|
Lego 5560 Creator: Large Pink Brick Box
by Thricemummy
My 6 year old daughter did really well in one of her after school activities so her father decided to buy her a well done present. The Large Pink Lego box! This is the product description courtesy of Amazon:
This pink storage case with transparent lid is portable and reusable for years of play and imagination! Includes ... hundreds of great LEGO elements, a minifigure and even a horse. Contains 402 bricks in 12 colors: three shades of pink, red, yellow, orange, two shades of blue, two shades of green, brown, and grey Features a building plate, windows, door, horse and 1 minifigure Lots of accessories included too: brush, cups, pot, golden cup, flowers, fences and wheels Instruction booklet contains 6 different building ideas.
Sounds brilliant, right?
Here are my daughters thoughts on the product:
When i was a little younger, me and my little sister received this box of Lego. We were really excited and began building straight away with my mum. The instructions confused us a bit ...until we got to the bottom of the box. What we found there sort of amazed us: bits of other Lego pieces were there, like the car windscreen, the house window cup of some sort, taps, bits to make flowers with and the horse and girl. Also there were roof tiles.. The only problem with this was that the tiles fell ( or a better word-collapsed) if you pressed too hard, which was sort of necessary if you wanted to attach them with something. On the whole, it's brilliant!
Advantages: girl colours, instruction booklets, new pieces.
Disadvantages: tiles keep collapsing.
Overall: brilliant and cool.
Rating: 4stars.
But then... kids are easily impressed at times.
My take: 402 bricks? They barely covered the base of the box! The box was huge compared to the amount of bricks that came with it. Sure sure, it allows plenty of storage space for other lego sets you may buy..blah blah...but thats not the point is it? We thought the description LARGE referred to the amount of pieces that came with the box...not the size of the box itself.
That aside, the product is still pretty good. I would recommend it...it contains lovely girly colours which will always appeal to little girls everywhere. The accessories likewise are loved by my girls. It contains instructions for houses...i think 2 or 3 of which my daughters attempted...and were frustrated by (see collapsing comment by daughter above) My contribution to the building of these houses were...to find the correct pieces. This took far longer than you would have guessed as the pieces are quite small and similar (to my weak and bespectacled eyes anyway). Nevertheless, little girls don't require instructions and specific pieces to enjoy themselves and create something fabulous! Which is exactly what my daughters went on to do after having tired of the (boring) instructions. A great buy once you get over the disappointment of the amount of pieces. Read the complete review |
|
Lego 4182 Pirates Of The Carribean: The Cannibal Escape
by supersonic75
*~*Introduction and reason for purchase*~*
My two sons are aged 7 and 8 years old and are at the 'crazy about lego' stage and have various different sets. Combined with their love of the Pirates Of The Caribbean films it was inevitable they would want the lego associated with the franchise and at Christmas last year they ... received a few of the sets from myself and their dad and also from their grandparents.
This review discusses 'The Cannibal Escape' set.
*~*Price, packaging & availability*~*
Cannibal Escape comes housed in a sturdy and rather sleek looking cardboard box which to be honest doesn't seem very big given the fact this set costs around the £20 plus mark. I purchased mine from Littlewoods catalogue as I wanted to use some commission to part pay for it so it was slightly more expensive at £26.99, though the general RRP does seem to be £19.99 but it's always worth looking around online for before buying.
The box is easy enough to open and is actually rather attractive as it features a scene from the film (though obviously depicted as a lego image) and shows a cannibal hut with bone cage, chief's throne and several characters loitering in the background. I like the fact it shows this scene as it gives you an idea as to how it will look when eventually built up.
Inside the box each individual part is bagged up separately (the cannibal hut and chief's throne etc are all individually sealed) so it makes the task of building everything up slightly less daunting.
*~*What's included in the set*~*
Inside the box are the following:
*Lego man Captain Jack Sparrow
*Lego man Will Turner
*2 Lego cannibals
*Bone cage
*Chief's throne
*Cannibal hut
* 2 snakes
*1 bird
* bones and skulls
*Also included is a poster, which a different one comes free in each POTC Lego set, and this particular one features aptly a cannibal scene with Will escaping from the bone cage (nothing violent though as it is lego at the end of the day!).
*~*Our experience of playing with this?*~*
Both of my sons are lego mad and whilst they have quite an extensive collection as it is they both did ask if they could possibly have one or two of the POTC sets for Christmas as they are both huge fans of the films, particularly my oldest son. I'd been looking around for a while for which sets to buy and as my oldest son Kieran kept hinting towards the Cannibal Escape this was the first of the sets that I purchased. As mentioned I did actually buy mine from Littlewoods catalogue, solely to take advantage of a build up of commission, but I had physically handled the box when I saw it in our local Toymaster store and was surprised at how small the box appeared to say it was priced at £19.99 there.
On Christmas morning the boys unwrapped the lego first (after Kieran deducted which he thought was lego by shaking the wrapped boxes first!) and the rest of the day was spent building up the sets with their dad, this being the first choice as it had been the favourite contender all along.
Inside the box as mentioned are all the separate parts already in sealed bags, and I must say this did make it easier to start building up as there were so many little pieces that otherwise it would have been a formidable task finding what goes where had they all been in one big bag together. Whilst my husband did the majority of the tricky building I did partake in some and found the set to be quite hard to put together at times. The age range is 7 to 14 years and I would say that it is probably aimed more for over 10's as the tiny lego pieces are quite difficult to grasp hold of to fit into place and my 8 year old struggled throughout. My husband built it up after about 45 minutes and whilst the instructions were clearly laid out it was a difficult set to assemble.
*~*Impressed?*~*
The boys were highly impressed with the set once built up and I have to admit it did look very good as the bone cage in particular has a small plastic chain attached that can both raise it and lower it and this proved a hit with my two. There is a small roasting spit which the lego characters can easily be attached to without too much fumbling and even the chief's throne can be adjusted backwards so there is a definite attraction other than it just being 'regular' lego.
Once built up though the set doesn't fit back into the box as it is quite bulky with the cannibal hut itself measuring 6" wide and 5" tall so it ended up getting put into a designated plastic tub that I ended up buying afterwards (and which the other sets are now also stored). My boys really like playing with this set but because it's now stored with the other sets it soon started to come apart and was tricky to distinguish which parts went where again so it doesn't get played with in full now unfortunately.
There is plenty of detail on each individual character and the likeness between the real Jack Sparrow in the films and the lego version is uncanny as is the character of Will. The two cannibals (who Kieran said are called Hungry Cannibal and Angry Cannibal on the wii game apparently) are full of colourful patterns and certainly look the part.
I would say that this is a fantastic set for fans of POTC and lego and though it is expensive for what it actually is though as it's lego brand that can be said about most lego. My sons do love the individual characters with Jack Sparrow being the firm favourite, and the bone cage it has to be said is quite amazing as it's made up of tiny lego bones!
A nice Lego set but difficult to build up and doesn't fit back in the box afterwards so soon gets 'demolished' though is relatively sturdy as long as kids aren't too rough with it (even the bone cage). My boys have had a lot of play with this product and that's the main thing at the end of the day so on behalf of Kieran and Zak it gets 5/5. Read the complete review |