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Probably the most anticipated Atlantis set of the new 2011 January wave, the Temple of Atlantis, happened to be available at Toy's R Us in my city (Uppsala, Sweden) and I didn't hesitate to pick it up. I've tried to take some decent pictures of the set but I'm well aware that they could be better, I'll try to make up for that with some in-depth thoughts about the set.
Set info
Set name: Temple of Atlantis
Set number: 7985
Release year: 2011
Piece count: 653 + 5 minifigs
Price: TBA, I got it for 759SEK but I haven't seen any official MSRP yet.
Box
The front of the box is shown in the first picture, here is the back side:
An alternative view of the set and some close up photos of the play functions:
(my bad photoshopping
)The content
This is what is found inside the box, looks pretty nice:
7 bags, 2 green rubbery pieces, 1 instruction booklet and one DSS (Dreaded Sticker Sheet)
The obligatory random instruction page picture
:
Clear and nice, no problem telling colours apart but then there aren't many colours you can mistake for another in this set. There was however one mistake that I discovered in the instructions:
At this step in the instructions you add the white pieces you see in the piece-call-out-box up to the left, but on the picture the two flickfire missiles are added too, one step before they are called out. I now ask all of you, how will this effect LEGO as we know it? Are we seeing a trend break in our hobby? Will AFOLs abandon their cause or will sales rise extraordinary as a result of this?
Of course not, I just mentioned it because I felt proud to have observed the fault
Here is the inventory list, sorry about the quality of the picture I'm not sure if it's readable. In any case, you can find it at Bricklink too: LINK
And the DSS together with the green rubberly pieces which are originally a Bionicle piece with first appearance in 2007 but in this set for the first time in green:
As you can see there are 14 stickers but of these I only applied 10 to the set. My inconsistency with the stickers might be confusing but I wanted to save some of them for a MOC I'm working on and some I didn't want to apply since the pieces are more useful without them.
Here we have some interesting pieces:
Black Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with Angled Handles on Side is Bricklink's name on the piece to the left, there are 2 of them in the set and is all new. The only other set it appear in is 7984 Drill Submarine, another 2011 Atlantis set. The propeller piece is made in Flat Silver this year, it also appears in other 2011 Atlantis sets.
The Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with Clip on Top is also new, a combination of a 1x2 plate and a 1x1 modified tile with clip. It also appears in light bley in the new Police station. The windscreen in trans-yellow is highly anticipated by Space-fans, in particular the sly Classic Blacktrons. Maybe it will fit well together with the Series 3 Space Villian...
And here, the piece that has drawn most attention to this set, the ribbed round bricks or Round 2 x 2 with Grille as BL calls them. The set contains 83 white and 19 tan ones which is more then I expected. We also get some old pieces in new colours, the 1x1 tile modified with clip in dark green, fish in Flat Silver, Ornamental Fish in pearl gold and the new handle which is also in the Ninjago sets, BL calls it Bar 1L with Top Stud and Two Side Studs.
Minifigures
Lets move over to the characters in this set, we got 2 humans, 1 statue (that lives?) an 2 creatures which clearly seems to be in their right element several leagues deep in the sea.
First out is a familiar member of the Atlantis crew, Ace Speedman in a new yellow diving suit and a large propeller on his back. The propeller makes him very back heavy and hard to position.
The golden statue is a clash of many different gold shades. I think it's meant to represent Poseidon (or Neptune if your Roman), the god of the sea with his trident. His armor is the same as the Portal Emperor and his helmet is Spartan but without the dark red painted plume.
Here you can see how he looks without the equipment. I like the printing, now we have a naked muscular man torso in yellow, light flesh and gold, but I wonder when we will get a female version?
Leg printing is also nice but when it comes to the head I'm disappointed to see a very noticeable moulding mark right over the face 
, luckily the back side of the head is spared from such things and is instead favoured with a nice human face. I guess that means the statue can be brought to life, but how and why is up to your own imagination.
The dark red Crab-man is a unique minifig for this set, very cute with short legs and large claws. He has, like his partner the Fish-man, a mouth on his torso.
As you can see, the claws are held by normal minifig hands and the headpiece is one piece, no normal minifig head under it like on the hammer-shark minifig.
The fish-man has featured in other review here on Eurobricks, he's quite an eye-catcher. BL calls him a Barracuda Warrior, but I don't find it very similar to a real barracuda. Maybe the underbite...
Last, but not leat, we got the leader of the expedition, Samantha Rhodes. She also sports the new underwater fashion of 2011 with a light bley diving helmet with trans-yellow visor, dark bley diving suit with silver and yellow details and yellow flippers. As accessory she has a flat silver harpoon.
