And if you don't recognize it, get the hell off my internet.
Looks like the body and lengthened Floats of a Grumman HU-16 Albatross with the wings and twin booms of a Fairchild C-82 Packet Tacked on.Which would make it a Conwing L-16 Heavy Transport named Sea Duck, of course.
And if you don't recognize it, get the hell off my internet.
Looks like the body and lengthened Floats of a Grumman HU-16 Albatross with the wings and twin booms of a Fairchild C-82 Packet Tacked on.Which would make it a Conwing L-16 Heavy Transport named Sea Duck, of course.
Holy shit. If you honestly just knew that, I'm not quite sure what to say.
Holy shit. If you honestly just knew that, I'm not quite sure what to say.
Yeah, I did. I was a pretty obsessive fan of Talespin when I was a kid, and seaplanes have always held a special place in my aviation mad, black, diesel pumping robot heart. My dream, if I win the lotto, Is essentially to buy an Albatross, Extend the floats, and put twin booms on it. Essentially, to make the Sea Duck, but the jury is out on the Yellow and Red Paint scheme, Since that's essentially search and rescue colours.
RANDOM CHURBA FACT - the first plane I ever flew solo was a Seaplane - a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, to be precise.
EDIT - In retrospect, I'm not so sure that these two passions are entirely unrelated.
Here's something I just only read: Due to the release of the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film, Lego is going to release licensed PotC sets in May and November. I'm both a Lego and pirate enthusiast, and pirate Lego sets have been some of my favorites from my childhood. Unfortunately, I never had an actual pirate ship, though friends of mine had them. Anyway, to make a long story short, the smaller sets in the PotC line don't look that interesting, but Lego is going to release both the Queen Anne's Revenge and the Black Pearl. Depending on how they look, I might actually go after them when they come out and not just do Lego Technic all the time
I also looked through the building instructions of the biggest retail Lego release so far, the Taj Mahal, today. While it is quite an impressive set with it's almost 6,000 pieces, it doesn't actually seem that interesting. There is a lot of repetition in the building since a lot of the set is constructed from parts that are repeated at least twice, due to the symmetry of the architecture. It also has no function whatsoever. It is really big, but not that interesting. I think I'd rather spend my money on one of the Lego Town sets (Market Street, Green Grocer, Fire Brigade, Corner Cafe, Grand Emporium) or the Ultimate Millennium Falcon, if I had to choose.
Here's Gizmodo Lego's page on POTC lego sets. If that's the Black Pearl, I'm disappointed, because it doesn't have red sails, it has torn up black sails...But the skulls and the minifigs surrounding the boat make me think that that's the Pearl. It is a sweet looking ship, though. I also agree that that the mini sets look pretty lame. But hey, Lego pirates have always been some of my favorite sets. I'll probably end up getting one of the ships in the end anyways.
If that's the Black Pearl, I'm disappointed, because it doesn't have red sails, it has torn up black sails...But the skulls and the minifigs surrounding the boat make me think that that's the Pearl. It is a sweet looking ship, though.
I'm pretty damn sure that it's the Queen Anne's Revenge.
Yep, you're right. A google image search for Queen Anne's Revenge Pirates of the Caribbean yields pictures of that red sailed lego ship. Well, considering how awesome that is, I definitely want the Black Pearl. I just hope it isn't over $100, but it probably will be...
Oh also, that Tale Spin plane is fucking awesome. You did a great job and I recognized it as soon as I looked at it. And then a giant wave of nostalgia washed over me. Ahhh Tale Spin...
Yup, that's the Queen Anne's Revenge. Haven't seen a pic of the Black Pearl yet, since it won't be out until November. I'm guessing the shups will be around $100 each. At least that was the price of Brickbeard's Bounty, a lego Pirate Ship released in 2009. Maybe the PotC ships will be a bit more due to the licensing costs.
That's awesome, but would have been a lot cooler if they actually put the laser in the turret instead of shooting the laser at it to get that effect. It also would have been a lot cooler if it wasn't as big as the palm of your hand. Someone needs to make one to scale. THAT would be awesome.
