[REVIEW] 42106 - Stunt Show Truck & Bike

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Set Number: 42106
Set Name: Stunt Show Truck & Bike
Pieces: 610
Price: $49.99 USD | 49,99 € | £44.99 | $89.99
Links: Lego.com | Bricklink | Brickset

Hello and welcome to my review of the Stunt Show Truck & Bike, the set most people...aren't excited about. Initial reactions to this set haven't been great, what's wrong with this set? Let's find out just how good or bad this set is.

A big thank you to Lego for providing this set; but as always, the thoughts in this review are my own, and I'll call something out when I need to. All honest thoughts here.

 

The Box

Front

The front of the box showcases all of the elements of the set as per usual, as well as advertising the pull-back feature, and the "2 in 1" aspect. I've never really understood the 2 in 1 marketing; Every Lego set is 10000000 in 1, you can take it apart and build it into countless different creations. I normally think of 2 in 1 as being two different products in 1 package, and I guess that'd be true in this case (though obviously they are talking about the A and B model.)

 

Back 

The back showcases the numerous components and a few of the sets features, though we will go over those later. We also see the B model, a...SUV...thing.... with a ramp and...uh, wall? Not really sure what's going on there, once instructions are available we will take a closer look at that. 

Bike

Pull back engine

 

Here we begin to build the bike, it's mostly made up of the pull-back engine/ Note the skull stickers we add here.

Gears

Since the bike's rear wheel doesn't directly go through the pull-back motor itself, we have to build this small gear system in order to transfer the power between the motor and the wheels.

Rear wheel attached

 

And here we can see how the wheel is mounted.

 

Finished bike front

 

Yeah, okay, I'm not going to pull my punches here. This is really not great. At this scale, in Technic, and with a pull back motor, it's really tough to pull off a good looking stunt bike. it's very unfinished looking and blocky, and has huge tires in order to successfully utilize the pull-back feature. 

Rear

Plus, with the gear system necessary for the function, it's extremely wide at the back. 

 

Trailer

Next, we build up the trailer, you can see here it's primarily a few large panels, we also begin to build up one function.

Function built

We will look at the function in a moment, but here's the mechanics behind it. Note the rubber 1x2s, those will keep the trailer in place when it's turned into a ramp, so the bike will not move it while in action.

Finished trailer

Here's the finalized trailer. The small peg is used to hold the bike on and prevent it from falling off, but it can easily be removed; it's held on by an axle-in-pinhole sort of situation.

With Bike

Here it is with the bike mounted. It works well, it's secure enough to drive it around. 

Ramp

By twisting the gear, you drop down the props, and manually fold down the panels at the back to create a ramp. It works well, once in position it's sturdy. Though, it's not a very steep angle, so the bike doesn't get much air.

 

Truck

Now we begin the largest component of the set, the pickup truck. 

 

Steering

The main function of the truck is, well, steering. You can see above how the system works, when you twist the gray vertical cylinder, it drives the small gear function at the front. it works fine, just as well as the systems on the small $13 sets.

Truck Frame

We continue to build up the cab of the truck, you can see some stickers are used near the engine. Again, really nothing functionally is built here, we are just shaping the truck.

More building

Here's two more shots of the build. A few things are apparent at this stage; first, this is obviously not meant to emulate any real-life truck. Second, it's a "slammed" truck in a way, the rear wheels are set very low into the bed of the truck. I'm not personally a fan of this look- I why they went for this design choice, as realistically you would want the truck lower so that the bike can easily jump the truck. But they missed an opportunity here to implement some kind of airbag suspension system into the design instead of yet another steering function.

Complete without stickers

Here's a few shots of the truck "clean," I do have some stickers on here as you have seen, but they are minimal things like a grill or V8 sticker. The rest of the stickers in the set are rather aggressive, so enjoy the clean look here before things get, well, messy. 

Front

 

The front looks decent enough, some system was used for the headlights and a sticker is used for the grill. 

Rear

Ah yes, there's the aggressive stickers. Here you can see the simple trailer hitch, it's pretty well mounted to the bumper.

Profile

The colorscheme isn't bad, but it feels very messy to me, especially with the stickers added on. 

 

Top down

Top down, we can see a pretty big eyesore, the rear trailer bed is quite hollow.

