Day three in the Advent calendars brings us a Christmas tree, a decorative lamp with an ornamental sprig of green, and some kind of Gungan catapult thingy.
I had to double-check the boxes to confirm that the Friends set gives us the lamp, and the City set gives us the tree. The oval shield in trans-purple with the printing on it in the Star Wars set is a really neat part. I really like the streetlamp design, but the tree is a pretty common design – every year there’s one very much like this in the Advent calendar set(s).
Tag: friends
Advent 2012 Day 2
The second door in each of our LEGO Advent Calendar sets gives us Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars set, a pink sled in the Friends set, and a chainsaw with log in the City set.
The chainsaw is a clever build, using two pistols (or gas pumps, or fire hose handles, if you like) and a 1×1 brick with studs on four sides. The sled is pretty simple, but it includes “Panel 1 x 2 x 1 with Rounded Corners and Central Divider” in pink! And the less said about Jar Jar the better.
Advent 2012 Day 1
Every year LEGO puts out at least one Advent calendar, each one typically folowing a particular theme. This year for the first time (that I know of) we have three Advent calendars: Star Wars (9509)
I’m writing this on December 4th, so I’m a bit behind. I’m going to catch up by posting the first four entries tonight, and then try to stay on top of them each day. Unlike some bloggers I feel it is important for me to actually open up the set and build it on the day, but this weekend I was so busy and overwhelmed, and only got three hours of sleep Friday and Saturday nights thanks to being out too late and being woken up too early by factors beyond my control. Anyway, I’m back to a more normal sleep schedule now, and will endeavor to stay on top of this with a daily post. Wish me luck!
When I opened up Day 1 in each of the calendars I found a little plastic bag of LEGO parts and a little paper page. Each calendar has a paper page with the legal warnings about choking on small parts and pictures of other sets in that theme. When you open the door for each day, there’s a small picture of the set you are to build on the back side of the door, and you pull out the little plastic bag and build it. There’s no step by step instructions though, so it can be a little more difficult to build the more intricate models than a typical LEGO set that spoon feeds the build to you in individual steps. They’re never all that hard though.
The big surprise I got however came when I opened the Friends calendar for Day #1, and found the wrong parts! I opened a couple of other doors at random and found the same thing. Eventually I figured out that my set was built wrong. I don’t know if they’re all this way or if I just got one that was defective, but the tray that contains all the stuff to build was put in backward. I opened up the box, pulled out the plastic tray with 24 bins in it, turned it around, and put it back in, and then not only Day #1 but the other doors I had opened were now correct.
Anyhow, I built the three models, and here they are – a micro scale space ship for the Star Wars calendar, a minidoll in the Friends calendar, and a firefighter minifig (with an extra helmet and bullhorn) in the City calendar.
The spaceship is the only thing that is at all challenging to build, of course, and the parts assortment is pretty ordinary, so there’s not much to write about.
Friends Second Wave #8: Summer Riding Camp
The final set in the Friends Second Wave is LEGO Friends Summer Riding Camp 3185
First let’s look at the building containing what I call the “canteen” on the ground floor, and bunk beds on the upper floor. The canteen has some nice parts usages to build a counter and what I guess is a vending machine for drinks, and upstairs we have room for two campers to sleep in bunk beds. Out front we have a hedgehog with his food dish, and some nice flowers. Like Olivia’s House, it comes apart into separate modules for each level so you could mix and match them.
The next building is similar, with a classroom on the ground floor (using the printed 4×6 piece from Olivia’s Invention Workshop) and two regular beds instead of bunk beds. Lots of wonderful light purple 1×6 tiles here!
Next there’s a little tack station with a place to hang the reins and store the saddles, and supplies for scrubbing down the horses.
Now we consider one of the most interesting parts of this set – the bathroom facilities. There’s a shower and a room with a toilet and sink. The privacy afforded to our campers here is minimal at best – they’d better hope no boys come sneaking around to peer over or under those shutter doors!
We round out the camp’s furnishings by looking at the front gate, campfire, and corral. These offer some great play possibilities but few great parts. I like all the white axles in the corral though!
My favorite part of this set is the next part, a van and trailer. Clearly inspired by the Volkswagen van of the 1960s-70s, the van really captures the look of that iconic vehicle, except for the fact that those wimpy air-cooled motors were rubbish for towing anything. Hopefully there’s not much in that trunk in the trailer.
Finally here are all the extra parts and (ugh) stickers.
This set sure is massive, and certainly hits the mark in terms of playability factor for girls. But as for parts for an adult builder goes, I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. Like the other buildings in the Friends line, the bricks are mainly tan, which is not that special. There are a lot of parts in the new Friends colors, but it’s probably more economical to source them via BrickLink.
That concludes my review of the Friends sets. Hope you’ve enjoyed them. If you buy these for any kids in your life, or for yourself, post a comment and let me know what you thought. And as always thank you for supporting the site by using my Amazon
Friends Second Wave #7: Heartlake Stables
Today we examine LEGO Friends 3189 Heartlake Stables
This set is the most complex I’ve built so far in this wave. You get two stables and a barn, two horses, and some equestrian accessories. It’s all pretty basic construction, but I imagine girls will be able to have a ton of fun playing with it once built. A few observations I have about the build:
- Dark pink hand truck? that’s new. But each new part/color combination costs LEGO a slot in their pallette. Is it really worth it to produce this in dark pink instead of red? Do you really think it matters to kids to have this part in pink? I’d much rather have some basic bricks and plates in dark pink.
- Use of sliding garage doors held in place by clips is a clever surprise and nice parts usage (the red equestrian hurdle).
- Still annoyed that minidolls can’t sit in the horses. They have to stand in the saddles, which looks strange. Nice to have more colors of horses though.
- 8×16 tiles in dark red!
