26 replies to this topic

[Mirandir]

So, I wen't into the city today, to get a birthday present for my GF, and I did come by some of next years new sets in the toy store I visited. I did pick up two sets. One being 8401 CITY Minifigure Collection the other being 8125 Thunder Raceway, which is one of those new Racers sets where you can fold up the track into a box. (Review of that will hopefully follow within the next 24 hours...)

Now enough about that. Lets get down to the review, shall we?

Name – Minifigure Collection
Set Number – 8401
Year – 2009
Pieces – 65
Minifigures – 4
Age Recommendation – 5-12 years
Price - 79.90 SEK Probably around 7.99 USD or maybe even less.


Front of the box, nothing new there. Anyone intrested in this set has probably already seen bigger and better pics of it.


Back of the box. And yeah the set is more or less four impulse sets put in a single box(as if you haven't figured that out already): A girl with a bench and a radio, a police officer with a couple of roadsigns, a guy with a suitcase, trafficsignals and a waterpost and a delivery-dude in a CS-jacket with a handtruck and one of those new crates.


This is what the box contains: Two polybags of LEGO, one DSS and an uneccesary instruction booklet.


Boom, I'm done. There is no tricky build whatsoever. It'll take you less time to build it than it'll take you to turn the first page of the instructions booklet.

Conclusion
So what do I think about the set? Well It's nice in that Impulse sort of way. It's good to stock up on minifigs but it won't offer any greater variation of the figs. Best part is that you get 4 minifigs in one go. And one of which wears a CS-jacket. Oh and look! It's a girl! In a set in the lower price-segment. Who would have thought....

This is the first girl I haven't bought of bricklink after the end of my dark age.


/Mirandir

[Derek]

Hello, thanks for the review. This looks like a nice set, perfect for expanding your city. However, I have some odd feeling that this won't be widely available in the US...

[Dennimator]

2009 sets available in Sweden already? They usually doesn´t show up before late January, at least where I live.
In what store did you buy it?

[mania3]

Thanks for the quick review.  Somehow I picture this set as costing around 9.99 USD.  We'll see though.

[zeki]

This set looks great! Will probably buy 12 of the oreven more due to the great accesories it offers!

[Mirandir]

Dennimator, on Dec 14 2008, 07:44 AM, said:

2009 sets available in Sweden already? They usually doesn´t show up before late January, at least where I live.
In what store did you buy it?

It was in a local Toystore named "Lek & Hobby". I saw Racers, some Technic and the whole new City Construction range + this set. I was actually into another store selling LEGO (HBAdventure) they had the same 2009 sets. Excluding this set and the foldable track Racers sets. So I would say this is somewhat widely spread.

I think this is something new for this year as they usually don't turn up in stores here until February. At least it feels that way...

Edited by Mirandir, 14 December 2008 - 10:42 AM.

[paul_delahaye]

I am really disappointed that the road signs are not printed

Edited by paul_delahaye, 14 December 2008 - 12:03 PM.

[Mariko]

Having recently bought the new dump truck set (which included a stickered road sign), I did not expect the crosswalk sign or the stoplight sign to be printed, but to have a sticker for the 50 km/h sign is ridiculous, when we get a printed one with the police officer impulse set!

[Mirandir]

Mariko, on Dec 14 2008, 06:02 PM, said:

Having recently bought the new dump truck set (which included a stickered road sign), I did not expect the crosswalk sign or the stoplight sign to be printed, but to have a sticker for the 50 km/h sign is ridiculous, when we get a printed one with the police officer impulse set!

My guess is that they decided that either all or none of the roadsigns were to be printed and then they let the mayority decide.

[Darth_Legois]

Hmm that delivery guy has given me afew ideas...

Anyway, Yes I guess it is like 4 Impulses in 1 set.

I dont really need the police man [My police already out-number my civilians ]

I like the chick & radio I dont have a blonde ponytail hairpiece yet.

The guy in the suit is ok I guess.

Delivery Guy is the best out of them all IMO.

Thanks for the review!

[Svelte]

Thanks for the review.

It's a nice idea for City army builders (can there be such a thing?) but I don't really like any of the figs apart from the female's tan ponytail hair. I am sick of policemen and his head and bearded guy are probably my least favourite male head-prints out of the current minifig range   They really need to add some new generic City minifigs - they've done great things in the licenced themes, Agenst and Castle - why not here too?

I don't know, maybe if the road signs were printed I'd feel differently...

Still, I applaud the change in direction and hopefully it will sell like hotcakes!

[BlueBard]

I think this little set is a wonderful addition to a Lego city collection. I hope TLC will release more of this sets!  

[Mariko]

Mirandir, on Dec 15 2008, 02:26 AM, said:

My guess is that they decided that either all or none of the roadsigns were to be printed and then they let the mayority decide.

That makes sense, but is still rather disappointing. Particularly since I really hate putting stickers on round pieces.

[Dennimator]

I got this set today, and I´ve noticed that some of the 2009 sets is priced higher than previous ones of the same sort.
For example the small Tiny Turbos sets used to cost 50 SEK, now they cost 70 SEK.
The same with the small Creator sets. Bigger sets are priced up to 30% higher than sets in the same price range previous years.
Bad move, TLC!