The build
From the first bag you build not only the minifigs but also the black crab monster:
Here you can see how the new "knuckle"-piece is used.
Black with orange details and sticker Atlantis-markings. The orange Bionicle spikes, which the crab-man also has 2 of, is a new colour for that piece.
The next sub-model is the submarine:
Quite simple build but the brackets gives us a nice base for the snotted sides:
The use of Wedge 4 x 3 Open with Cutout together with the curved stud-less slopes works very well. The colours used are mostly red, dark bley and trans-yellow. as with many action theme sets we have some flick-fire missiles. They are however a bit difficult to fire since the propeller gets in the way, but maybe the set is designed more to small kid's fingers and not my clumsy ones.
Back:
Front:
And now we start with the temple itself, this is what's inside the bags numbered 3:
Lots and lots of column pieces and mostly pieces in white, tan, dark tan, light and dark bley.
After bag 3 the temple looks like this
I've put on the stickers on the large white panel but not on the rock pieces. The new gold handle is used to hold two gold ornamental fishes and the silver fish goes together with some jewels in the treasure chest. In the middle you can catch a glimpse of the mechanism that makes the golden statue come up through the floor when you turn the Atlantis key.
Back:
As you can see, there are more column pieces then just those in front of the temple. Apart from some seaweed the basement of the temple is pretty bare, but that leaves room to place the monster crab there.
Here is a picture of the golden gate at the left side of the temple. The 1x2 tile has a sticker with a key hole pattern, but there is no key in the set (except the Atlantis key but tat won't fit), who might have it?
This a view from the other side where the statue rising function more visible.
Content of bag 4:
Much like bag 3 but with less big plates and more 1x1 round gold plates.
Now we can see what this is going to be. The temple rises up on the base and is about 24 bricks high.
At the bottom of the stairs there is a structure with the key mechanism that makes the gold statue rise up. The blue gem sitting in front of it looks a bit out of place to me, but I guess it's meant to be some kind of decoration.
Another back side shot, it shows that quite empty back of the pediment. Only the flick-fire missiles and a small ledge.
And finished:
At the end a portal and some columns in different degrees of decay and large and small seaweed is added. The right column can be tipped to the left if one want to.
With all the minifigs and sub-models:
The portal in the front has a dangerous trap:
Push the golden cone and an axe falls down, luckily the diver managed to roll away:
The temple before the key is turned:
And after:
The white panel doesn't rise all the way up by itself so the merman stickers aren't very easy to get a good look of unless you pull it up yourself:
It would have been nice if we could get gold mermaid fins too, but I guess the legs of the statue is pretty good too.
Final thoughts
This is a great set, I won't hesitate to say that. I like sets that contains lots of useful parts and I think this set has much of those. The colours are mostly very useful, white, tan and grey are colours that can be used in many different MOCs and the gold details are nice too. I'm not a big fan of the submarine and the monster crab but to Atlantis fans I believe they are popular. I must say though, that I find the submarine nicely designed but I'm turned back because of the not-so-nice colours and the use of the big ugly ball-and-socket-joints. When it comes to minifigs I wasn't very interested in them but I must say that with the figs in my hands, many of them are nice. The divers are probably good for Sci-fi fans and personally I think they look better then the lime green variant. The golden statue is really special, but the mash of different gold nuances are kind of dragging down the grade on it. One can also ask oneself what a gold minifig are good for, maybe it can be used an El Dorado MOC or something but it's uses are limited IMHO. The fish-man and crab-man are really cool, I have no idea what I will use them for but I still think they look great. Since their parts aren't very versatile I guess I'll just keep them together standing on my shelf.
Build and design: 6/10 Nice and detailed, the temple is very good but the monster crab and the submarine is not that good IMHO.
Playability: 7/10 Quite a lot of different functions, the rising statue is the most advanced and the rest very simple.
Pieces: 8/10 Really good, over a hundred new grilled round 2x2 bricks and some really interesting new pieces.
Minifigs: 7/10 Not so exciting divers but very nice mutant creatures and gold statue.
Price: 6/10 I'm not sure yet what the MSRP will be but the 759SEK I paid was fair to me. I guess the $/€ price will be something around 80.
Total: 7/10 Above average according to me, well worth a buy if you like the pieces and minifigs. To me this is the kind of set I had hoped all of the Atlantis set would be like when I first heard about the theme, with Greek inspired architecture submerged ruins clad in seaweed, I very happy we finally got one.
) all the sets!!
, I actually like the sub, but will agree with you on the new dive suits and what about those undersea creatures eh ? 
Thanks again Etzel. 
