This is another Mighty Micros set, this time Captain America vs. Red Skull. It is 95 pieces, and RRP’s at £8.99 but is available in supermarkets and from Amazon for only £6.99.
This is very much like The Flash vs. Captain Cold set I reviewed already, in that it’s aimed at 5-12 year old builders, but is probably a bit too fiddly for those at the lower range of that bracket. It is however a great toy for that group, with Noah still playing with The Flash one over a week since we built it.
I personally think that this is a nicer couple of models than The Flash pair, with far fewer small parts that are likely to break off. Captain America’s tank looks especially great, which still makes these a great impulse buy.
A Lego Cinderella Castle could be on it’s way this September, at least according toallthe Lego sites that are writing about the rumour today. CM4Sci has been dropping information across the web that 71040 will be a D2C version of Cinderella’s castle from Walt Disney World.
D2C sets are those exclusive ones that Lego sells directly to consumers through it’s own stores and website.
As a Lego fan and a fan of WDW, this has the potential to be an interesting set. But the problem with Cinderella’s castle, especially the one in Florida, is that it’s huge. There are smaller versions at other parks, but that’s seen as the definitive version, built when Disney was flush was cash and building something that size was much cheaper. Doing that justice in Lego is going to be tough, especially considering the poor showing of most of the D2C sets we’ve seen so far this year.
Can Lego pull this one off, and if they can, would you buy it? Comment and let us know.
My love of Lego increases almost in line with the size of the model, and if you’re calculating a price to size ratio, Technic sets will often feature as some of the best value. Later this year Lego will be releasing this monstrosity, the Technic Bucket Wheel Excavator. Unfortunately they don’t seem to actually demo it actually excavating anything, but with the combination of motors, buckets, switches, wheels and conveyors this thing has going for it, I expect it to be chewing through my garden later this year.
Much like the Sisyphus model I linked to yesterday, I like Lego which has real character. Where you can see something beyond the fact that it’s made out of plastic bricks. These Cyclops models from Lego 7 are a great example of that, where not only does the model have character, but it also looks like there’s real sense of motion in his positioning.
One day, I’ll work out how to build that kind of model myself.
If there’s something I love watching on Youtube, it’s videos from Tested. I especially enjoy Adam Savage’s one day builds, where he uses his formidable skills in design and fabrication to produce something cool in his amazing workshop.
So when I looked tonight and found that his latest build was one made out of Lego, I just knew I had to mention it here.
In this 22 minute video, he completes the build of a MOC set from Jason Allemann, it’s a Sisyphus Automata, and it’s a really lovely model of Sisyphus pushing a stone forever, with Technic and motor internal to make him move.
The finished build is a really lovely model, with an impressive level of humanity, and a great example of what Lego is capable of in the hands of a talented designer.
As my collection has started to grow, displaying it all has become impossible. What you can see behind me in the videos is barely scratching the surface of what I have displayed elsewhere in the house. I’ve reached the point where the last big build I did, the Brick Bank, doesn’t actually fit next to my other modulars because there’s simply no more room on the table. That’s lead me to the conclusion that I’m going to have to start breaking apart older builds so that there’s room for new ones.
But how do I organise all the pieces that will be left, in a way that I can easily use them for my own custom builds?
After a lot of searching, there are three solutions that I think fit the bill, and seem to be the most common pieces used by Lego fans.
For small amounts of pieces, these are your starting point. They come in various shapes and sizes, with differing numbers of drawers depending on how much you’re willing to spend. But overall, they’re cheap, and the different sized drawers means you have somewhere to put the larger pieces or pieces you have more of. Plus, they’re super easy to access around your build space.
For the next size up, Really Useful have a whole range of boxes with lids which you can stack. That means you should be able to provide a size that meets whatever you need. But the ones I’ve linked to here come with 3 layers of trays, each of which has a number of slots in different sizes. That means you can organise everything by type or colour, and easily access whatever you need. Since they’re strong and stackable, you can probably keep on going however height allows, or place them on shelves.
Finally, for the larger pieces, or pieces which you have a lot of, or complete sets organised into ziplock bags, we have the Ikea Trofast system. Trofast comes in lots of different shapes and sizes, and you can mix and match the 3 different drawer sizes as you need them. The added advantage is the flat top, which means you can also use them as display space for completed builds.
Hopefully this has given you some inspiration of how to store your Lego pieces/parts.
Lego’s love affair with all things superhero continues with this 88 piece, £8.99 set (official price, get it cheaper from supermarkets or Amazon), it’s 76063 Mighty Micros: The Flash vs. Captain Cold.
