I love getting cheap Lego. It’s almost like a challenge to see how little you can pay per piece. But the £14.99, 81 piece Lego Star Wars First Order Stormtrooper (75114) does not meet that criteria. At 18.5p per piece, this is some of the most expensive Lego I’ve ever bought (although Amazon now have it for less than £12).

But is it really Lego? With the large number of moulded and printed pieces designed specifically for this set, you may struggle to find ways to use these in your own builds. Similar to the recent Hero Factory and Bionicle sets, it uses the Lego Character and Creature Building System (CCBS) to create a movie accurate, highly posable action figure out of a series of bones and ball joints. It snaps together very easily, and with so many of the parts being unique, you could probably guess where most of went simply by ignoring the instructions and just looking at the picture on the box.

The finished model reminds me a lot of the Super Hero Masher range, which has a similar ball joint for connecting arms, legs and the head. The idea of those is that you can swap Captain America’s body and legs for The Hulk’s, or create weird non-humans with nothing but giant legs and heads for arms. The Lego figure is much more detailed, and if you had more than one in this range, you’d have the same creative opportunity.

The problem is that they’re too brittle. The body parts don’t connect to the ball joints with a strong enough connection, which means it’s easy for them to fall off even when trying to pose the figure. It’s not completely terrible, they’re not going to fall off with every movement, it’s just a factor of the design that smashing two of them together (as younger kids are bound to do) is likely to leave a small pile of armor sitting on the floor.

Which is a shame, because it’s a very nice looking figure, with play features including a gun that actually fires projectiles. I just don’t see that Noah could play with it unless he was a bit older and a lot more careful. For the AFOL or even just a big Star Wars fan, they would look great as a collection on a shelf along with other characters in the range.

I was highly skeptical of these, but after building one they’re much nicer than I gave them credit for. I just wish they were a bit tougher.

I’ll admit it, I have a soft spot for Lego buildings. My favourite sets are probably the modular range, and I always wish they made them larger and more elaborate.

Lakeside Lodge is of course the complete opposite of that, it’s a 368 piece set that has an RRP of only £19.99, but which Amazon are currently selling for £15.99. At the official price, that’s just 5.4p per piece, and at the Amazon price that’s close to 4.3p. Considering that some of the Star Wars sets are more like 10-15p, and even sometimes close to 20p, this is not only a great value build, but a good way to get some cheap pieces for your own builds in the future.

The model includes the house, a single male minifigure with blue top and beige legs, and a moose. Yes. You read that correctly. A moose. It’s also a 3-in-1 Creator set, which means there instructions for three variations of the house, the one in the box and another two available from the Lego website. I only built the main model, so I can’t talk much about the others, but the build process was very straightforward. It’s aged for 7-12, but a competent builder of younger than that could probably manage without too much difficulty. Since this is a house, you’re literally using these as bricks, so they go together very quickly and easily.

It’s a very similar set to the 31025 Mountain Hut that came out a couple of years ago, and both of them were definitely cut from the same cloth. They each have the same colour palette, and they also both open up on a hinge so you can see the detail inside.

I have that other set too, and I’m interested in the possibilities in combining the two of them together on a larger baseplate, extending the water, and putting a forest or flower field between the two of them. A mountain range at one side and the sea at the other. The upcoming 31051 Lighthouse Point could be a further extension of that.

This kind of set is easily overlooked in a sea of Star Wars and Super Hero releases, but the value proposition is just so much better here I can’t help but recommend it. The play proposition is definitely there too, especially if you’ve got a few other minifigs, with plenty of opportunity to combine it with other sets like the 4×4 with Powerboat we reviewed, or any camping or outdoor related sets and turn it into a real holiday cabin near the lake.

Yes I like Lego buildings, and this one is no different. Now can we have some larger and more elaborate ones please?

I have a soft spot for Lego City vehicles, because I think they’re a great way for younger kids to get started with Lego. They’re often quite cheap (this one is £24.99, but you can easily get it for less than £17) and they never have too many pieces for small hands to put together (this one has 301).

The 4×4 with Powerboat is the latest in a long line of vehicle/boat combinations in the Lego City range, and this one comes in a very natty orange and black colour scheme. There are three separate models, and three instruction booklets. First you build the 4×4, which has some really nice chunky wheels, then the trailer, and finally the powerboat itself. There are also two minifigs, male and female, one of them to drive the car and one of them to pilot the boat.

None of these are particularly complicated builds, there’s not enough pieces involved for them to be. The car isn’t a whole lot different from any other recent Lego City car, but it rolls well and has room for a minifig inside. The powerboat also has room for a minifig inside, and is largely made up of a single piece orange hull, onto which you stick various other pieces to add some detail on the top. I know that the aim here is that it can actually float, but it does seem a bit of a cheat when a Lego piece is literally the shape of a boat.

Everything is covered in stickers of various shapes and sizes, including details on the roof of the car, on the sides of the trailer and all over the boat. I don’t think these stickers look like they’re going to be waterproof, so if you do take Lego at their word and play with the powerboat in the bath or sink, you may find it’s not long before you’re covered in the shredded remains of a number 21.

But let’s not be too harsh. This is a cheap toy designed for kids, and Noah is going to have great fun playing with this for a while before it gets recycled for parts. It’s unlikely to be the kind of set an AFOL is going to put on show, and it’s not designed as such.

It’s easy to scoff and say that Lego could do something more interesting than the endless array of boats and cars, but I have no problem with them. Boats and cars are the staple diet of Lego lovers of all ages, and this one can be loved by your kids just the same.