Review of City of Wonders Gift Sets in Malaysia.

[kaelthas]

Hello, I know this is around two months since they are launched in Malaysia, but I'm happy to be able to review these four beautiful sets that represent Malaysia.

Thanks to LUG of Malaysia (LOM) that gave me this opportunity to review these sets. These four sets are called Bunga Raya, Rumah Kampung, Wau and Ketupat which were lauched week by week in Toys"R"us Pavillion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

*All the minfigures are NOT included in these sets.

Let's get started.

Bunga Raya (Hibiscus).

 Let's start with the first of the four Malaysia Limited Edition set, Bunga Raya.

 As we all know, Hibiscus (also known as Bunga Raya in Malay), is our national flower. Its scientific name is Hibiscus rosasinensis. After our independence day (Merdeka), our Agriculture Ministry was instructed to suggest a suitable flower to be our National Flower. However in the end of 1958, the ministry of Agriculture actually came up with seven suggestions which were Bunga Kenanga (Cananga odorata), Bunga Raya, Bunga Melur (Jasminum or Jasmine in English), Bunga Teratai (Nelumbo nucifera or lotus in English), Bunga Mawar (Rosa or rose in English), Bunga Cempaka (Carson Magnolia sp. or Champak flowers in English) and Bunga Tanjung (mimusops elengi or Spanish Cherry Flower in English). After discussion on 28 Julai 1960, 'Bunga Raya' was declared as the national flower of Persekutuan Tanah Melayu and continued to be until now. 

 The Box.

 

This set is not packaged in ordinary polybags but it came in a small yellow box instead. Front part you can see the poster of City of Wonders, and a piece count with 133 pieces in this box. At the back you can see other three sets to be collected and at the side, you can see the Bunga Raya but it is NOT actual size. 

As you can see here, it can be opened up like a lunch box. I liked it as you don't need to damage the box when you are opening it.

 

Yeay! Lets pour everything out! You get the 133 pieces of LEGO which is mostly red in colour, and a piece of instruction paper. Its very amazing that this pile of LEGO will bloom out and become a beautiful flower.

 

The parts consist of three main colour, red, green and yellow. As you can see in the picture, the pieces are mostly plates, inverted slopes and smooth curvy parts. I like the green and yellow parts showed up in the sea of red in this picture. They become the striking component here. Lets start building.

 

Step one you can see the base is mainly plates. Then covered by curved parts for the bottom two petals in step two. After a few minutes building, you will get four petals attached nicely as in the picture.

 

Step four is completing the five petals of our national flower. Its already a very nice looking flower just as it is. I love how the curved parts attached to become not squarish as LEGO parts are mostly square. Then tadaa! Build the green stem and yellow anther and you get yourself a very nice beautiful flower! 

 

In this picture you can see the bottom part of the flower. It was supported by those inverted bricks so that it won't fall apart like how it was before these slopes were attached. Then you can hold it on the stem and it will stay at your hand firmly.

 

Lastly this is not a minifig scaled flower. With so much details inside it is quite hard to make it smaller. However, Antman (which is not included in the set) is always 'scaled' to any sized object so he can pose here nicely standing beside the beautiful Hibiscus.

 Pros

What I really like about this set was the flower is very nicely designed with the striking combination of red green and yellow colour. Its a very nice display set where you can put on your working desk to proudly show that I LOVE MALAYSIA! 

Cons 

The only cons I think was the long pillar holding the anther tends to fall off quite often. But it doesn't really affect the appearance of the flower.

 

Look how realistic is this. It almost looked like a real Hibiscus.

 

Rumah Kampung (Village House).

Hi, today I'm proud to present to you the second set of the LEGO City of Wonders, Rumah Kampung.

Rumah Kampung is a traditional Malay houses in Malaysia. It originates before the arrival of foreign or modern influences, and constructed by the indigenous ethnic Malay of the Malay Penisula, Sumatra and Borneo. It was built with traditional architectural forms such as tropically suited roofs and they are captured in this very beautifully designed LEGO set.

