the molded version from City, in new colors if need be to make things more worthwhile and interesting?

 

The Combo

One of the possible reasons for the limited success of this set, and many, many people have already pointed this out, is perhaps that it doesn’t fit the minifigure scale. In this particular case this means that the car/ trailer combo itself is about one third too large at least. This can be seen in the overview image further up. However, once you take the minifigs out of the equation everything looks nice and proportionate in relation to one another.

Still, you mustn’t underestimate how big the model actually is, especially when both vehicular components are combined. Those approximately 40 cm in length also make it a bit unwieldy when handling things freely, so you may always want to separate the two sections. That’s going to happen a lot, anyway, simply due to the weight and the small tow bar not being able to handle much resistance. Other than rolling around the combination on a smooth surface, the risk of it self-decoupling is quite high as soon as something gets stuck.

The Car

The car in my opinion is the more interesting part of the whole set and I think if they had sold it standalone as a set would have made for a reasonably popular item. Of course with its white stripes it is on some level reminiscent of the Ford Anglia from the respective Harry Potter sets, but its overall shape is more in line with a Mini Cooper or older Fiat 500 models, I think.

The main attraction, if you want to call it that, are the many Dark Azure parts, some of which premiere on this model like the 1 x 2 x 1 curved slope. This is of course subject to point of view, as it’s a divisive color. Some hate it for not being blue enough, some dislike it for already being too blue. Personally I’m okay with it, but it’s true: LEGO have yet to come up with a set where they use this color and make you go “Yes, they couldn’t have gone with anything else!”. If you will, it’s kind of too replaceable and unremarkable, both in the good and bad meaning of the word.

The car has a decent play value, as both the doors and trunk can be opened and offer sufficient space inside to place your minifigure and load up some equipment. Sadly, though, the set doesn’t provide any of that. not a single piece of baggage or even a spare tire, so you have to source them from your own stock.

 

The front hood/ bonnet on the other hand cannot be opened nor is there even a hint of a motor imitation. One thing you will also notice is that all transparent parts kind of drown in the blue surroundings and disappear or turn into ugly dark colors. Here the designers should really learn their lesson and always underpin these spots with White or Pearl Silver elements pretty much like real car lights’ reflectors.

 

The Trailer

The trailer, while recognizably modeled after a larger real world example that may in fact even exist somewhere, is still a lot less interesting than the car, all things considered. i don’t know what it is, but somehow this didn’t click with me at all.

From the exterior the most noticeable thing is of course the stripe pattern. It’s done decently enough and flows around the whole perimeter. other than that there is very little to say about the external design, the combined window/ air conditioning unit on the roof perhaps being the most noteworthy. The two integrated stowage boxes above the tow axle are also nice, though ultimately not that useful for actually keeping stuff in there.

On the right hand-side there’s a sun roof. Unfortunately the designers opted, of all things, for the regular green color, which to me makes the whole thing look very unpleasant. they also didn’t bother to at least create an even stripe pattern, further reducing the aesthetic appeal in my view. that aside, what bugs me the most about the roof is that it cannot be stowed away elegantly. Neither does it properly butt flat against the side wall nor is there a compartment to slide it in. You have to genuinely remove it if you don’t want it to get in the way, but have no storage option other than dumping it inside the trailer. This hasn’t really been thought through that well.

 

 

 

The interior can be accessed in multiple ways. Naturally, within the play world’s logic there is a door to get inside. This is nice in that it’s the version with the horizontal bars in black which oddly enough is a pretty rare commodity. One would think that since this element has existed for a while it would have been used in a ton of sets, but no, so far only three…

The second way of gaining access is to simply remove the roof. That is also pretty much the only sensible option if you actually want to change something of the internal layout and reach certain areas. The basic arrangement is already “realistic” in a sense, nicely reflecting the crammed space in these types of vehicles. Funny enough, despite the model being oversized for minifig scale, it feels just as constricted.