With trailer

Combined with the trailer it looks good, they are two cohesive pieces for sure. Though I do not demonstrate it in this review, you get about 180 degrees of pivot out of the trailer hitch.

Opening doors

The first function we will take a quick look at is the doors, they can open thanks to a single axle connection point. 

Interior

 

There's a few things to look at on the inside; seats, a speedometer, and the steering wheel which can be raised and lowered.

 

Steering

 

Complete set

Here's the last little build of the set, a ring-of-almost-fire. This mounts to the back of the truck by a single pin, it cannot stand on it's own. The idea here is that you would park the truck, drop the ramp, and the bike would jump the ramp, over the truck and through the hoop. I've tried demonstrating this in the video below with limited space.

 

Bonus Pics

Just for fun, you can see the decent carrying capacity of the trailer. 

 

Overall

At $50, this set does not aim to feel like one, large, complicated $50 model. It's not one single model comprised of over 600 pieces. No, instead they chose to give us a set with a lot of different components, it's a Technic set with a System mindset. And...it's okay. I think this set is a very acquired taste; for Technic fanatics, I really can't say this set offers you anything outside of pieces, the functions aren't groundbreaking and the design overall is mediocre. For system fans, this might be a good introduction to Technic since it follows a similar formula as many system sets, though to be fair, you again have the issue of "this set doesn't look great and doesn't have the functionality to back it up."

Everything is always up to your opinion. In this review, my aim was to show you this set in as many ways as possible, and my opinions are just that, opinions. I'm not a hardcore Technic fan, so asa casual Technic fan I can say, I really don't get this set, unless you absolutely love the concept. Thanks for viewing! What are your thoughts? 

[Maaboo35]

Man, this set is total puke. 

[Ngoc Nguyen]

I like the concept, but not the execution.

[msk6003]

That truck looks god for RC mod. You can put 3L diff if remove 3L axle joiner. And put batterybox on top of rear wheel.

[mostlytechnic]

Yeah, I think they're going for getting new, younger Technic fans with this one (with most of the 2020 lineup, actually). I actually prefer the B model to the A on this one!

[iLego]

The sole purpose of this set is to reduce the price of the red mudguard on bricklink. It has no other reason for existence 

May God bless it with heavy discounts.

[Ngoc Nguyen]

I've just thought that orange mudguards come in 4 for a set, dark azure ones also come in 4, but red ones only come in 2. So this wave TLG has to release extra sets with red mudguards.

[captainmib]

I've just checked Brickset for sets between 500 and 600+ pieces, and man, can you pick some nice technic and interesting builds in that range.

This is not one of them.

I think the whole 1h 2020 is meh.

[Lakop]

I'm not a fan of these smaller technic sets. They rarely have any technic functions. The steering wheel should have the ability to steer, it should have a technic piston engine in the front and the rear should have a functioning boot or something to appeal to younger lego people.

H

[Maaboo35]

25 minutes ago, Horace T said:

I'm not a fan of these smaller technic sets. They rarely have any technic functions. The steering wheel should have the ability to steer, it should have a technic piston engine in the front and the rear should have a functioning boot or something to appeal to younger lego people.

H

It has a fake "V8" supercharger, is that not enough for you? 

Also, that ring of fire. Where the hell are people supposed to store that thing? 

[Ngoc Nguyen]

6 hours ago, Maaboo35 said:

Also, that ring of fire. Where the hell are people supposed to store that thing? 

The set should have had a flammable hazard sign 

[Saberwing40k]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: LEGO NEEDS TO BRING BACK RACERS. This is not a Technic set. It embodies basically nothing that makes Technic Technic. A set like this would be a much better as a Racers model.

[Maaboo35]

6 hours ago, Saberwing40k said:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: LEGO NEEDS TO BRING BACK RACERS. This is not a Technic set. It embodies basically nothing that makes Technic Technic. A set like this would be a much better as a Racers model.

Pretty much most of H1 looks like Drome Racers. I do like the Buggy and Race Truck though.

[paul_delahaye]

This is a set which just makes no sense to me, almost no features for £45, no real unique parts.  I don't see this any better than the set you get when you combine two pull back racers, which it basically is and then you pay a premium.

Worse than that, 3 desperate people on ebay UK have paid £49.90 for a £45 set just to get their hands on it in December.......what were they thinking?

[Viper Knight]

I didn't know LEGO would go carnie. Interesting to see, it's reminiscent of Mad Max.