Lego City Park Hybrid "Fountain" and "Fun in the Park" Build

I have been very excited for the 60134 "Fun in the Park" set and the freebie 40221 Creator "Fountain" set this month, and am happy to report I finally got my hands on both!  I have been brainstorming ideas for how to combine these two sets into something more substantial that I could integrate into my City and Train Layout.

First off, I love the Fountain set.  The rebuild option for the statue gives you a variety of different combinations to create the perfect center piece for your park.  The fountain itself looks very good, plenty of detail, and both the benches are excellent quality.  I especially love the trash can with the grill pieces.  I do wish the flower pot was some other color than the neon green, but I swapped it out for a white one to better match my existing color schemes.

It is odd that the Fountain set is a "Creator" set meant to be paired with the Brick Bank Modular Building, even though the coloring and design seems to fit much better with the City themed Fun in the Park set.  The bench in the Park set is the same dark blue color and same basic design (just two studs wider) as the two that came in the Fountain set.

I wanted to make a city park that would fit comfortably on a normal sized base plate and that could be built along one of my Modular Building style streets.  I decided to use the longer bench and bus stop sign from the Park set to create a bus stop along the road in front of the Park.  I built a wall with entrance along the front of the park and partial walls going back part of the ways down the side.  I used masonry profile bricks for the walls and then built up pillars for the corners and ends with higher pillars forming the entrance up front.  Jumper plates were used to center the 1x wall between the 2x2 pillars.  I also used 1x1 tiles to texture the pillars.  All told I am pretty happy with it and its now integrated into my layout right next to the open spot for the next modular building!

New Purchases and Reviews!

I have been very excited for the Summer 2016 sets to come out and I have been a little frustrated by how hard it has been to get a hold of many of the sets.  I have found that only the new Star Wars sets seem to be available in Retail stores (other than Lego Stores and Toys R US, either of which I have in my area).  None of the Creator or City sets have made it onto the shelves.  I placed an order on Lego.com just a couple days after launch and found most of the sets sold out or otherwise unavailable.  

I wanted to take advantage of the free Creator Fountain set, so I placed an order for 31053 Treehouse Adventures, 60100 Airport Starter Set and 60101 Airport Cargo Plane.  The Lighthouse, Vacation Getaways and Fun in the Park were all sold out.  I wanted a couple Creator Fountains, and the first one I had was crushed pretty bad, so I built that one for my city layout and placed a second order for 60103 Airport Air Show.  The Creator Fountain came in pristine condition, so that one goes on the shelf to keep unopened.  

I am over hauling my Lego room to make better use of the space and to make it easier to work on the City and Train layout, so hopefully I will have more reviews and info coming soon!

Creator Set Review - 31053 Treehouse Adventures

The Summer 2016 Creator sets have been almost totally eclipsed by the truly excellent Vacation Getaways set, and I have to admit, when I first saw pictures of 31053 Treehouse Adventures, I was not impressed at all.  Already owning 31010 Treehouse from 2013, this set did not seem like an improvement at all.  Needless to say, after buying it and putting it together, I love it and think its far superior to the 2013 Treehouse!  Check out the video of the play features:

https://youtu.be/SgxsC9FrCyY

The set comes in a standard thin cardboard box that does its best to showcase the features and alternate builds.  Inside are a few non-numbered bags and three sets of instructions (one for each build) in a bag with no cardboard backing.  There are no stickers in this set.

Parts wise, there is a nice variety of parts and colors but not enough of anything to make it a good parts pack for any particular project.  There are a decent number of brown half arches/tree branches along with a couple other unique parts, only two small white windows, two brown fence sections, the printed map and cookie and a frog.  The only slightly rarer colors in the set are small quantities of dark green and dark reddish-brown.

The set comes with two minifigures, both kids with short legs.  A boy and a girl, both with dark brown hair and freckles.  The torsos are common ones but with appropriate and nicely done prints.  The minifigs come with a hammer, a paint roller, orange hat, cookie, map and a brick built squirt gun.  There is also a brick built cart for the kids to carry their stuff around in.