That's awesome, but would have been a lot cooler if they actually put the laser in the turret instead of shooting the laser at it to get that effect. It also would have been a lot cooler if it wasn't as big as the palm of your hand. Someone needs to make one to scale. THAT would be awesome.
There's actually a bunch of PortalTurrets made from Lego, but the one I posted was in my opinion the best (other than the steampunk version), particularly because it was so small and sweet. Microscalestuff also looks very sweet.
Also, the guy I linked to with the monstrous Tow Truck made one fucking sweet tank, among other good creations:
And now for something completely different: As of last year, Lego has been releasing sealed sacks containing one specialized and exclusive minifigure each. This very much follows the booster pack principle of collectible card games and some japanese toys where you do not know which minifigure is actually in it upon purchase. So far there have been 4 series with 16 different minifigs each, a 5th series being on its way. These series have brought out a couple of interesting minifigs, such as Lego Zombie, Lego Crash Test Dummie, and Lego 70s Disco dude. Yesterday I had a small trip to the local Toys R' Us, the only store nearby carrying the minifig series, and picked up 5 packs of them from Series 4:
As you can see, I got Surfer Girl, Wolf Man, Hockey Player, Street Skater and Figure Skater. The hockey player was the only one I really wanted and got unlucky with the rest, as there are other characters in the series I would have rather had, like the Hazmat guy in the radiation suit, the Punk Rocker with a lego mohawk and a guitar, or Frankenstein's Monster, but alas. The hockey player is kinda weird actually, since they gave him a full face shield and combined with the pads he looks more like a football player. The single black knob for a puck he comes with is a nice addition though. Also weird for me was that I got all 4 characters in the series that have something to stand on other than the small 3x4 plate with a single row of knobs the Wolfman in the picture above is standing on, though all of them come with that plate. Here's a review of Series 4, which also has links to reviews of the previous 3 series.
Probably the most outstanding thing about this excavator is of course the motorization. Lego of course has a long history of powered motors, most notably of course in their model train franchise. Unfortunately, I never owned a Lego train (but friends did). However, I got myself rather familiarized with the Lego Technic Motors. I never had the 4.5V or the 12V sets, since they were way ahead of my time, but I had multiple 9V motor sets and I upgraded some of my sets to make use of them. The problem however was that this often was rather clunky and unwieldy. The Battery box and motors were quite gigantic and heavy. The battery box often didn't even fit on the respective set but had to be carried as a sort of remote control, though of course the cables were going from it to the set. A lot of Technic sets didn't even have any instructions or capabilities to be upgraded with motors, or only in the weaker B-Model.
However, this has changed a lot since I last had a motorized Technic Model, and this Excavator exemplifies a lot. Motors are a lot smaller now, and come in multiple sizes. The battery box is also lighter, though the same amount of batteries are used. The most striking thing to me however is not that the Power Functions (as their official name is) are a lot smaller, but that sets (Technic sets in particular) are designed so that they are easily integrated into the set. A couple of sets that don't come with Power functions, but whose instruction manuals I've read, are well equipped in taking in and holding both motor and battery box without them sticking out. This of course goes doubly so for sets that come with power functions.
The Excavator itself is probably the largest Power Function based set so far. It comes not only with the Batter box, but with four midsized motors and an Infrared remote control system. The remote control is two separate RC Handsets as well as two receivers, tuned to two separate channels of the four available. The two receivers, all four motors as well as the battery box are all housed in the back of the House of the Excavator, rather neatly packaged and the battery box can be easily removed to replace the batteries. The RC Handset is powered by three AAA batteries each, which means that the Set requires an additional 12 batteries (3 AA, 3 AAA) to be run.