Let's go to the set.

 

This set has 137 pieces, almost the same number of pieces with the Bunga Raya set but quite small compared to the Hibiscus.

 

Emmet is excited to start building the nice village house with these bricks, plates and slopes!

*Emmet is not included in this set.

 

This is part one of the part list. The Rumah Kampung consists of brown plates, light bluish gray slopes and a dark brown clip.

 

Part two consist of tan coloured windows and door, dark red tiles and tons of brown profile bricks.

 

Lets open up the instructions and start building! 

 

Step one you can already see the base of the house lined with cozy dark red carpet. Emmet is comfortably sitting there watching me building.

 

Hi! We have a helper now. The carpenter had already finished the windows and Emmet is helping him to install them for the house!

 

After installing the windows, it started to rain! Luckily the base of the roof was done for Emmet to 'not getting wet'. Where did he get the umbrella? Hmm...

 

Yeay! The roof was done! Now Emmet is happy that the house has two air vents at the roof to make the inside of the house cool. This is very important in our all year hot country! 

 

Then the pillars are installed. Now that the roof is taller than Emmet, he can't help but wondering 'How to get inside the door?'

 

With the ladder, of course! I like the simple and accurately designed ladder. 

 

These are the views of the finished model. Amazing design! This house is stable and the slope of the roof are built at two nice gradient. The hole was purposely left brickless to resemble the air vent at the roof which I feel its an amazing touch to the house. In conclusion, this is a very nice set to get for your work desk! Thanks for reading and I'm not sure how tree beard feels in the next picture. 

 

Emmet: 'Can you keep that wood plank and the saw now?'

*Emmet, Tree Beard and the carpenter are not included in this set.

Pros

Amazing design! This house is stable and the slope of the roof are built at two nice gradient. The hole was purposely left brickless to resemble the air vent at the roof which I feel its an amazing touch to the house.

Cons 

The cons of this set is that you need to be careful of the legs that quite often fall off so you need to count the eight legs every time you bring the house from one place to another.

 

The use of the profile bricks to make it looked like wood planks is a very nice touch to the house. It really has the village cozy feel here.

The other two sets will be reviewed at the comment area. Please continue reading.

 

[kaelthas]

Wau (Traditional Kite)

 

Wau is actually a Malaysian moon-kite that is traditionally flown by men in the Malaysian state of Kelantan. In Bahasa Melayu we called it 'Wau Bulan'. There are actually other types of Wau such as cat kite (Wau Kucing) which was used as MAS (Malaysian Airlines) logo. 

 Lets start building!

 

There are 139 pieces in this set and I suppose this set has the biggest number of pieces among all. The back of the box are identical to all four sets, lets open up and play. Wow, the pieces here are quite small but very colourful! Benny can't wait already to start 'Build a spaceship'!

*Benny is not included in this set.

 

This is a very colourful set and I personally liked the pearl gold pieces. There is a special part here as you can see labeled as inverted curves, quite rarely found in normal LEGO sets.

 

See, Benny is so touched that he finally can build a spaceship. Step one is to build the base of the Wau. The colour matching is very nice using black as the border.

 

Now the supporting structure of the Wau is installed. In Bahasa Melayu we called it the 'Rangka'.

 

As we go up higher, we need another horizontal pillar to support the borders of the kite and the design of these pillars are very nice with patterns inside. 

This is a quick tip to build four of these pieces. Its quite hard to manipulate the small 1x1 parts, so you can build three 2x2 red plates first, then add on with those 1x1 plates.

 

Now Benny is asking why is it not blue? But you can already see the drawings on the Wau. Very impressive build!

Lastly we build the yellow cone and stand. The Wau here is actually connected part by part like you can see in the picture. 

 

Tada! Benny is back to happy face as his spaceship is done! It looks really nice and accurately designed to look like a real Wau Bulan. The small pieces of 1x1 plates combined into an art pattern at the body of the Wau. I really liked it very much.