The build was delightful.  There are tons of extra details and hidden features that the box just cant do justice.  There are plenty of SNOT techniques and I liked the use of ball joints to give flexible, natural looking leaves to accent the structure.  The mechanism for dropping and raising the bridge/ladder works flawless and is very well done.  The set looks very natural and level of detail is impressive.  I also like that the play features in no way detract from the look and feel of the set.

The completed model looks great and is wonderful to play with.  The set looks solid from all angles and is hinged in the middle to allow it to be posed on a long front with the bridge up connecting the two trees, or it can be hinged closed for a more compact design with the bridge down as a ladder and the set looking more like a single big tree.  While both ways look great from most angles, I think it looks best opened up with the bridge up, but in this position the back is the weakest looking side.  When closed up, the ladder is not great looking, but the set looks better from all angles.

One thing that is hard to truly visualize until you build the set is how smooth the bridge feature works.  There is an angled technic arm hidden under one platform and on the other platform there is a very natural looking branch sticking out the back.  When you hinge the set closed, the branch activates the technic arm to lower the bridge.  When you open it back up, the action of the branch moving back out resets the arm and automatically raises the bridge.  It works perfectly every time, is very smooth, looks great and its nice that it does both the raising and lowering completely automatically.  There is also a hidden compartment in one of the tree trunks that you can store some of the accessories.  There are a number of other fun details, a well built yellow lawn chair, a nice brick built telescope, a yellow flag, brick built blue jay, small water fall covering the base hinge, two lanterns, a desk and a ladder leading from the main platform up to the roof were the telescope is.

A rope is also included that the kids can use to lift up supplies or the one tan (unpainted) board.  The board matches the size of the painted boards on the main room, so the idea is the kids can lift the unpainted board up, use the paint can and paint roller (which matches the paint color) to paint the board, then the included hammer can be used to attach it to the treehouse.

I absolutely love this set, it looks great, works great and my daughter has played with it for hours, all for a fairly low price of only $34.99.  I would highly recommend this set!

Minecraft: The Village 21128 Review Summary

This set is the largest yet in the Minecraft Theme and is the centerpiece of any Minecraft collection. For those not familiar with Minecraft, I think its important to know how this fits in and what its supposed to represent.

Villages are randomly generated structures composed of a variety of buildings (houses, shops etc), farms and roads that contain AI controlled villagers that you can trade with to buy rare items. The villages are also good sources of food from their fields. The villagers use emeralds as currency for buying and selling and the village can be attacked by AI control monsters that may wipe them out. Finding a village and protecting its villagers to allow you to trade is an important part of the game. The Iron Golem is a common creation to help protect it, and villagers can be "infected" and turned into special zombie villagers that you can try to save by turning them back with potions.

One interesting decision they designer made with this set was to represent sections of various biomes throughout the village. This set includes slices of snow, jungle, desert and the normal grass sections. This allows you to connect other minecraft sets to this central one and build out to other biomes. The entire set is modular and can be rearranged in an endless variety of ways.

I know the Minecraft sets get a bit of heat for using so many very boring old school 2x2 and 2x4 blocks, but this set does include a healthy amount of nougat colored blocks including a very large number of smooth 1x4 and 1x6 smooth tiles, 1x2 and 1x4 textured (brick profile) pieces, 2x2 jumper plates and very long 1x12 bricks along with assorted other pieces in this great color. Otherwise you get the usual Minecraft specialty pieces, printed furnaces, printed crafting boxes and the various brick built figure specialty components. There is also a treasure chest.