One of the motors is in my opinion a bit underused, as its only purpose is to being able to remotely switch the gear system (explained in my Review of the 8053 Mobile Crane). The gear system is able to switch between controlling the undercarraige of the Excavator, or the arm. When controlling the undercarriage, two motors are used to power the caterpillar tracks on either side. This lets the machine go forwards or backwards as well as turn. The way they executed the drive of the tracks is also quite interesting. Since they couldn't fit two axles through the rotating base of the top half of the excavator (a.k.a. the house) as they would get into each other's way, they only used one axle and the hollow gears I was talking about in the Mobile Crane review. One hollow gear at the bottom with one of the red cylinders and an extension fitted into it and another gear on the top. This builds another axle around the axle and the two turn independently of each other. The third motor is used to turn the top half of the excavator.
As said, the motor functions can be switched remotely to control the boom, which is fully articulate. The boom can be raised and lowered as well as full digging motion can be executed and the shovel itself can be dipped. All of these are powered by Linear actuators, the larger version that acted to raise or lower the arm of the Mobile Crane. This Excavator comes with 4 of them and when it first was released, there was a bit of a problem with them as they weren't strong enough to perform their duty. Lego has offered replacements for them to every customer who bought the set after they pinpointed the problem. Of course newer productions already come included with the newer version.
Overall, this is just a fantastic Lego set with a lot of functionality. It is of particular interest for enthusiasts who build functioning RC Vehicles, like the guy who built the Tow Truck and Tank I posted videos of last month. Tanks should be of particular interest considering that the model is caterpillar track based. The tracks are also decent in themselves.
During assembly, I also made two rather stupid mistakes. The first was that I carelessly overlooked inserting one of the gears, which resulted in one of the of the tracks not being motorized. The other was that I accidentally put in one of the linear actuators facing the wrong way (I had the pinholes (top right in this image) of one of actuators that raise and lower the boom point into the house, and one out of the house). Thankfully, I was able to fix both of these problems without much dis-assembly.
The Excavator actually has about a 100 parts fewer than the Mobile Crane, but a lot of the parts (RC Handset, IR receiver, motors, linear excavators, shovel) are rather large and thus the set itself becomes quite large. The House is 15 cm wide, while the undercarriage is 18 cm from track edge to track edge. The Excavator stands 14 cm from the bottom to the flat surface on the house. The house is 24 cm long and the boom is about 60 cm from the base to the tip of the shovel. The excavator also has a lot of shaped pieces, which I already noted in the review of the motorbike, which are used to furnish the body and make it look nice and round. Almost all of those shaped pieces are decorated with stickers as well.
Unfortunately, due to the power functions, the set is also rather expensive. It ran me €140 and I've seen some retailers (*cough*toysrus*cough* jack it up as high as €180). It's a bit pricey, but a ton of fun. Finally, it took me about 4 and a half hours to construct the whole thing, the two corrections I had to make not withstanding. There is also a B-Model, instructions only available from the Lego.com website, which is a motorized Bulldozer, but considering the work and intricacy of the A-Model, I don't think I'll ever disassemble it to build the B-Model.
Edit: I found a really cool threepartinterview with the designers of this set.
I think if I ever actually got into Legos hardcore like I was as a kid, I'd probably just invest a decent amount of money into buying lots of every piece ever and then never buy any sets ever and just look up instructions online if I wanted any official ones. Lego sets are way to expensive. Most of the Lego builds I've been interested in are the working gun replicas.
As mentioned earlier, I'll be getting away from Lego Technic from a while. While I love the Technic line, it is often as something almost entirely separate from the main Lego lines. Particularly now, that the Technic construction method has switched to almost entirely studless pieces. It is however nice to work with studs again.
Also, as mentioned earlier, Lego is now rolling out another licensed product with Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates has pretty much always been my favorite Lego Theme besides Technic and the first wave was recently released. Of course the Lego fan that I am, liking big sets with lots of pieces, I give you the Queen Anne's Revenge (4195). Also, featured for the first time here, I'm using self-shot photos. I kinda suck at it, but it's better to show the detail of this set rather than using commercial photographs. And let me tell you, this is one beautiful ship.
