Subject:
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Go the Designer series!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Sat, 6 May 2006 22:56:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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1911 times
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I sort-of broke out of my self-imposed Lego exile on Friday night. I bought
the
4507 Prehistoric Creatures (T-Rex on the box cover) - 719 parts
4884 Wild Hunters (lion on the box cover) - 630 parts
as birthday gifts for some primary school aged girls and had a good building
session with them on Friday when we built a model out of each set (some kind
of horned dinosaur and the lion).
These are really very good sets. There are instructions for a number of
models, the models look good and as a parts collection are excellent value.
From memory, the shelf prices were $60 and $50 but I got them at a 20% off
sale, making them about 6-7c per part.
The prehistoric creatures set gives you a lot of red and dark red, together
with browns, greys, blacks and white for accents. The wild hunters set is
predominantly tan and shades of brown (including that burnt orange), with
black, grey and white accents (plus some green parts). The traditional
inappropriate blue part (so beloved by Richy) seems to have been omitted.
Without consulting the inventory, the impression you get of these sets is
that the parts are predominantly slopes and regular bricks and plates. There
are also a lot of wedges and curves. There are quite a lot of hinges in this
set, to help build these rather these very non-traditional Lego structures,
including some new and somewhat wierd-looking click-hinge pieces for
handling shoulder and elbow joints. But apart from these new pieces and a
few teeth pieces, everything else in the box is really good general building
stock that could be used for other projects. There were a few Technics
bricks (with the holes) and a few Technics pins and axles.
The finished models are quite impressive -- the kids were thrilled and other
adults present were amazed you could make such things with Lego -- they
really look like the animal!
The playability is not great though. To get the realistic external shape,
there are a lot of little wedge plates built snot-style, which makes it
difficult to grip the models on the sides without knocking them off. I think
a head-on combat between the dinosaur and the lion would have seen a lot of
blood split by both :-) But as display pieces, they were great.
One comment though. The boxes say 6+ and 7+, well, the kids involved were a
bit older than this, and they could not build some of the more complicated
bits (especially the legs with lots of snots) without adult help. I built
the lion legs and then found I had got it wrong and had to rebuild them --
it was NOT easy to follow the instructions as things are on different angles
with things like legs. So, if you are buying these sets for kids, you may
have to help with the construction at times, as the kids were getting a bit
frustrated, and don't expect to get it right the first time yourself.
Of course maybe if we had started with some of the easier models first, we
might have learned a bit more about the techniques used in the joints and
legs first before tackling the bigger models, but the kids wanted to start
on the more complicated models so that was that!
I think these would be a great gift if you are looking for something that
both parents and kids could enjoy together (not always an easy thing to
find). I'm definitely tempted to go back and buy these sets just for
myself -- no, no, Kerry, wait until after you finish your studies!
Kerry
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Go the Designer series!
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| (...) snip (...) The legacy lives on in the innappropriate colour that may or may not be blue. For eg. I got the new Batmobile recently, and some of the internal structure is made of yellow parts. I figure either a)it saves them shutting down (...) (18 years ago, 7-May-06, to lugnet.loc.au, FTX)
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