To start off with, the set comes with a lot of minifigures and mob builds, covering a very large variety. You get a Steve, Alex, two villagers in different prints, a zombie village (zombie with green villager mold head), regular zombie, enderman, creeper, brickbuilt iron golem, and a brick built pig and piglet. Its a nice mix, but its a huge miss to only include two actual villagers. The set really could have benefited from one to two more actual villagers, even if they were repeat prints to the existing ones. I certainly appreciate the addition of multiple monsters to represent attacks on the village that Steve and Alex (assisted by the iron golem) have to defend the villagers against, but considering there is currently no other way to get villagers, the town is simple too thinly populated for proper play or display. I hope that they release a set in the next wave that adds a building for the village and at least one or two more villagers. The rest of the figures are all standard and identical to those found in previous sets. Steve gets an iron sword and Alex a diamond pick-axe, there are no armor pieces or other weapons/tools which I also felt was a miss.

I personally like the set. Having said that, I am a big Minecraft fan and I understand that if your not, this set probably does not resonate with you at all. As a licensed theme, it is a big more expensive, but I felt like it was still in the realm of reason IF your a fan of Minecraft. I always liked the Minecraft themes because the blocky look and feel harkened back to my younger days building early Lego sets, while still letting me create custom sets that, while not highly detailed or realistic by our normal standard, are very much so when compared to thier source material in game. This makes me very happy with all the Minecraft sets, but again, I cant stress enough, if you are not familiar with and passionate about the source material, these sets probably seem very odd and pointless. I like the quantity and diversity of buildings and other structures, it gives plenty of play options and lots of space to re-enact elements of the game or display figures.

There were a few misses in the set though. The biggest was the lack of more villager minifigs. Again, I very much hope they fix this by releasing a set next wave that has more villagers and some additional structure for the village. Next, I felt the butchers shop had too plain of an interior. I also thought there was a distinct lack of torches to light all the various buildings and most of the main structures do not have clips to add torches (or to use the torches from the two street lamps). I also would have liked to see some more tools/weapons/armor options. Last of all, the bright green plates that show through to the inside of the two biggest buildings annoys me quite a bit, especially since it could have been mostly fixed with little effort.

Minecraft: The Village 21128 Review Part 3

In part three of our review, we move on to the farm and corral modules, composed of four detachable sections all from bag eight.  This bag also includes the second villager, this one in a brown coat, a brick built pig and four torches that all get used on a street lamp build.  The first module is a farm, a nice sized rendition of the game version with a central strip of water to provide irrigation and a strip of dirt on each side holding carrots, wheat and potatoes in various states of growth.  This section looks great, offers some great play features and matches the in game version fairly well.  It also includes a street lamp that uses the four torches and a red flower.  The next section is a corral with full fencing and a double door gate.  This also includes a green jumper plate inside to help with posing the pig.  The pig itself is the same build we have seen in previous sets and looks great with a printed head!  Next we have a very simple small plate with nothing on it except another red flower.  Last of all we have a small water plate with a central 2x2 plate of sand holding some sugar cane.  All together, these sections provide you with a great representation of the resource generation and collection for the village!

Bag nine gives us Alex with a diamond pick-axe, a creeper and a brick built piglet along with a section of desert with some basic terrain and a well building.  The terrain is mostly desert with a strip of gravel representing a road.  There is one cactus and three brown grass sections to add detail.  Another street lamp with four torches is also included.  The well is a nicely details little building with four pillars holding up a smooth roof.  The center has a block of trans blue to represent the water and it includes a pail with water in it.

Last of all, bags 10 and 11 build the butcher shop, another rectangular building with peaked roof similar in design to the library.  This building also hinges open down the middle but includes two doors and a small fenced in area to hold an animal.  The interior is very simple with some benches and a table.  The coloring and material usage for the walls is slightly different than the library and there is no attic floor, but the roof is otherwise the same.  No figures are included in this portion of the build.  This building suffers from the same problem as the library in that the hinge construction includes a two green 2x4 plates (one on each side of the hinge split) to hold it all together which runs through the wall and is visible from the inside.