The Queen Anne's Revenge was a real ship and will be featured in the upcoming 4th PotC film, which is an adaptation of the 1989 novel On Stranger Tides and the film bears that title as a subtitle.
Please excuse the dust. I didn't notice it really but the flash photography exposed it. It will be dealt with swiftly once I finish writing.
The most impressive feature are the sails, which are simply beautiful with the print and the color scheme. The only thing I don't really like about them or the flag is that they don't bear Blackbeard's mark, but I guess that's creative license. The sails come in a small, sturdy cardboard envelope some they won't be damaged inside the box. The figurehead is a skeleton with a translucent red body, in the same manner as the flames that surround it. I'm not sure whether or not that skeleton body has been used before. The skeleton parts (and you get quite a few of them with this set) are also new to me, with the joints that they have. Skeletons of older pirates sets were somewhat fragile as they had very small ball joints.
From the side you can see the holes for the cannons, as well as the flaps covering them. The set comes with stickers to put on those flaps. The holes are kinda weird, as there are a total of 6 flaps on each side, but only four of them on each side open. Plus the set only comes with three cannons. The cannons are nice and actually work, by pulling back a stick at the back of them. They can fire single stud round pieces, and the set also comes with a couple of them for ammunition in a box.
Also in this photograph, you see a few of the minifigs the set comes with. On the right you have your Lego Jack Sparrow, and on the left is Angelica, a new character played by Penelope Cruz in the movie. Neither Keira Knightley's nor Orlando Bloom's characters will be in the movie, so of course we get a new female lead. The guy in the middle is some random pirate. The set also has a Blackbeard minifigure, who is the main antagonist of the film. Of course, how could the set come without the captain of the ship. The figures are very detailed and feature a lot of print. Of course particularly on the main cast. Here's a promo picture of all the minifigs included in this set: Finally, there is the rear, which is dominated by the big skeleton Lantern using black skeleton parts. Also notice the windows that are also decorated with stickers, and of course the whole row of skills framing the entire back of the ship. The rear is interesting to build due to it being on a slant, but it wasn't all that difficult in retrospect.
Again, this set is beautiful through and through, and I can only hope the pictures do that fact justice. However, due to the license, it is also a bit pricey, clocking in at 130 € when I bought it. I had a ton of fun building it though as well, which took me about 3 hours. The only real functionality that the set has is the windows on the side of the cabin opening, and an anchor chain which can be reeled in and out, though the anchor chain is rather short. The set has 1097 pieces, and a lot of them are very small for the detail work. What I didn't show in the pictures is the table, and the barrel inside the cabin, which have a bunch of accessories for the figures such as a tile with a map print, a tile with a compass print, a statue, two bottles, and a bucket. There is also a cutlass for all the characters except one, but Blackbeard gets a particularly fancy one. Strangely enough, there's only one pistol in the set (loaded with a single shot. Sorry, couldn't resist), and only two muskets which are only used for decoration really.
Just a great set, but definitely for the collectors and enthusiasts.
While this thread is actually meant to talk about custom builds (or MOCs as they are called in the Lego community), I'm having a grand old time with some commercially released sets, if you couldn't tell until now. For that, I will continue my little series until I want to, or somebody tells me to stop
The Fire Brigade is another take on a rather common Lego theme: The fire station. What sets this one apart from the rest however is the fact that it is a . Modular Houses is a series of Lego sets for advanced builders with very detailed parts and usually have a rather large piece count. The Fire Brigade comes with a total of 2231 individual pieces, which currently places it 15th in commercially released Lego sets in that category, with another Modular house taking 14th and three more trailing the Brigade directly.
They are called Modular Houses for two reasons: 1) On the sides of each house there are four 1x2 Technic bricks, and you get two Technic pins to put into one side. You can see that on the bottom right in the picture above. Because the houses are built as wide as their baseplate, you can connect the houses and build one long street. 2) Each house is separated into floors which are built individually and can be separated and stacked together easily, giving access to the floor below when removed. If you have multiple sets, you can even stack multiple middle sections on top of each other and they will still fit together.
