Zarkan Posted December 3, 2008 Helicopters go with lego like peanut butter goes with jelly – they mesh perfectly, and it’s very hard to mess them up. It’s very easy to make an appealing helicopter using lego bricks, and over the years TLC has released a wide array of the whirly-birds in their Town and City lines. 7741 is one of the most recent models, and I decided to start working on a review of it as soon as I had picked it up from Wal-Mart. Let’s get soaring! Name – Police Helicopter Set Number – 7741 Year – 2008 Pieces – 94 Minifigures – 1 Age Recommendation – 5-12 years Price - $9.99 USD / Unknown EUR / Unknown GBP The Box and Instructions: Personally, the City boxes are some of my favorite lego boxes of all time. They usually have very nice and clean artwork, and 7741 is no exception. On the front, you have a great action pose with the helicopter beginning to take off and the policeman rushing to the cockpit. The back is nice as usual, since it features several panels showing what you can do with the helicopter – display it, fly it around, and store accessories in the side compartments. I’m sure kids appreciate that the box shows them this stuff. The instructions have the usual cloudy sky background, and the grays and blacks are easy to tell apart. Oh, and here’s a picture of the stickers. Notice something? That’s right – you get stickers in two languages. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice this, and now my helicopter has a combination of English and another language applied onto the pieces. The Pieces and Minifigures: A total of 94 pieces are used to build this kit, and they come in 13 shades, including 7 shades of trans colors. That’s a lot of diversity for such a small lego set. Here’s the pieces I found interesting. A printed dashboard slope, a large pin base piece, a new handcuff mold, two white mailboxes, new airplane windows that have individual panes, and the black fin pieces all add to the nice selection of parts in 7741. A shot of the new handcuff mold, compared with the older, black one only found in the Batman kits. The newer one has a shorter chain, a more accurate color, and is far more realistic overall. 7741 has a nice selection of extra pieces, including three cheese slopes and three lights. These pieces round the total amount up to the generally accepted piece-per price ratio, as opposed to the slightly lower-than-average count without them. Here’s the included figure. His torso is excellent, and I like that he has grey gloves. The policeman without his helmet on. I personally feel that the new sunglasses face is an excellent successor to the original shades face released many years ago. The sunglasses actually have a reflection now! The Build: 7741’s build is short but sweet. There are no real surprises, but the assembly of the back section and helicopter blades makes it worthwhile. Here are three random pictures of the build in progress: The Finished Model: Here’s a general view of the helicopter. As you can see, the distinctive feature is the four helicopter blades – most lego helicopters of this size only have two. Front view of the helicopter. The little details like the light underneath and the video camera add to the overall look. Back view, showing off the tail rotor. A general view of the tail rotor. It’s very simple, but the design works well. A closer view of the side. I still haven’t seen a single case where cheese slopes didn’t add to the design. Inside the cockpit. It’s very simple as well, with only a printed control panel and a seat. A control stick would have been nice, but I guess there wasn’t room. The Model in Action: This helicopter is just begging to displayed on a custom police trailer – in fact, the reason why I bought this kit was to do that very thing! Here’s the helicopter ready for travel on a trailer of my own design. Summary: Presentation – 9/10 Pieces – 8/10 Minifigs – 7/10 (it’s just another policeman, but the City cops are superb) Model – 9/10 Playability – 7/10 Price – 7/10 (very average at best) Overall Rating – 7.8/10 7741 is the definition of a run-of-the-mill City set – nothing special, and you get what you pay for. Still, this helicopter is among my favorite designs, and it blows away the mediocre and <insert that tiresome argument> Fire helicopter of 2005. If you already have several police helicopters in your town, it might be best just to skip on this kit – but if you have a hankering for a cheap vehicle kit, 7741 is an excellent choice. Other Resources: Bricklink entry for set 7741 Peeron Inventory for set 7741 Brickset entry for set 7741 Brickshelf gallery for this review (when public) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VBBN Posted December 3, 2008 (edited) Please remeber that you cannot post reviews outside of the RA before they are graded. ;) Thanks, VBBN Edited December 3, 2008 by ~VBBN~ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SWMAN Posted December 4, 2008 I am not a big fan of the newer Police line. It feels like Lego is really skimping down on the amount of policemen in each set. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
xenologer Posted December 4, 2008 Am I the only one who finds the new handcuffs pieces to be depressing? I miss having the all-in-good-fun non-serious cops vs brickster type themes... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Big Supie Posted December 4, 2008 The other language is german. Nice review for a nice helicopter. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
