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Review: 76157 Wonder Woman vs Cheetah

June 9, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

Pieces: 371 Minifigures: 3 Retail Price: $39.99 Price I Paid: Retail

When I first saw this set and it’s large, golden, somewhat shiny radar dish, I knew I wanted it. Then I saw the box!

Lego is apparently redesigning their default box look and they did some really cool things with this one. The front looks like a comic panel with the two figures front and center about to rumble. The back of the box looks like it could be the front of the box which just gives you this slightly special feeling about the box. The WW84 logo is cool (not a Lego design) and they put an image of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) from the movie on the side of the box!

Groovy. And we haven’t even opened the box yet! I didn’t even see the other Wonder Woman film but now I want to see this one.

You get three minifigures, Wonder Woman in her golden armor with wings and lasso, Cheetah who looks fierce and could almost be a CMF animal costume figure. [I’m on a mission to collect the new DC CMF of the Cheetah and get a group photo with Catwoman, CMF Series 14 Tiger Woman and this Cheetah. Stay Tuned.] Finally, Maxwell Lord (I just learned his name) wearing a great windowpane suit jacket. I only wish his legs were printed with the same pattern.

The base or structure of the set appears to be a base of some sort with the aforementioned beautiful array of golden radar dishes atop it. The base itself is made in nice sand and dark tan colors with a few leaves here and there. There’s also a giant slot – for mail? – above the door.

The inside isn’t much to look at (I didn’t put the stickers on) but it contains a little bit of space and for me it succeeds in being three dimensional enough and not just a “storefront” that so many LEGO sets are these days. There are distinct sides to this base.

And one of the sides has a large spider on it! That spider had better be in the film otherwise Lego is creeping me out for no reason. Maybe I don’t want to see the film now…

On to the radar dish. Look at it! It’s made of 2×2 flags that clip on and make up the array.

Upon closer inspection, the pieces are printed, not stickers. Hooray. I originally thought they would be stickers, but I still wanted the set, it was a relief to not have to try and align 32 stickers for application.

Tipping the model forward we can see that the radar dish isn’t just stylish, it’s functional! (No, not that way.) It rotates with a turn of the knob.

Here’s where I should have made a nice little gif to show you the rotation but you’ll just have to trust me, sorry internet.

There’s the full set with the spider and minifigs and what looks like a broadcast tv camera for Maxwell. Wonder Woman (or Cheetah) can stand on the clear piece extending from the set and look like they’re flying. Great set even without applying the stickers:

The TV screen stickers are meant to go on the inside of the curved panels but they just looked like they would be floating on those larger pieces and so I didn’t end up putting any on. I don’t think the set loses much from it but if you wanted it to be just like the movie you can sticker away. Maybe I’ll want to after I see the film.

I’m giving this set a 9 out of 10. Three great minifigures, a cool base made of good colors and the radar array as always. I’m interested to see how it compares to the “real one” from the movie. But I’m not counting on seeing any movies any time soon. Along with no new movies, we’re probably not going to see any discounts on Lego for awhile so you might want to just buy this set for full price, it’s worth it. (If you buy through Lego we get a commission to help support the site- Thanks!)

Lego Throwback Thursday – Lego Islanders

June 4, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

I got a few older nearly complete Islander sets a while ago and finally got around to posting them. While I had LEGO Pirates and Imperial soldiers as a kid (like most kids of a certain age) I never had any Islanders. I like how they add a third group and add the possiblities for Politics! Alliances! Crocodiles!

That’s King Kahuka, he had his own island – with raised baseplate!!

This is 6256 Islander Catamaran, it was $12 back in 1994. The canoes are great, as is the aforementioned crocodile. And not to sound off color but this minifigure is one of the few I’ve seen with cleavage.

That’s 6246 Crocodile Cage – only got one crocodile with the lot of sets and he’s with the catamaran right now. It must be frustrating to get captured and have a pegleg. Hard to run away I’d think.

That’s actually an older Pirates/Imperials set from 1989, 6245 Harbor Sentry.

Just seeing the recognizable old Pirates and Imperials minifigures takes me back. I spent a lot of time with those minifigures, having less of them made them more precious in a way and they could all take on their own identities, even if they had less expressive faces.

A Lego Shop@Home order

June 3, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

Quarantine continues and I placed another order of Lego. I am waiting on a large bricks and pieces order but I also ordered 76157 Wonder Woman vs Cheetah because as soon as I saw that giant golden radar dish I wanted it. It came with double VIP points – which seem to be meaningless these days – and a free 30369 Beach Buggy polybag. I got suckered into ordering 2 each of the DC Super Heroes Minifigures and the CMF Series 20.

First I’d like to say that the CMF bags have gotten much larger. So….is that why they cost $5 now?