Finally, you can open the left hand side wall’s rear two-thirds. This is not that different from the Surfer Van (31079), but it has been executed a bit better here. Instead of a very long plate element that cause the whole section to bend multiple shorter plates and bricks are used, allowing for the small gaps from the manufacturing tolerances to balance things out and compensate the tension. Opening up this segment is also the only way to access the bathroom/ toilet. It’s in its own way a cute touch, but somehow always gets in the way and feels a bit unnecessary. If I were to use the model for serious play, I’d probably simply rip it out to free up the space.

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Concluding Thoughts

I’ve had worse sets in my short LEGO career, but at the same time my enthusiasm for this set is limited. Personally I don’t even care for the minifig scale issue and on the face of it, all components are designed well enough, yet the spark won’t jump over. I suppose it’s a combination of this being ultimately still rather mundane and a bit boring plus the off-putting price. You know, I understand that they need to have this subject covered in every other product cycle, yet after a while it gets a bit stale because you’ve seen it before.

That and the fact that I can’t fathom who they are targeting with an 80 Euro “play set”. If I had kids, I would think very long and hard to get them a set that you also could buy an even nicer collectible car for like the Fiat 500 (10271), which kind of is the point. A collector’s item this set is not, it just has an outrageously insane price. To me it still comes down to that selling the car separately at half the cost would very likely have made for a much more satisfying experience. So if you are considering this one, make sure you get it as cheap as possible. Otherwise take your money elsewhere.

RV on the Beach – Surfer Van (31079)

Last week we had the hottest day of the year so far, and while today it’s quite the opposite with temperatures only reaching autumn levels, it still seems more than adequate to talk about a rather summer-themed set like the Surfer Van (31079) from the Creator 3in1 series..

Good news first: I got this set as a gift from my brother, so it didn’t cost me a single penny, but you can get it for around 20 Euro almost everywhere. The set had been released last year, so naturally at the point of writing this article there is no longer much of a price competition and everyone has it on some sort of discount, which can only be a good thing. This is even better since in terms of the sheer bulk of pieces you’re getting quite a bit of stuff and it seems more than a fair price. As a matter of fact similar to the Race Plane (31094) this may be one of the few occasions where even the original 30 Euro asking price might be okay. There’s a caveat, though, so read through to the end before making a decision.

The set allows you to build a reasonably large RV (recreational vehicle) or in the more generalized sense a van converted for travelling and camping as the primary model. I tried to figure out what type it is supposed to represent, but me not being a “car guy” I couldn’t pin it down. Overall it looks very American, anyway, so it’s likely not anything I would recognize. The other models didn’t interest me that much. I tend to think, though, that the little buggy could be worth a try one of these days.

The color scheme looks okay, but ultimately feels boring. It looks too much like a classic Volkswagen Bully for my taste. They should have gone for something fresher and tried something different There’s enough summer-ish, bright colors to choose from even in LEGO‘s limited palette. I tend to think a Lime Green/ Bright Green combo with an orange pin stripe could have looked pretty awesome as could have Bright Light Orange with Bright Light Blue.

On the other hand – for me as a European even those boring standard beige/ ivory (Tan) liveries with brown-ish stripes (Dark Orange etc.) that seem so popular across the pond might have been interesting at least. You get the drift – I’m just thirsty for something that tickles my art-sy brain or at least feels a bit less repetitive and mundane compared to what I get to see everyday.

Now for the problematic parts. One of the biggest issues you will be facing with this set are warping issues in the parts. The roof is particularly bad, as it consists of only a long, narrow plate onto which some slopes are attached to form the contours of the roof. This begins to bend up immediately like a springboard, being that on the underside there are no additional plates or bricks that would counter the forces on the top. No matter how much you push and press, there is always a gap somewhere.