The 2nd picture shows the 2nd floor of the building, which has living area for the fire fighters, but also shows a bit of the detail that goes into the modular houses. They usually come with very individualized fixtures and household appliances. The Fire Brigade for example comes with a couch, a kitchen, a refrigerator, and a tennis table. It also has a fireman's pole, as every fire station needs to.
You can also see a lot of the detail on the outside in the front with the layered build that mimics a brick wall on the top floor. More details of note is the bell on the top (unfortunately somewhat hard to see in the picture) and the lettering that writes "1932" on the roof, which is really hard to build. It also gives away the style these modular houses are commonly built after. The set comes with four minifigures and a dog minifig, and is also so far the only modular house to include a vehicle other than a bicycle. What I only noticed after getting the set is that the minifigs all have the old, standard, smiley face that Lego used to produce en masse, but has moved away since with very detailed faces usually. However, this step back to the smiley faces is very much intentionally.
All this detail unfortunately doesn't exactly come cheap. The Modular houses initially run at €150 a pop and are not sold in stores except on rare occasions, but have to be ordered from Lego's online shop. However, they are also very, very popular with the Adult Lego crowd and when they go out of production they usually shoot up in price. The Modular House 10185 Green Grocer was originally released in 2008 and is now about a year out of production, and its price on ebay already doubled. The two Modular Houses released before it aren't even available on german ebay right now and easily shoot above 400€ at BrickLink, the largest Lego resale site.
With all the detail this set provides, the piece count, they difficulty of building, and also the price, these sets are definitely for the adult Lego fan, but they are quite a sight to behold. You might even be able to pass them off as an investment to your spouse or yourself, considering how their "property value" dramatically increases
As a bonus, here are two videos about the designer of the newest Modular House, the 10218 Pet Shop, talking about that creation. It also shows a lot of the concepts in all modular houses.
Chaos, is there a custom instruction book for that model?
In other news, I wound up with a lot more money this summer than expected, so I'm probably going to buy a modular house. Seems like a great way to get an asston of bricks at a good price, as well as a beautiful build.
Comments
RANDOM CHURBA FACT - the first plane I ever flew solo was a Seaplane - a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, to be precise.
EDIT - In retrospect, I'm not so sure that these two passions are entirely unrelated.
Here's a link to Brickipedia's page on the Pirates of the Caribbean line.
I also looked through the building instructions of the biggest retail Lego release so far, the Taj Mahal, today. While it is quite an impressive set with it's almost 6,000 pieces, it doesn't actually seem that interesting. There is a lot of repetition in the building since a lot of the set is constructed from parts that are repeated at least twice, due to the symmetry of the architecture. It also has no function whatsoever. It is really big, but not that interesting. I think I'd rather spend my money on one of the Lego Town sets (Market Street, Green Grocer, Fire Brigade, Corner Cafe, Grand Emporium) or the Ultimate Millennium Falcon, if I had to choose.
But hey, Lego pirates have always been some of my favorite sets. I'll probably end up getting one of the ships in the end anyways.
Oh also, that Tale Spin plane is fucking awesome. You did a great job and I recognized it as soon as I looked at it. And then a giant wave of nostalgia washed over me. Ahhh Tale Spin...
Other than that: Are you still there?
Edit: Ho-Ly Fuck.