Like I said, I got suckered, classic Shop@Home move to get two of the same minifigure when you can’t feel the packaging. I know, I know, this is the name of the game, you win some you lose some, but I don’t even know who that guy is!

He comes with some clear, make it look like you’re flying boosters to put on the stands though. (You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been out of the CMF game for awhile.) But just think of all the possible permutations of 4 figures out of the choices I ended up with two of that guy and drone kid and karate kid.

Karate kid has good hair at least. And Drone kid must come with the most individual parts for a CMF. But really though, a quick visit to an online permutation calculator says when choosing 4 from 32 different items that can repeat there are 52,360 possibilities. I would argue that the combination that I got is no higher than 51,984. (And yes, this is not correct because really we’re making 2 choices from 16 combined with 2 choices from 16.) What is that on Drone kid’s shirt there? An aqueduct? A strange squared off M? A T-Bone steak? If you know, drop us a line in the comments. On to the free buggy.

Side surfer california floppy hair – check. You do wonder about a surfer that has a windsurfing shirt on – maybe he’s saving up for the sail.

So anyway there you have it – a beachy little buggy that was free. It almost makes up for the CMF disappointment. No, it doesn’t. I’ll have a review of the Wonder Woman set up soon.

I just looked and the minifigure’s name is Metamorpho.

Not a set review – a BrickLink order

May 26, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

I’ve been spending some time during the coronavirus lockdown attempting to build a modern style Lego house and found my spare parts wanting (as always) so I ordered some on Brick Link.

It was about $110 and here’s what I got.

I am building the house in mostly white and tan and I needed some more bricks and plates.

I wanted to get large white plates for the roof but plates in white seem to be the most expensive so I got some more colorful ones and will make do.

I also got some tiles for floors, though I’m not going to tile the whole floors but will put them down as area rugs probably.

And I got a few special parts and 3 minifigures.

The middle figure is the mayor from the Lego Batman Movie and even though she? it? cost $8 I thought it would be good to have a politician minifigure especially for 2020. Now I just need to get facemasks for all my minifigures.

And lastly, I got some brick bricks. I love the sand green color in every part, it seems to be a really good real world color. The sand green bricks were just under 19 cents each and the dark tan ones were just under 37 cents.

And now the bad news… Although the bricks were all mostly in great shape some still needed to be cleaned and if I was going to clean some I might as well clean them all, so there I was slaving over a bucket of soapy Lego and then taking over the living room for 3 days to let them dry out. I’ve found it takes Lego about 2 days to dry and I did them in different groups because you can only wash Lego for so long before you get really bored. But now they’ve been dry for awhile and my modern house has a nice tan and purple first floor.

I’ve since ordered some pieces from the Lego Shop At Home Pick a Brick or whatever they call it now and the prices seem comparable, PLUS they won’t have to be washed.

Review: 10232 Lego Palace Cinema

April 27, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

Pieces: 2196 Minifigures: 6 Retail Price: $149.99 Price I Paid: Retail (which seems like a deal now)

I had held on to this set for several years now and the pandemic finally provided the right time to build it. It originally came out in 2013(!) and they stopped selling it in 2017.

There great thing about the minifigures are their wonderful classic LEGO smiling faces. I wish they hadn’t stopped using these heads in the modular series, the Assembly Square model which came out in 2018 was the last one with classic heads. These are also high quality figures, the plastic just feels heavier and the heads go on with a good snap.

This set comes with a car/limo that seems to have comically undersized tires. I don’t feel the need for a car with the modular sets, they’re not play sets but I will admit the car does look good with the rest of the set.

And now we come to the model…

Beautiful. It’s big and substantial, colorful and intricate. Ready for opening night.

It’s a corner modular so you get sidewalks on two sides.

The back isn’t much to look at, nor is the roof, but the back of a movie theater is supposed to look like this. The roof seems like a good place for some shady characters to meet.

And now for the inside-

You have a classic movie theater lobby with red carpet and snack bar.

The ticket windows are approachable from the outside also very classic movie theater.

Other than that it’s a little sparse inside which continues as we go upstairs.

The second floor is the movie theater and this is where the modular limitations show. There is only room for 6 seats and no aisles. The chairs are not one piece chairs but constructed with slopes and flags, maybe the chair piece wouldn’t have had the right recline. The projector is a nice little build.

The screen has a sticker on it but I guess I can’t blame them. I would have been ok with a blank screen I think. But why are there windows in a movie theater? It’s certainly possible that there would have been windows built in an old theater building but they’d need to be blocked up on the inside. Maybe this is nitpicking about reality but it’s a pretty obvious problem as you build the set. The windows obviously make the building look better from the outside.

I think the LEGO movie posters on the outside are my favorite detail. They are also stickers – double sided so they are viewable from the inside too – and they are full of puns. Which is probably why I like them so much.