Unfortunately the roof is not the only place where this is an issue, as in particular the left side that swings open (see further down) suffers a similar problem, if not as prominently. It’s built in part on 1 x 10 plates that expose a similar behavior. This being attached to the somewhat flimsy one plate high flat hinges also doesn’t help. Could this be fixed or avoided? Yes and no. Depending on how lucky your are, the issues could not even be noticeable. Otherwise you may be in trouble.

Point in case: After I gave the set a poor build quality rating in the customer survey, I got contacted by one of their service agents and they of course offered to replace the faulty parts. In my opinion this would be kinda pointless, as due to the specific nature of the issue you would have to replace a lot of parts and experiment around which one works best in which position. You would need to request so many parts that you bump into their internal 50 pieces limit and then the whole thing possibly won’t work out as you may still need to order more parts just to try.

Similarly, the second option of ordering different parts could be just as troublesome. Personally I’m of the opinion that one unit wide plates shouldn’t even exist in variants longer than 1 x 8 at most due to those issues, so the only “real” solution naturally would be to use shorter plates ans split the lengths covered wherever those long ones are used originally. Simple as it may sound, it wouldn’t be a straightforward replacement then, either, as of course you would still need to pay attention to get good overlap and interlocking of parts.

See what I’m getting at? To me this is a much larger overall engineering problem and I’m frankly puzzled how this could get through LEGO‘s internal review process before release. No doubt someone at least was aware of the risk.

The whole matter is a bit sad, as regardless of all that you are actually getting a nice model that has been crafted with lovely details. The interior is fully decked out and could almost work in reality as well.

The driver’s cockpit is able to fully accommodate two minifigures (unlike many other vehicles) and also supposedly serves as the only entry port to the aft section. This is perhaps a bit unrealistic. Most such vehicles would still provide access through an extra door on the side or the rear. I also feel that it’s a bit detrimental to the layout of the cockpit as it lacks any details. Foregoing this centralized “door”, making the cockpit one or two studs longer, having the seats on turntables to swivel around and having that extra door somewhere would simply have allowed more design options.

The living and sleeping area itself is nicely done and functional as you would expect. It really makes sense, is logical and follows the standard rules of most such vehicles with the bed being a large area snuggled into the rear and a small kitchen zone while monitors and tables can be folded away.

Since storage space is a premium in such vehicles every nook and cranny has to be used and so naturally the bed can be opened like a chest.

I promise I’ll stop complaining after that, but unfortunately this is one last area that we need to talk about. It’s not that I don’t get the concept and in fact as a display model where it’s just left shut this would be perfectly okay, but as a play feature the engineering is just not sufficient. As evidenced in the photos, the hinges just come off. It’s rather the norm than the exception and I actually had to fiddle around to get a photo where they open correctly while still attached to the Medium Blue tiles representing the blankets.

The obvious solution would of course be to simply attach a plate or those inverted round plates, but the caveat to that is the reduction of available space in the end only making the bed higher would genuinely fix it while keeping this play feature intact. Otherwise you probably shouldn’t give it a second thought and just leave it closed.

As a surfer van inevitably this has to have some beach accessories like chairs and an actual surf board plus a small barbecue grill. Not much to write home about, but it looks the part, giving a feeling of the vehicle being loaded to the brim when its attached and still looking okay when put up separately.

On the whole I really want to love this model, but there are quite a number of “if”s and “but”s attached that need to be considered. Fixing or improving them might prove an exercise in patience and may also require to obtain some alternate extra parts by whatever means, be that bugging LEGO‘s service with a support case to get replacements or buying them on your own dime from somewhere.

If you don’t care for those pesky details and are just looking for a playable model for your kids, then this one is pretty perfect as it gives them plenty to explore, looks reasonably realistic and is pretty robust, no matter what. kids won’t even mind if the roof comes off too easily just because it’s bent.