Also, the guy I linked to with the monstrous Tow Truck made one fucking sweet tank, among other good creations:
As of last year, Lego has been releasing sealed sacks containing one specialized and exclusive minifigure each. This very much follows the booster pack principle of collectible card games and some japanese toys where you do not know which minifigure is actually in it upon purchase. So far there have been 4 series with 16 different minifigs each, a 5th series being on its way. These series have brought out a couple of interesting minifigs, such as Lego Zombie, Lego Crash Test Dummie, and Lego 70s Disco dude. Yesterday I had a small trip to the local Toys R' Us, the only store nearby carrying the minifig series, and picked up 5 packs of them from Series 4:
As you can see, I got Surfer Girl, Wolf Man, Hockey Player, Street Skater and Figure Skater. The hockey player was the only one I really wanted and got unlucky with the rest, as there are other characters in the series I would have rather had, like the Hazmat guy in the radiation suit, the Punk Rocker with a lego mohawk and a guitar, or Frankenstein's Monster, but alas. The hockey player is kinda weird actually, since they gave him a full face shield and combined with the pads he looks more like a football player. The single black knob for a puck he comes with is a nice addition though. Also weird for me was that I got all 4 characters in the series that have something to stand on other than the small 3x4 plate with a single row of knobs the Wolfman in the picture above is standing on, though all of them come with that plate. Here's a review of Series 4, which also has links to reviews of the previous 3 series.
Also, here's one way to spend a weekend:
Probably the most outstanding thing about this excavator is of course the motorization. Lego of course has a long history of powered motors, most notably of course in their model train franchise. Unfortunately, I never owned a Lego train (but friends did). However, I got myself rather familiarized with the Lego Technic Motors. I never had the 4.5V or the 12V sets, since they were way ahead of my time, but I had multiple 9V motor sets and I upgraded some of my sets to make use of them. The problem however was that this often was rather clunky and unwieldy. The Battery box and motors were quite gigantic and heavy. The battery box often didn't even fit on the respective set but had to be carried as a sort of remote control, though of course the cables were going from it to the set. A lot of Technic sets didn't even have any instructions or capabilities to be upgraded with motors, or only in the weaker B-Model.
However, this has changed a lot since I last had a motorized Technic Model, and this Excavator exemplifies a lot. Motors are a lot smaller now, and come in multiple sizes. The battery box is also lighter, though the same amount of batteries are used. The most striking thing to me however is not that the Power Functions (as their official name is) are a lot smaller, but that sets (Technic sets in particular) are designed so that they are easily integrated into the set. A couple of sets that don't come with Power functions, but whose instruction manuals I've read, are well equipped in taking in and holding both motor and battery box without them sticking out. This of course goes doubly so for sets that come with power functions.
The Excavator itself is probably the largest Power Function based set so far. It comes not only with the Batter box, but with four midsized motors and an Infrared remote control system. The remote control is two separate RC Handsets as well as two receivers, tuned to two separate channels of the four available. The two receivers, all four motors as well as the battery box are all housed in the back of the House of the Excavator, rather neatly packaged and the battery box can be easily removed to replace the batteries. The RC Handset is powered by three AAA batteries each, which means that the Set requires an additional 12 batteries (3 AA, 3 AAA) to be run.
One of the motors is in my opinion a bit underused, as its only purpose is to being able to remotely switch the gear system (explained in my Review of the 8053 Mobile Crane). The gear system is able to switch between controlling the undercarraige of the Excavator, or the arm. When controlling the undercarriage, two motors are used to power the caterpillar tracks on either side. This lets the machine go forwards or backwards as well as turn. The way they executed the drive of the tracks is also quite interesting. Since they couldn't fit two axles through the rotating base of the top half of the excavator (a.k.a. the house) as they would get into each other's way, they only used one axle and the hollow gears I was talking about in the Mobile Crane review. One hollow gear at the bottom with one of the red cylinders and an extension fitted into it and another gear on the top. This builds another axle around the axle and the two turn independently of each other. The third motor is used to turn the top half of the excavator.
As said, the motor functions can be switched remotely to control the boom, which is fully articulate. The boom can be raised and lowered as well as full digging motion can be executed and the shovel itself can be dipped. All of these are powered by Linear actuators, the larger version that acted to raise or lower the arm of the Mobile Crane. This Excavator comes with 4 of them and when it first was released, there was a bit of a problem with them as they weren't strong enough to perform their duty. Lego has offered replacements for them to every customer who bought the set after they pinpointed the problem. Of course newer productions already come included with the newer version.