The roof goes for a terra cotta effect (I think) in a clever way. The red/maroon roof is what really distinguishes this model.

There are also star tiles in the sidewalk outside. This further replicates the Grauman’s Chinese appearance.

By Rtercero – TCL Chinese Theatre, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

And the marquee. What a marquee. You can almost see the blinking lights chasing up and down. I am impressed at how well they depicted the letters, the end result is a consistent, very readable font.

And there you have it. I’m giving this set a 9.5, it’s truly beautiful from the outside. Inside it’s lacking a bit, but the amount of time spent looking inside of a modular like this is small. I enjoyed building this and it’s right there with the Detective’s Office as my favorite modular.

Thoughts on the Lego Masters Finale

April 22, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

Now that it’s been almost a week since the finale of Lego Masters I thought I’d share my thoughts. Like many I was disappointed that Mark and Boone didn’t win. They just had so much enthusiasm and seemed to represent the AFOL community as a couple of dudes. They were also the most entertaining and they seemed to win challenge after challenge. So I was both rooting for them and thought that based on the episodes I saw, they deserved to win.

Having said that, I’ve seen many episodes of the Great British Baking Show and am aware that each episode is judged by itself and doing well throughout the series is not enough to win the final episode. So with that in mind, everyone would have gone into the final with equal chances.

We got three very distinct builds which made the judges jobs that much harder or easier. If they had a specific style they liked, it would be easier to just choose that, but when you saw the three final builds it was clear it was comparing apples to oranges to pears.

Mark and Boone built like they always build, lots of minifigures and little stories within the build. They had a mechanical element to it with the rotating walls but it wasn’t connected to their and their main building was just a building. Their original concept looked really cool but they were warned off of it by the judges and changed course. So they had already been warned that just a building wouldn’t cut it. In the end, this wasn’t their best executed build but of the three, it was the most like a Lego play set. For me the one standout element were the “streams” of paint being applied to the building, that must have taken awhile to get right.

Sam and Jessica built an art piece made of LEGO. If it wasn’t the most creative it was the most beautiful I’d say. It had color and narrative, the two things the judges constantly asked for. But it didn’t have a single minifigure and I think that despite the challenge being “build whatever you want” this apparently wasn’t what the judges wanted to see.

And then we have our winners, Tyler and Amy. They built what I would call a “high MOC” style build. The kind of style most used for castle builds with high repetition of natural elements and large structures of rock and sections of blue for water. I remember discovering this style of building when I first started seeing castle MOCs and being impressed. All the little bricks together look pretty impressive. It looked like they had a few minifigures in their build to have some stories but they didn’t feature on the show. And then, the “pieces” de resistance the slowly flapping wings of the Griffin. Apparently that alone took 3 or 4 hours. When I saw that Tyler had managed to execute that part of the build I was pretty convinced they would win.

And ultimately as we know, they did. I was disappointed for Mark and Boone because again, they were so entertaining and joyful. They were just having fun building Lego, which is really what it should be all about. They were the kids in all of us when we build a lego set well into our adult years. As I thought about it, I did start to see that Tyler and Amy had a more impressive build given the unifying theme and especially the flapping wings. I think without that mechanical element it’s a different contest. But then I spoke to my friend who also watched and he thought Sam and Jessica should have won, pointing out that they were the most creative of the final three builds. As a non Lego builder he was looking less for a minifigure element probably. I was fairly convinced by this argument. So next time there is a finals on Lego Masters I think the judges should actually come up with a task and have a criteria for judging the builders.

Finally, the criticism that people are giving the judges or the winners and saying it was fixed is pretty ridiculous. All reality tv shows are fixed to an extent but I don’t think there was some conspiracy permeating the show. Let’s step back from conspiracy theories everyone. It’s a tv show, a reality tv show. And lets dial back some of the anger at the winners, especially Amy. True, she is not a life long AFOL but it is important to recognize that a lot of the criticism of her “LEGO skills” are based in sexism and NOT reality. I will agree that it rubbed me the wrong way when she mentioned the $100K prize but so did Sam and Jessica as I recall, that definitely seemed to be life-changing money for the contestants. Let’s not forget the role of the producers and editors in a reality tv show and the choices of what comments by the contestants to show and what not to show. For all we know, they asked the contestants about the $100K. And if you’re a producer, you’re pretty happy with the invented controversy because your show will make more news and get more viewers next season.

The best way to get over the outcome is to just honor Boone’s words – go build something amazing!

10232 Lego Palace Cinema Time Lapse

April 20, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

My first attempt at a Lego build time lapse. Look for the review soon.