- 2×4 roof peak slopes in pink!
- Yet another treasure chest sans lid. What’s up with that?
- More stickers. :-(
- I like the helmets with hair coming out the back.
- The well is simple, but cute.
- Another new Friends character, Katharina.
Friends Second Wave #6: Adventure Camper
Today’s set is LEGO Friends 3184 Adventure Camper
This set features a motorhome, trailer, two bicycles (including one in dark teal, a new color for bikes), and some campsite details. Our old friend Olivia is back, and a new friend Nicole joins her.
Unlike some of the other models in this wave of Friends, this is not a recolor of an existing LEGO model. It’s pretty much a complete redesign. It bears a passing resemblance to the motorhome in LEGO City Camper (7639)
The inclusion of bicycles is a nice touch, and I experimented with how to best have a minidoll ride them. Since they’re designed for minifigs, the dolls don’t quite fit perfectly, but I found two good ways to pose them: one with straight legs, similar to a minfig, and one with the hips bent and the feet forward. In both cases the hands can touch the handlebars, but lacking rotatable wrists the dolls can’t grasp the handlebars. That’s better at least than the RV, where their hands don’t go anywhere near the steering wheel – well, the one in the passenger seat can come fairly close! When you sit the two dolls in the front of the RV their arms overlap quite a bit due to the wide position they are in.
Like many of the Friends sets, this one comes with a large assortment of accessory parts – this time, the cooking set in red. The meal that the dolls are preparing to eat is a little strange – two cupcakes (one chocolate, one vanilla) and a carton of orange juice. Meanwhile while they eat dessert a turkey leg is cooking over the fire. I guess when two teenagers go camping without adult supervision, this is the kind of dietary hijinks one should expect.
Friends Second Wave #5: Emma’s Horse Trailer
Today we take a look at LEGO Friends Emmas Horse Trailer 3186
The car and trailer are almost a perfect copy of Lego City Limited Edition Set #7635 4WD With Horse Trailer
This set also includes one of the new Friends horses, previously seen in Heartlake Vet, only this time the horse is white instead of brown. But it’s still not possible for a minidoll to sit or stand in the horse’s cutout. At least now we get a saddle piece, which can fit into the cutout and can accommodate a minidoll rider. As with some of the first wave sets, there is an assortment of ribbons and bows and grooming equipment included in this set. There’s also a little hurdle for equestrian jumping and some extra haybales to raise it up for higher jumping.
Finally there is a little tack station, with an apple and carrot to feed the horse and a place to store the saddle. It has a flower which uses the regular LEGO green flower stem, but instead of the usual sprue with four tear-off flowers it comes with the 1×1 round plate with petals. I don’t recall having seen that combination used in a LEGO set before…?
Overall it seems like a really good playable set for kids … not having kids myself, I can’t really speak too much to that. I’m disappointed that instead of printed parts, this set includes stickers – but by mistake it seems I got two copies of the sticker sheet! I’m more interested in the parts, and we get some lime green 6×6 plates, a yellow box for the food in the tack station, dark tan tall slopes, and a bunch of dark red and pink pieces. I’m sure that the curved panels in dark aqua on the trailer will be useful for something too…
Friends Second Wave #4: Heartlake Flying Club
Having dispensed with the smaller sets we now tackle the medium-sized ones, starting with LEGO Friends Heartlake Flying Club #3063
This is the first one in this series that comes in numbered bags. First we build the airplane, which is a really sweet design, very swooshable. It uses the new style handlebars first seen in Stephanie’s Pet Patrol, which are similar to the ones minifigs have been griping for years but with the ends upturned for minidoll compatibility. Here it works really well as the yoke of an airplane, flown by … Stephanie! The color scheme of the plane, with white wings and an aqua and dark aqua body, is really nice and I’m looking forward to the day when I have enough of these colors to do more MOCs with. This set comes with no fewer than six 1×4 curved slopes in light aqua, which is sure to be good for something. In addition to the plane we also get a cute yellow duckie, a dock with a cute crab and a fairly basic parts assortment, and the clubhouse for the flying club with life ring and some signs (stickers, sadly).
Since you build the plane first, it’s kind of a gradual process in disappointment – the plane has a lot of cool parts and is really swooshable, but the rest of the set is pretty forgettable in terms of parts or building techniques.
Friends Second Wave #3: Mia’s Bedroom
The third in my “Friends Second Wave” reviews is LEGO Friends 3939 Mia’s Bedroom
This set consists of bedroom furnishings – a bed, table with a radio on it, a cabinet of some kind, and the drum set that Mia uses to keep her parents and neighbors awake at all hours of the day and night. I particularly liked the drums and the dark aqua tiles and 2×2 tile with center stud are nice parts to have in that new color. The drums themselves are well designed as well, using black telescope pieces for the cymbals and smaller drums, and a black R2D2 body for the bass drum. The furniture isn’t that exciting, though the macaroni in dark aqua could prove useful. The drum set comes with two printed tiles – one with Mia’s name and one with some sheet music.
Friends Second Wave #2: Andrea’s Bunny House
Last week I posted “Friends Second Wave: Olivia’s Speedboat” and I was going to post more reviews of the second wave of Friends sets, but the weekend got away from me … I posted all the photos on Flickr for several sets but didn’t get around to writing the reviews. But this week I’m determined to catch up. So here goes with review #2, #3938, Andrea’s Bunny House
This is another simple, small set, featuring Andrea (previoulsy seen in Fortnight of Friends – Day 3: Andrea’s Stage and Fortnight of Friends – Day 12: City Park Café) and an adorable little bunny rabbit. It’s a pretty simple set, but it’s nice to get some light orange bricks and pink plates. As a general rule I’m not sure it includes enough special parts to really be worth much, but the bunny is adorable!