[Mirandir]

Dennimator, on Dec 15 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

I got this set today, and I´ve noticed that some of the 2009 sets is priced higher than previous ones of the same sort.
For example the small Tiny Turbos sets used to cost 50 SEK, now they cost 70 SEK.
The same with the small Creator sets. Bigger sets are priced up to 30% higher than sets in the same price range previous years.
Bad move, TLC!

I guess this is the effect of the SEK currency dropping like a rock in value. :(

[skinkfem]

Mirandir, on Dec 15 2008, 08:11 PM, said:

I guess this is the effect of the SEK currency dropping like a rock in value. :(

i doubt the current crisis is to blame tho as the prices increased before them
skeleton tower (7093) cost 549SEK in the beggining of the year, now cost 629SEK
(aprox 11USD prizier).

it seems more like yet another case of the
"europe gets to pay so we can dump the prizes in us"
policy that tlc seems to have.

[Omega 8]

I am even more excited for this set now.

My 8 year old daughter is ALWAYS wanting girls to play with and as we all know they can be somewhat hard to come by..... this set will certainly help!

[Lego Amaryl]

It looks so "classic"... I'll buy it for sure.
But I'm disappointed for the roadsign stickers too...

[Peter-72]

Mirandir, on Dec 14 2008, 11:39 AM, said:

It was in a local Toystore named "Lek & Hobby". I saw Racers, some Technic and the whole new City Construction range + this set. I was actually into another store selling LEGO (HBAdventure) they had the same 2009 sets. Excluding this set and the foldable track Racers sets. So I would say this is somewhat widely spread.

I think this is something new for this year as they usually don't turn up in stores here until February. At least it feels that way...

I noticed the new Construction sets at "BR Leksaker" yesterday. Talk about a neat X-mas surprise!

[Whittleberry]

I'm annoyed that the signs aren't printed, I'd be willing to pay more for printed signs. Anyway it's nice to see a minifig with blonde hair! That doesn't happen a lot...

[Legoist]

Here in Finland we've had this set on shops for a while, I don't remember exactly but I think it's been available already before Christmas. It's definitely the first 2009 set I've seen on the shelves over here.

I like it a lot, and plan to buy at least one of them. I'd rate it a 4/5 for the following reasons.

4 figures with accessories = 2e each, better price than impulse sets. Generally speaking, while most of the impulse sets are nice, many of them have very little besides the actual minifig (the best being probably the castle soldier impulse sets which has at least quite a few weapons), and the "design" of that little is pretty limited. Furthermore, despite the fact that impulse sets are quite many in number, there is actually only 1-2 per  theme... and each of them (except the castle soldier, the troll and the imperial soldier) holds a minifig that is rarely worth having in multiple copies.

That said, I believe a set like this 8410 is generally a better idea than impulse sets! It's almost a return to the minifig sets of the 80s, which usually were 4 or 6 minifigs each (but with less accessories). I really hope that in the upcoming months, LEGO will release a similarly-sized minifig set for EVERY theme (in a way, they already did it for Castle with the battle packs, but unfortunately not sold in every country). Perhaps City is the theme that actually needed it the least.

The 8410 is great but not perfect for my tastes, but I'm a nitpicker  

Actually what I like most here is the non-minifig content. Roadsigns are NECESSARY and very scarce (I always wish they would release some roadsigns pack like 20 years ago), and I don't mind too much the fact that they are stickered. The park bench and the semaphore are great too. The fire hose is meh, but doesn't hurt. All of these would be worth having in multiple copies.

The minifigs are a mixed bag: for me the woman and the businessman are just fine, while I don't like the other guy's torso and head. The policeman is ok, but honestly this is probably the most common minifigure in anyone's City, so they could have had someone else instead. For this set to be perfect, I would probably just replace the worker's head with something nicer and give him an actual worker's torso, and completely replace the policeman with either another civilian or a doctor/cook/trashman/postman.

[Asuka]

Thanks for that nice review, Mirandir.  

I´m very glad that TLC´s giving us such an useful little set. Although I don´t like the use of stickers for the road signs either
I still think that set´s pretty neat, especially with the inclusion of a fine female MF. Sets like that one´re long overdue IMO
and it would be great to see more of them!  

Mirandir, on Dec 14 2008, 03:14 AM, said:

This is the first girl I haven't bought of bricklink after the end of my dark age.

Well, I know what you mean but somehow that sentence leaves room for a completely different interpretation...  

[legowill1]

It's a really good set!

[Darth Jar Jar]

legowill1, on 13 September 2010 - 01:41 PM, said:

It's a really good set!

Just asking legowill1 why have yo bumped so many reviews just to say its a good set just curious

Edited by Darth Jar Jar, 13 September 2010 - 06:34 PM.

[Legocrazy81]

Darth Jar Jar, on 13 September 2010 - 06:33 PM, said:

Just asking legowill1 why have yo bumped so many reviews just to say its a good set just curious

He must be some kind of repost robot, vase he's done this to about 5 threads and has said the exact same thing in all of them.

Also, just noticed the bottom of the page. For now anyways, the last 4 posts are revival by him too...

Edited by Legocrazy81, 15 September 2010 - 06:31 AM.