This is 1 of 6 Mighty Micro’s sets that Lego have recently released, 3 of which are Marvel and 3 are DC. They are aimed at 5-12 year olds, but the build is likely to be fiddly for those at the younger range of that. My (almost) 5 year old struggled with some of the smaller pieces, and the final model is also a little brittle thanks to things like the flames at the back of the Flash car only connecting via a single hook. That’s potentially limiting for play, as bits keep falling off every time you make the car go fast. And Flash is supposed to go fast. Build time for an average Lego fan is likely to be around 10 minutes, but the final models are actually quite detailed considering the size, with Captain Cold’s snow plow looking the best of this pair.
These are small, impulse buy sets, especially when you’re likely to be able to pick them up for the £5-£6 range, similar to the Star Wars Micro-fighters that have been so successful over the past few years. An AFOL may like to complete the whole set for display purposes, but these are going to be best for younger kids who’ll fall in love with anything superhero related.
This is really quite lovely, a 3D Lego creation of the poster for Star Wars Episode IV by Alan Cheung, complete with scenes for each of the other movies around the base. The details throughout are really great, complete with tiny X-Wings at the back and my personal favourite being how Princess Leia’s hair has been put together. Alan has put together more information about the build here, including photos of each of the lower sections.
The Lego modular buildings are some of my favourite sets. If you’re not aware of them, this Creator series has been around since 2007 and are a series of large (2000+ pieces) buildings designed on a standard sized baseplate so that they can all connect together to create a single street or city block. The Brick Bank is the 2016 release and the 11th modular building so far. It is also the 4th building to be a corner piece, so when Lego get around to releasing the 12th then it should be possible to build a perfect square city block. These are very collectable items because not only do they make a great display piece, but also because Lego don’t make them available for very long. After 2 years, they’re typically removed from sale and a new one arrives in it’s place. This means that the earlier modular buildings are currently available for anything up to £2000, making that complete collection unattainable for your average newcomer to the range.
The Brick Bank follows the tradition of the last few modulars of being slightly smaller in size than the earlier ones. Compared to the 10224 Town Hall that was 50cm high, this one is only 26cm, which is quite the difference. The lower £120 price tag compounds this problem, where Lego have decided to focus on detail both outside and inside rather than go for the higher cost / larger model that they’ve gone with before. I personally would rather pay more and get a larger model and keep the detail if that’s what it’s going to take.
The build process, despite being 16+ and being rated for Experts, isn’t that complicated. There’s a lot of tiling to do in the first set of bags (there are 4 sets in all), and some fiddly pieces as the process continues, but I’ve had some Technic sets or the 70810 MetalBeard’s Sea Cow that were aimed at younger ages that were much more difficult. A couple of times I misread the instructions and put something in the wrong place, but never anything that I didn’t notice a couple of steps ahead.
All modular buildings go together in stages, one floor at a time, and it’s a process I do enjoy. The detail inside this one isn’t as good as the excellent 10243 Parisian Restaurant, but there are some nice little touches throughout. The main part of the model is the bank itself, and the double doors for that take up the front of the model. Inside there’s a teller and some glass frontage, and some little tables for visitors to the bank. A large vaulted ceiling holds a chandilier that actually hangs from the third level of the model. At the back corner is a vault, filled with money, and with a well designed locking mechanism on the front and cage on the top made of what are usually doors for jails on the police sets. Upstairs, offices for bank employees house coffee makers, desks, and an important looking area for the bank manager. The back corner of the building has a laundrette (money laundering, get it?) which has a nice frontage with printed Soaps n Suds signage (no stickers are used anywhere in the build) and a wall of washing machines on one side and ATM for the bank on the other.
Since this is not as tall as some of the other sets, there’s really only two floors rather than the usual three, the third floor just being a very low roof and skylight structure. Like all modulars, it all splits apart easily for access to each floor for those that want to use it to play.
And speaking of play, one of the attached stories involves a young girl receiving a cheque with a photographer coming to take photos, but she’s actually looking to perform a heist. My 4 year old especially enjoyed lowering the photographer (complete with burglar mask and hat accessories) by a rope down the open chimney at the top of the building which comes out into a hatch above the vault. So there’s lots of imaginative possibilities for younger builders.
All in, this is another great set for fans of the modular buildings, whatever age you are. Even if this is your first one, any fan of larger sets would do well to pick this up, whether you’re going to use it for play or display. And at this price, like all the modular buildings (at least on launch day) it has one of the best price per piece cost available.
This is the first post on Brick Digest, a site that I hope over the coming months will blossom into a useful resource for anybody, child or adult, with an interest in Lego. Whether you’re just venturing into Lego for the first time, coming back to it again, or you’ve been a massive fan for as long as you remember, hopefully I can find things to interest you. I’ll be doing my best to hunt out the best UK deals with our comprehensive Lego price comparison engine, scouring the web for the best builds, providing the latest news from the Lego Group, and posting my own reviews and videos of any set that crosses my path.
Lego is a community sport, so I’d love to hear what you have to say. If you’ve built anything cool, have something Lego related you want me to know about, have a question, suggestion or tip, then please don’t hesitate to send them my way. Address all emails to richard@brickdigest.com.
