REVIEW: 80119 Galloping Horses Canvas

[Pchan1983]

Here is my review on the latest LEGO Chinese New Year set 80119 Galloping Horses Canvas:

THE GOOD:

• Looks impressive on a stationary state from a far.
• Use of cloth instead of plastic foil for the big artwork.
• The minifigures and little side build.

THE NOT SO GOOD:

• The building experience is not the optimal and felt very repetitive.
• The action feature does not live up to the "Galloping" name.

This may be the first ever CNY set that I personally didn't enjoy building.  I think it's mostly because it doesn't live up to the name of the set which I will explain later.  From the pictures and even the built set itself does look stunning in a stationary state from a far.  The use of a cloth piece with a lovely picture instead of a plastic foil is great too.  Obviously LEGO is really smart to split the exclusive minifigures across 2 sets.  You get the must-have Horse Costume minifig here if you are collecting all 12 zodiac signs.  The little girl also has a new torso with a nicely done printed tile of a horse drawing.  Now that's pretty much all the good stuff.  The building experience though, wasn't fun.  It started ok from building the base, then the effect builds became very repetitive, understandable but the problem is you put on the effect but it doesn't really give you a hint on what's coming so it felt like to piling bricks together in the same way for many times.  May be it was just me never into this kind of build.  By the time I got to the first horse, I had to stop as I couldn't continue in one ago, knowing the 4 horses are very similar build.  One, the black horse was a bit different because half the body are designed into the effect parts.  The horses look fine from a far, but the closer you get, you start to realise the horses are kinda too thin.  Now the biggest problem to me is the action feature, conceptually it's great but in reality it just not able to move like "Galloping Horses" but more like a Merry-Go Round. I probably would have accepted the name of the set if there wasn't an action feature.  The part behind the big cloth piece also look so bland.  Also having 4 horses don't really align the chinese new year theme as 4 is not really a lucky number.

I wouldn't say it's a bad set because it's clear it wasn't just my cup of tea.  And again wouldn't have bought this if not because the minifigures.  I do wonder if the set is 1/3 a bit smaller would have a different feel in terms of the action feature.  And with 4 more years to complete one round of zodiac, I wonder what kind of location or scene can LEGO do without rehashing previous sets.