Review: 76056 Rescue from Ra’s al Ghul

April 17, 2020 by admin·0 Comment

Pieces: 257 Minifigures: 4 Retail Price: $29.99 (since retired) Price I Paid: I don’t remember

Hello from the quarantined Lego blog-sphere. We’re at it again at BrickKnight. Now let’s see if I can remember how this set reviewing works…

Ra’s al Ghul makes his only appearance so far in LEGO along with his daughter Talia and they’ve kidnapped Robin!

Sadly this is not a Christopher Nolan Dark Knight set and the minifigures aren’t representative of Liam Neeson and Marion Cotillard. But it’s ok, we have desert Batman and a dune buggy.

Those are some nice tires. Hopefully Batman deflated them to the appropriate PSI before he drove through the sand.

The set itself is small as usual for a $30 set. Robin has a jail cell and Ra’s has a radioactive green pit to reverse the aging process according to the step-by-step hierogylphics on the wall. But don’t worry Robin, Batman is coming through in his Batbuggy!

If he could only get through the doors. That’s right, the Batbuggy doesn’t fit through the doors, which would be why they are being smashed down on the box. Very nice doors they are though – one piece each – great parts to have. Between the desert Batman, wheels on the buggy and the doors it’s a nice little set to have for those parts. I enjoy collecting the iterations of LEGO Batman, which was fairly easy until the collectible minifigure series 1 AND 2 for the Lego Batman movie.

Reviving the 10 point scale for sets I’ll give this a 7.5. I’m glad I bought it during a mini dark age and finally came out of the dark age to build it. Look for more soon, I’ve got some newer sets coming.

The Lego Movie 2 Review (Hello Again)

February 16, 2019 by admin·0 Comment

Hello again LEGO verse! I saw The Lego Movie 2 last night and here are my thoughts:

Just like the first one, the sequel is a near barrage of pop-culture and Lego jokes. Even though it’s a kid’s movie many of the jokes come flying at you and are aimed squarely at adults, e.g. a joke about Radiohead! The movie starts right where the first one left off, the Duplo have just landed and begin attacking the Lego world. Instead of the reveal at the end that this is human directed play manifesting in the Lego world, we see more frequent live action shots throughout. The whole allegory is that the younger sister, formerly the Duplo user is trying to play with/alongside her brother and it asks the question – can two siblings play nice? It gets a little too heavy handed in this aspect at times but I respect it for going for an overall theme with some emotional heft instead of just being all silliness. They pretty much wrap this up at the end of this movie, it gets a bit Toy Story 3 there for a minute, so any sequels may have to just go for the silliness or not use the human control component. I assume there will continue to be sequels, Lego Movie 2 made $34 million in it’s first weekend and I’d think even if the movies just break even the merchandise sales are enough to keep it going. Hopefully any sequels will continue to be creative and not keep following the “everybody teams up to fight the threat to the universe” formula.

But anyway, plot wise, right after Duplo attacks we’re taken to five years later where they live in Apocalypseburg and it’s gritty and dusty, basically Mad Max has come to the Lego universe and it leads to some pretty funny moments. They could have spent more time here as far as I was concerned.

But then they’re attacked by a minidoll (I’m still not buying any minidolls) and they’re on the run then the main crew aside from Emmett is abducted and taken upstairs. They meet the villain for most of the film a Duplo face that seems to have LEGO pieces surrounding it, and likes to sing and rap. I really didn’t care for the character, there really wasn’t anything funny about it the way there was the first movie’s Lord/President Business by Will Ferrell.

So Emmett goes to save everyone despite worrying he’s not tough enough. He meets another Chris Pratt voiced character who is tough and has a spaceship crewed by velociraptors. From there it’s just all saving the universe and jokes sprinkled in with a somewhat satisfying resolution.

Overall, it was entertaining and not a bad thing to see in the theater, the sound of kids guffawing is probably the main reason to pay $15 vs waiting for dvd/streaming. Lots of good pop culture humor and a lot of Lego specific humor, a great scene where two minifigures fight in stop motion by banging together just like they do when you’re a kid and make them fight in real life. So I’d recommend seeing it at some point and maybe watching the first Lego movie beforehand to remind yourself of the characters if you’ve only seen once or a long time ago.

Lego Star Wars Assault on Hoth – What a piece of junk!

February 13, 2016 by admin·0 Comment

I’ve been waiting for this set for awhile, as any right thinking person, I’m a huge fan of Hoth. But this is just a lame combination of the prior Hoth sets. The keyword here is creativity, the massive lack of it, that is. Lego is supposed to be a creative toy and we’ve already bought this creative toy before. If not for the minifigures, the parts value of this set must be really low. It’s sad to see how cool the Ewok Village was and how comparatively lame this is – and yes, this set is $250. And for $250 you only get one Tauntaun. And I thought they smelled bad on the outside.