Pros

This is an art piece I would say. You can literally 'draw' a painting on this kite. The pattern of the Wau was nicely painted by bricks and plates. The building technique has a nice finishing border and seamless. 

Cons 

Hmm, the cons of the set I think is the small parts build. Its quite tedious to handle 1x1 so much but with the design so nice, I'm not complaining.

 

I believe I can fly!

Ketupat 

Ketupat is a Malaysian delicacies that is made from rice that has been wrapped in a wovenpalm leaf pouch and boiled. As the rice cooks, the grains expand to fill the pouch and the rice becomes compressed. This method of cooking gives the ketupat its characteristic form and texture of a rice dumpling. 

Let's start 'cooking'!

 

This box contains 126 pieces, and you get two diamond shaped ketupat in this set.

Only three colours here, green, white and lime green. Alright, lord business is hungry already.

*Lord Business is not included in this set.

 

As you can see here, there are lots of plates in three colours mentioned before.

These parts will make the ketupat looks more delicious with curves.

 

Lord Business: Hey, get rid of the rat! We are cooking foods here! The first and second step involves building the 'rice' of the ketupat. 

*Cleaner, Lord business, rat and green space guy are not included in this set.

In the third step we start to wrap the rice with olive green leaves.

 

Now that the delicious ketupat starts to take shape, Lord Business is very happy now!

Lastly, lets put a good wrap to the rice inside and we are ready to serve! Eh wait, you need to make another one. Haha.

After building another one, and these delicious ketupat are ready to be served! Are you sure you are not getting more? Two is better than one!

 

Pros

By building this set I learnt how to combine two studless surface face to face. The use of green and olive green colour in this set matches perfectly and you get double happiness in this set!

Cons 

Hmm food. A delicacy so nice to eat got nothing that I don't like. Haha.

 

 

Outdoor shot of the 'Ketupat'. Shouldn't it be served in a plate?

 

Review summary 
 Playability: 6/10 - There are nothing to play with actually, and if you do play with these, they will break apart.
Design / Building Experience: 9/10 - The design and building techniques are quite useful for MOCers.

Overall: 9/10 -  The design of the flower, village house, kite and the 'Ketupat' are very similar to the real ones. It would be very nice to be displayed on your desk for iconic Malaysian culture. 

 

I love the color richness and very recognizable builds here.

Thanks to LUG of Malaysia (LOM) and I hope you enjoy the review! Please leave your thoughts and comment below, thank you.

[sousmarineuse]

Thank you very much for this review! Reminds me travels, a long time ago.

Malaysia is indeed a wonderful country!

And nice technic for these builds!

[WhiteFang]

Lovely review. I am very pleased to see the completed reviews for these 4 sets. Thanks for taking your time to do this review for our Eurobricks community. I had the pleasure of seeing the display in KL earlier. 

[Catanas]

Great review, thankyou! I adore the colours on these, and I think the flower is probably my favourite! ^^

[makoy]

I hope LEGO will continue doing CoW and that this is not just a one-off exercise. Featuring the local flavour of LEGO builds even without the typical set number is a welcome addition to some collectors.

Of course, very thorough review as always. Great job!

[Holodoc]

Nice and comprehensive review!

But - mmmh. 
The Hibiscus is nice but not what I would call a brilliant masterpiece. The hut is ... basic: No special parts or techniques.
For the kite I believe you have to be asian to get anything from it.
In the ketupat set TLC finally used some interesting technique, so thumbsup for that. But are these parts really olive green? I would swear they are lime green from the photos...

In sum it's a very versatile arrangement with all 4 sets. Made for the asian market I'm not the target group, so everything is okay.

[makoy]

6 hours ago, Holodoc said:

But are these parts really olive green? I would swear they are lime green from the photos...

The Ketupat exterior is actually green and lime green. @kaelthas might have overlooked this detail.

