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7396
Lego Time / Clock
Creator Alarm Clock
Ages N/A, 10 Pcs. (Unofficial Count) (C)2001.
3 manual pages, one describing clock features, a second showing how to read
a clock, and the third explaining the warranty in several languages.
Price Range: $29.99 CAD at Walmart.
(Also seen before at Shop@Home, Bricks and Blocks, and Winners)
RATINGS (Scale: Must-Have Excellent Very-Good Good Fair Poor)
Set: FAIR / Models: VERY-GOOD / Playability: EXCELLENT
DECALS? No
SPECIAL FEATURES/COMPATIBILITY
[X] 1.5V AA Clock Mechanism
SET DESCRIPTION
This is a very unusual product in the sense that it's basically a large
plastic clock mechanism with dots on top to attach Lego bricks to. The
clock is extremely easy to read and obviously meant for children to learn to
read time on. The analog clock has a second, minute and hour hand, as well
as an alarm hand. Several models exist in various themes and associated
colour schemes.
This specific model is blue with a red bezel ring, a white clock face with
coloured lettering, with a yellow snooze button on the front and a green
alarm switch on the top, which coincidentally is 2x2 dots.
Two 40t Technic gears and halfaxle bushings plug into the back of the clock
box, allowing for easy setting of the Alarm time and the clock time.
Apart from the clock itself, it appears each set also comes with a set of
corresponding accessory pieces. This set comes with two Creator figures,
Tina and Max, two 1x4 white Creator fence pieces, and a 8x16 green baseplate.
SPECIAL ELEMENTS
Obviously, the single special element in this set is the clock mechanism
itself-it's a large square box, 4x12x10 bricks tall with gears for setting
protuding from the back as well as a thin bezel on the front. The plastic
of the casing is not like Lego plastic, it seems slightly thinner or
cheaper, but the unit seems easily integrated into other Lego bricks and
accessories. The clock includes a beeping alarm with snooze function, which
also functions to turn on a small grain of wheat incandescant lamp in the
lower left corner of the clock itself.
The bezel has a movable ring with minute intervals marked on it. This I
presume is to use as a crude stopwatch to see how many minutes has elapsed
since setting the bezel position.
IMPRESSION
The first time I read about the Lego clocks, I thought it was yet another
attempt at extending the Lego brand. Some of them are pretty nifty
(keychains) and others don't really make my day (Lego pillowcases?) I
though the clocks were nice but overpriced as they were only through Shop@Home.
A few months later, someone in my graduate engineering class was wearing a
Lego watch-she'd happened to have received it as a cute gift and thought it
was a neat thing to wear. (Now, admittedly, she was a library sciences
Masters program so...) It seems the Lego timepieces have a potential market
beyond enthusiasts and kids, though it's not evident just how large it is.
So, when the Lego clock turned up at Walmart recently, I figured I might as
well buy one for the sake of seeing what they were about. The price was
right, $29.99, which I was much more likely to pay than to mail order the
thing from Shop@Home.
I decided to pick the least offensive colour combination, the Creator themed
clock. The others had better part selections, but had largely unreadable or
very specific theme oriented designs for the clock face. The Creator one is
the most basic.
It appears the Creator clock is one of several which were not initially
announced. These clocks include a baseplate and more compact packaging, but
the clock itself appears the same apart from colours and accessories.
The alarm is very quiet, but does alternate pattern in beeping, which is an
interesting human factors design choice. The alarm button is well placed on
top, but the snooze button is at the lower corner, difficult to press
without knocking the thing over.
The gearing to adjust the clock time and alarm is implemented in an unusual
way: The large gears, when in place, make it too easy to adjust the main
clock time. This may be for the purpose of allowing the time to be easily
set to teach examples of reading times.
RATINGS (Scale: Must-Have Excellent Very-Good Good Fair Poor)
Set Rating
FAIR: As a set, the Clock is pretty meagre-it adds to your collection the
way the Speed Regulator or Brick Separator increases building possibilities.
Model Rating
VERY-GOOD: The clock itself is quite cute and visually attractive. It has
an unmistakably Lego style to it, whereas other Lego branded ancillary
products don't. The colour scheme was nice, and I think there's a lot of
interesting things you can do with this clock.
However, there aren't a lot of elements to begin with, so one can't say the
elements are effectively used in the model, nor can one judge its fit with
other products. Certainly the colours fit the Creator product line quite well.
Playability Rating
EXCELLENT: As a child, the most obvious use of this clock is to learn how
to read an analog clock. What's nice about this clock is that can be built
around and personalized, which makes it quite novel. My only complaint is
the gears in the back-it would be truly neat if the clock could drive some
sort of extra mechanism. It would take a lot more hardware to generate the
torque required, admittedly.
Likes/Dislikes
-The colour scheme and design is nice.
-The clocks are overpriced, though Walmart pricing wasn't bad.
Scale
The clock is one of the few objects in the Lego world which is at human
scale. It doesn't fit any figure scale.
Errors
None.
Extra Elements
None.
CONCLUSION
<Would you buy the set again, for yourself or as a gift? Would you
recommend the set?>
Would I buy it again? Probably. For those who will buy anything with a
Lego logo on it, (ie, a Lego turkey baster, a Lego dehumifier etc) then you
probably already have one of these. For the pragmatic, the Sony clock radio
I got at Costco has an AM/FM radio, two alarm settings and 3" tall digits
for the same price. But for those of us on the fence, you might consider
it: It's a novelty but a reasonably well executed one at that. For me, I
only bought it because I didn't have to mail order it.
REVIEWER INFORMATION
Review Written: September 2002
By: calum Tsang, tsangc@mie.utoronto.ca
Age 25 Favorite Lines/Themes: Town, Train, Technic/Mindstorms, Boats
COPYRIGHT
This review is Copyright 2002, by the author as named above. The
author grants publication rights for all uses, public and private,
with the following exceptions: all information in the document must
be published in full; any for-profit use requires express written
permission by the author for publication in full or in part
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