Overall, this is just a fantastic Lego set with a lot of functionality. It is of particular interest for enthusiasts who build functioning RC Vehicles, like the guy who built the Tow Truck and Tank I posted videos of last month. Tanks should be of particular interest considering that the model is caterpillar track based. The tracks are also decent in themselves.
During assembly, I also made two rather stupid mistakes. The first was that I carelessly overlooked inserting one of the gears, which resulted in one of the of the tracks not being motorized. The other was that I accidentally put in one of the linear actuators facing the wrong way (I had the pinholes (top right in this image) of one of actuators that raise and lower the boom point into the house, and one out of the house). Thankfully, I was able to fix both of these problems without much dis-assembly.
The Excavator actually has about a 100 parts fewer than the Mobile Crane, but a lot of the parts (RC Handset, IR receiver, motors, linear excavators, shovel) are rather large and thus the set itself becomes quite large. The House is 15 cm wide, while the undercarriage is 18 cm from track edge to track edge. The Excavator stands 14 cm from the bottom to the flat surface on the house. The house is 24 cm long and the boom is about 60 cm from the base to the tip of the shovel. The excavator also has a lot of shaped pieces, which I already noted in the review of the motorbike, which are used to furnish the body and make it look nice and round. Almost all of those shaped pieces are decorated with stickers as well.
Unfortunately, due to the power functions, the set is also rather expensive. It ran me €140 and I've seen some retailers (*cough*toysrus*cough* jack it up as high as €180). It's a bit pricey, but a ton of fun. Finally, it took me about 4 and a half hours to construct the whole thing, the two corrections I had to make not withstanding. There is also a B-Model, instructions only available from the Lego.com website, which is a motorized Bulldozer, but considering the work and intricacy of the A-Model, I don't think I'll ever disassemble it to build the B-Model.
Edit: I found a really cool three part interview with the designers of this set.
Also, as mentioned earlier, Lego is now rolling out another licensed product with Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates has pretty much always been my favorite Lego Theme besides Technic and the first wave was recently released. Of course the Lego fan that I am, liking big sets with lots of pieces, I give you the Queen Anne's Revenge (4195). Also, featured for the first time here, I'm using self-shot photos. I kinda suck at it, but it's better to show the detail of this set rather than using commercial photographs. And let me tell you, this is one beautiful ship.
The Queen Anne's Revenge was a real ship and will be featured in the upcoming 4th PotC film, which is an adaptation of the 1989 novel On Stranger Tides and the film bears that title as a subtitle.
Please excuse the dust. I didn't notice it really but the flash photography exposed it. It will be dealt with swiftly once I finish writing.
The most impressive feature are the sails, which are simply beautiful with the print and the color scheme. The only thing I don't really like about them or the flag is that they don't bear Blackbeard's mark, but I guess that's creative license. The sails come in a small, sturdy cardboard envelope some they won't be damaged inside the box. The figurehead is a skeleton with a translucent red body, in the same manner as the flames that surround it. I'm not sure whether or not that skeleton body has been used before. The skeleton parts (and you get quite a few of them with this set) are also new to me, with the joints that they have. Skeletons of older pirates sets were somewhat fragile as they had very small ball joints.
From the side you can see the holes for the cannons, as well as the flaps covering them. The set comes with stickers to put on those flaps. The holes are kinda weird, as there are a total of 6 flaps on each side, but only four of them on each side open. Plus the set only comes with three cannons. The cannons are nice and actually work, by pulling back a stick at the back of them. They can fire single stud round pieces, and the set also comes with a couple of them for ammunition in a box.
Also in this photograph, you see a few of the minifigs the set comes with. On the right you have your Lego Jack Sparrow, and on the left is Angelica, a new character played by Penelope Cruz in the movie. Neither Keira Knightley's nor Orlando Bloom's characters will be in the movie, so of course we get a new female lead. The guy in the middle is some random pirate. The set also has a Blackbeard minifigure, who is the main antagonist of the film. Of course, how could the set come without the captain of the ship. The figures are very detailed and feature a lot of print. Of course particularly on the main cast. Here's a promo picture of all the minifigs included in this set:
Finally, there is the rear, which is dominated by the big skeleton Lantern using black skeleton parts. Also notice the windows that are also decorated with stickers, and of course the whole row of skills framing the entire back of the ship. The rear is interesting to build due to it being on a slant, but it wasn't all that difficult in retrospect.