[kaelthas]

On 8/4/2017 at 11:04 PM, sousmarineuse said:

Thank you very much for this review! Reminds me travels, a long time ago.

Malaysia is indeed a wonderful country!

And nice technic for these builds!

Thanks! Malaysia is a beautiful country.

On 8/5/2017 at 3:51 PM, WhiteFang said:

Lovely review. I am very pleased to see the completed reviews for these 4 sets. Thanks for taking your time to do this review for our Eurobricks community. I had the pleasure of seeing the display in KL earlier. 

Thanks @WhiteFang. Its my pleasure to do review for Eurobricks community and I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, the display in Kuala Lumpur was great with large MOC scene of new city sets.

On 8/5/2017 at 5:21 PM, Catanas said:

Great review, thankyou! I adore the colours on these, and I think the flower is probably my favourite! ^^

Thanks! The colours are great and the flower looked so real!

On 8/5/2017 at 5:34 PM, makoy said:

I hope LEGO will continue doing CoW and that this is not just a one-off exercise. Featuring the local flavour of LEGO builds even without the typical set number is a welcome addition to some collectors.

Of course, very thorough review as always. Great job!

Thanks! I am wondering an annual event would be nice.

9 hours ago, Holodoc said:

Nice and comprehensive review!

But - mmmh. 
The Hibiscus is nice but not what I would call a brilliant masterpiece. The hut is ... basic: No special parts or techniques.
For the kite I believe you have to be asian to get anything from it.
In the ketupat set TLC finally used some interesting technique, so thumbsup for that. But are these parts really olive green? I would swear they are lime green from the photos...

In sum it's a very versatile arrangement with all 4 sets. Made for the asian market I'm not the target group, so everything is okay.

Thanks! Sorry for the color mistake, I've rectified it to lime green, thanks for pointing it out. 

 

[Legogal]

Wow! Thanks for the excellent reviews of all four. These are a wonderful set of small builds, especially the hibiscus. And they represent the culture of some lovely folks.

When you decide to visit Legoland Malaysia, just across the border from Singapore, make sure you add on at least a few days in Malaysia. I flew to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore and enjoyed five days seeing some outstanding places that I will never forget! Don't miss the Royal Selangor factory and museum and the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia as well as riding up to Petronas Towers on a clear night.

The City of Wonders should be a series so that there are small sets for each major city. This increases understanding of other cultures, which is something this world badly needs. And it would encourage folks to travel abroad more and see how others live. You will see many requests for which LEGO set is available only in _________, and there rarely is a set that represents a city. (LEGO might be surprised at how well these small sets would sell. Look at the number sold of the Statue of Liberty polybag offered in NYC at the old ToysRUs at Times Square.)

The hibiscus set looks especially inviting and should be on my desk to remind me of fun times in Malaysia!

[kaelthas]

On 8/11/2017 at 7:42 AM, Legogal said:

Wow! Thanks for the excellent reviews of all four. These are a wonderful set of small builds, especially the hibiscus. And they represent the culture of some lovely folks.

When you decide to visit Legoland Malaysia, just across the border from Singapore, make sure you add on at least a few days in Malaysia. I flew to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore and enjoyed five days seeing some outstanding places that I will never forget! Don't miss the Royal Selangor factory and museum and the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia as well as riding up to Petronas Towers on a clear night.

The City of Wonders should be a series so that there are small sets for each major city. This increases understanding of other cultures, which is something this world badly needs. And it would encourage folks to travel abroad more and see how others live. You will see many requests for which LEGO set is available only in _________, and there rarely is a set that represents a city. (LEGO might be surprised at how well these small sets would sell. Look at the number sold of the Statue of Liberty polybag offered in NYC at the old ToysRUs at Times Square.)

The hibiscus set looks especially inviting and should be on my desk to remind me of fun times in Malaysia!

Thanks for your kind words! Glad that you like Malaysia. I agree that every city should have a set to represent them. Thanks again @Legogal!