At any rate, this is an extreme case of “Your mileage may vary” depending on your personal priorities. My personal view remains that this is a good idea squandered by some poor design choices and while the issues are all fixable, one shouldn’t need to worry over such things on a commercial boxed model even if it’s a relatively cheap one by LEGO standards…

Mustard Pizza? – Pizza Cart (60150)

One of the good things about pre-Christmas season is that it brings some opportunities to fulfill your LEGO desires and get your fix cheap because there are lots of special promotions and discounts even in your friendly neighborhood grocery store. Sifting through the info flyers this weekend reminded me that I had this little gem in my collection already, so I’m posting my thoughts on it just in case someone might consider it as a small Christmas present and is looking for an opinion.

I got the Pizza Cart (60150) set in October when it was on sale in a large drugstore’s toy department for something like 12 Euros and that’s what it is typically being sold for in those promotions I mentioned as well. That also is the sweet spot that I’d consider a fair price, given that the model is basically a “shake box to assemble” simple affair. That’s not supposed to say it’s bad or any of that, it’s just not going to keep you busy for long and the suggested retail price of 20 Euros doesn’t feel warranted in that regard.

I don’t do much City stuff, but the overall building style seems very prototypical/ stereotypical and judging from photos is used pretty much on every van-like vehicle of this type and size these days with only the details varying. Still, I think it’s nice, regardless, since overall it makes for a very balanced appearance and could be interpreted as many different car models from different manufacturers without explicitly hinting at a specific one.

The big difference and standout feature is of course the color scheme. For me as a German it’s a bit awkward, as the yellow body and red trim are too reminiscent of the postal service/ DHL parcel delivery vehicles that drive around here. Yes, for a while they were in fact even using a Dark Red in parts, which makes this even more of a strange coincidence. LEGO‘s overcranked color corrections on their promotional photos and the packages to me also made it look like the yellow was in fact the more orange-y Bright Light Orange, but that’s not the case. It’s really just plain old Yellow.

Either way, based on my gut feeling I would have preferred a different color combination, but of course it’s clear that this could then feel just as odd to people from other countries where those same post vehicles are Blue, White, Orange and so on. Perhaps prominently using a third color on the exterior would have avoided some of that? Dunno. In any case, to me the car just doesn’t spell “pizza truck”. I can’t get over those years  of subconscious conditioning. 😉

Arguably this can also be attributed to the lack of some details and decoration. Granted, I never use them, but the sticker sheet on this set is rather sparse and not particularly well designed. There are for instance no sticker for the large rear panel or the bonnet. Usually this type of car is covered all over the place with self-promotion for the foods offered, has chalk-boards to write on the prizes or printed posters with that info and then some….

For all intents and purposes, this should look like a super-busy vehicle that hits the road every day and has a bit of a rustic charme. It’s also missing a standee that could have had this pricing info or prominently featured an arrow and some text to point the people to the delicious food and a garbage bin would have been nice, too.

The interior is not particularly logical, being that it suggests pizza comes out of a small microwave like oven. There is also no real workbench, no fridge/ freezer and any number of kitchen utilities…. Most puzzling, though, is the fact that there isn’t even a door to get inside there. Given the limitations of the small size and the simplicity of constructions those are forgivable omissions, it just feels incomplete to me.

The winged flaps/ doors are designed nicely and even have smooth inverted tiles to stabilize the connections on the undersides. What’s not so nice is the construction of the hinge. You can really see how the middle segment with the two hinge elements formed this kind of pattern and then they filled it in left and right with some modified tiles to make it look continuous. It doesn’t make much sense for a million reasons, though, and I would have preferred had they just raised the roof one plate height and faired over everything with tiles to disguise the hinges.

My article probably makes it sound terrible, but I’m really just nitpicking over minor issues. Taken at face value and what the set is meant for it is delivering what you expect. It’s meant to be a playable set to put in your city, not something to store and admire in your showcase and it does this job pretty decently. It’s a solid build that doesn’t distract with fancies and despite not being ultimately realistic offers good play value along with some interesting parts in nice colors. For 12 Euros you can’t go wrong with it, it’s just that I would spend my money on other sets if the price was any higher than that.