Again, this set is beautiful through and through, and I can only hope the pictures do that fact justice. However, due to the license, it is also a bit pricey, clocking in at 130 € when I bought it. I had a ton of fun building it though as well, which took me about 3 hours. The only real functionality that the set has is the windows on the side of the cabin opening, and an anchor chain which can be reeled in and out, though the anchor chain is rather short. The set has 1097 pieces, and a lot of them are very small for the detail work. What I didn't show in the pictures is the table, and the barrel inside the cabin, which have a bunch of accessories for the figures such as a tile with a map print, a tile with a compass print, a statue, two bottles, and a bucket. There is also a cutlass for all the characters except one, but Blackbeard gets a particularly fancy one. Strangely enough, there's only one pistol in the set (loaded with a single shot. Sorry, couldn't resist), and only two muskets which are only used for decoration really.
Just a great set, but definitely for the collectors and enthusiasts.
We build what we can, because we must
I want miniature versions of these.
Also this.
Anyway, the set I want to talk about today is the 10197 Fire Brigade.
The Fire Brigade is another take on a rather common Lego theme: The fire station. What sets this one apart from the rest however is the fact that it is a
They are called Modular Houses for two reasons:
1) On the sides of each house there are four 1x2 Technic bricks, and you get two Technic pins to put into one side. You can see that on the bottom right in the picture above. Because the houses are built as wide as their baseplate, you can connect the houses and build one long street.
2) Each house is separated into floors which are built individually and can be separated and stacked together easily, giving access to the floor below when removed. If you have multiple sets, you can even stack multiple middle sections on top of each other and they will still fit together.
The 2nd picture shows the 2nd floor of the building, which has living area for the fire fighters, but also shows a bit of the detail that goes into the modular houses. They usually come with very individualized fixtures and household appliances. The Fire Brigade for example comes with a couch, a kitchen, a refrigerator, and a tennis table. It also has a fireman's pole, as every fire station needs to.
You can also see a lot of the detail on the outside in the front with the layered build that mimics a brick wall on the top floor. More details of note is the bell on the top (unfortunately somewhat hard to see in the picture) and the lettering that writes "1932" on the roof, which is really hard to build. It also gives away the style these modular houses are commonly built after. The set comes with four minifigures and a dog minifig, and is also so far the only modular house to include a vehicle other than a bicycle. What I only noticed after getting the set is that the minifigs all have the old, standard, smiley face that Lego used to produce en masse, but has moved away since with very detailed faces usually. However, this step back to the smiley faces is very much intentionally.
All this detail unfortunately doesn't exactly come cheap. The Modular houses initially run at €150 a pop and are not sold in stores except on rare occasions, but have to be ordered from Lego's online shop. However, they are also very, very popular with the Adult Lego crowd and when they go out of production they usually shoot up in price. The Modular House 10185 Green Grocer was originally released in 2008 and is now about a year out of production, and its price on ebay already doubled. The two Modular Houses released before it aren't even available on german ebay right now and easily shoot above 400€ at BrickLink, the largest Lego resale site.
With all the detail this set provides, the piece count, they difficulty of building, and also the price, these sets are definitely for the adult Lego fan, but they are quite a sight to behold. You might even be able to pass them off as an investment to your spouse or yourself, considering how their "property value" dramatically increases
As a bonus, here are two videos about the designer of the newest Modular House, the 10218 Pet Shop, talking about that creation. It also shows a lot of the concepts in all modular houses.
In other news, I wound up with a lot more money this summer than expected, so I'm probably going to buy a modular house. Seems like a great way to get an asston of bricks at a good price, as well as a beautiful build.