The last bit of instructions shows you how to assemble everything in the default layout using the 2x4 jumpers you built in step one.

Minecraft: The Village 21128 Review Part 2

As we move on to the next set, bags two and three build out the Black Smiths shop.  Bag two builds the terrain and most of the walls, forge and hinging system.  Bag three finishes the interior, front, roof and also contains Steve with an iron sword.  This clever building has a flat roof and an open floor plan around the front corner of the building.  There are a couple windows, two stacked, removable, printed furnaces and a forge with lava.  The best part of this building is that the roof and front hinges up on a fairly well hidden Technic hinge system.  It functions well, has enough friction to hold its position, looks good and makes it much easier to access the inside of the building.

Next up is the Library, built from bags four and five.  This is one of the three larger buildings in the set and splits open length wise for interior access.  This is an attractive building with simple terrain, windows, one door and an attic.  The attic has a spider web and hanging below it into the main room are three removable bookshelf blocks.  The building also has a printed crafting box, a table and some benches.  The surrounding terrain does include some mushrooms.  Bag four builds the terrain and walls along with some of the interior, bag five builds the bookshelves, roof and an Enderman figure.  The roof is finishes with 1x4 and 1x6 smooth tiles and the peak has 2x2 jumpers to give a polished finish.

Bag six builds some snow covered stone/gravel terrain with a small waterfall, some ice, mushrooms and a support structure for the building that is constructed in the next bag.  This is a fairly straight forward build that is raised up higher than the previous ones to create a hill.  Bag seven builds the simple structure that goes on top of the previous terrain and also includes two torches, two emerald blocks to mine and a brick built Iron Golem.  There are 2x2 jumpers under the building for the emerald blocks to be mined from and clips next to the entrance to the building and down below where the emerald blocks are for the two torches.  The terrain forms a sort of staircase up to the entrance and there is no actual door.  The structure is very simple, three walls with windows and an opening in ceiling to access the the roof with its nicely build railing.  This is meant to represent a regular house or guard tower.

Minecraft: The Village 21128 Review Part 1

Being a big fan of Minecraft and Legos, I have set out to collect 100% of the Minecraft Lego sets.  I was very excited to hear about the new D2C 21128 The Village and picked it up on release day at the Lego Store in the Mall of America.  When pictures and details first got out, the general impression online seemed a bit negative, but I have found that the Minecraft Lego sets in general seem to attract a bit of the attention, people either love Minecraft the Game and the Legos make perfect sense, or they haven't played the game and the sets just do not appeal to them.

Villages in the game are a very iconic piece of the experience and I was curious to see how they would tackle it.  Would they do more abstract open models?  A modular system across multiple sets representing different parts?  I am happy they chose to go all in and release a large scale, heavily detailed (for Minecraft) set that trys to capture many of the key elements of Villages.  And after buying and assembling the set, I have to say overall my impression is positive.

The box is a standard Minecraft set design with the main build on the front, an alternate layout with the buildings opened up on the back and all the minifigs and micro builds displayed across the lower left front.  The box is made of the heavier cardboard and has an attractive look and feel.

Inside you will find two instruction manuals.  One contains the main instructions from start to finish for the primary layout shown on the front of the box.  The other book is thinner and has alternate build and layout ideas.

You end up with 11 numbered bags and one bag for plates, plus the bag for the instructions.  Of interest was the variance in bag numbering style.  A few bags had the traditional style of numbering with the large bold black number with white outline, but most bags had a design I was not familar with that had a white stripe with a smaller black number printed on it.

The build starts with the market hut, a simple design with a tablet to display wares for sale on (an eye of ender, iron bar, cake and apple).  A chest with emeralds in it (as currency).  A small hut with a stepped red and white roof and a jungle tree with vine that attaches to the roof of the hut.  It also includes on villager and has you build 8 2x4 dirt block jumpers, one 2x4 sand jumper and one 2x4 snow jumper which will be used later to attach various modules.

More to come soon!