Review: 6177 Basic Bricks Deluxe

[Rufus]

They said it couldn't be done ...

Actually, They said nothing of the sort, but if I had approached Them about reviewing a Basic Brick set, that is just the kind of thing They would have said...

<Ahem>

To my knowledge, a review of a Basic Brick set hasn't been done before here on Eurobricks, and I wanted to see whether this sort of thing would have any appeal to the usual AFOL audience. For myself, having seen the Basic Bricks range at the LEGO store on numerous occasions, and being aware that my Basic brick collection comprised mostly of tan and bley, I had felt the urge to splurge on one of these sets growing on me for some time. And why not plump for the largest one? Let's see if my decision proved wise.

Review: 6177 Basic Bricks Deluxe

---

Official Shop@Home Picture

Set Information

Name:

Basic Bricks Deluxe

Number:

6177

Theme:

Bricks & More

Release Year:

2008

Parts:

650

Figures:

0

Price: UK

£20.99

| US

$29.99

| EUR

19.99

-

27.90

| DKK

199.95

| CA

$34.99

| AU

$49.99

Endless building fun!

This special set contains 650 colorful LEGO® bricks you can use to build almost anything. The only limit is your imagination!

• Includes bricks in white, orange, red, blue, yellow, brown, black, dark green, and light green!
  

Links ... Brickset ... Bricklink ... Peeron ... Shop@Home

The Box

---

There's something really appealing about this box front, in a visceral, intangible way... perhaps it is the bright, exciting selection of colours, sorted painstakingly into piles of their respective colours; or maybe it is the promise of such a vast number of bricks. As we are so used to box covers depicting the set inside, I'm not surprised that a couple of suggested builds are included on the front; as we shall see, this theme continues apace as we look around the box.

The back of the box features the largest and most complicated of the suggested builds: a house, man and car:

The smaller house on the right is clearly meant to be further away, explaining its miniature size in relation to the larger yellow one, and the box designer and/or photographer has done a great job in making this seem realistic, with the aid of a shadowy road-and-town background. In case the box is displayed on the shelf this way round, a pile of bricks is evident to remind casual browsers that this is in fact a box of bricks rather than a set. You can also see that the box opens with thumb tabs; I'm sure buyers of this one won't be too concerned about box-destruction in opening it.

On the left side is a pirate display: Pegleg Pete and his parrot with what is meant to be a Jolly Roger flag, with a red ship in the distance:

Again, kudos to the box designer for the forced perspective of the ship. It's interesting that this side of the box is meant to be orientated vertically...

... whereas the right side warrants the box to be flat on its back:

This gives a variety of options for display (not that your average shelf-stacker is going to care too much). This side features a horsey display with showjumper and stile.

On the underside, the usual Small Parts Warning is translated into numerous languages, along with the parts providence in English (for those who are interested, parts are made in DENMARK, HUNGARY and the CZECH REPUBLIC).

The Polar Expedition figure, with his Parkas and Penguins, from the front of the box is joined by a colleague with more penguins. I completely failed to notice the yellow seaplane in the top right-hand corner until I wrote this .

Lastly, the top of the box features the usual set inventory:

As this set is all about the parts, we'll look at this in more detail next.

The Parts

---

Opening the box, out fall six polybags and nothing else: no instructions, stickers, fliers or WinGagneGewinne kids lurk within.

Aside from a general brick-size tendency, I could determine no particular order or reasoning behind the polybag packing. As there is no instruction to the contrary, I guess you're meant to pour all the bricks together onto the shag-pile carpet .

Of course, I didn't do this: instead I diligently sorted all the parts by colour and size. This proved a lot more time-consuming that I thought. Here are the parts sorted by colour:

Reds & Oranges

Red has the largest selection of the nine featured colours, and might be useful if you're revamping old Classic Town sets; on the other hand, orange is a newer colour and I certainly don't have much in my collection, so I'm happy to see it quite well represented, even if I didn't have a clear idea how I would use it when I bought this.

Yellows & Whites

There are large numbers of both yellow and white parts, and I suspect these may be the most useful...

White in particular will be very handy for Star Wars fans, particularly if you're making a Hoth scene; the yellow will be extremely useful for me when I finally get round to restoring my old 375 Yellow Castle.

It doesn't show up clearly in the picture, but there is considerable colour variance within the yellow selection, even in bricks of the same shape:

The 2x2 on the right has a duller, flatter yellow than the one on the left, which gives it a slightly 'dirty' look. I had encountered a similar problem previously in the 6745 Propeller Power CREATOR set, and I understand it's fairly widespread amongst yellow parts.

Greens

Green bricks are more that welcome, and I suspect will be useful for landscapers:

The selection is similar for green and lime green, although for some reason there are more 1x2s in green and more 1x1s in lime. I would love to see dark green and sand green represented here, but alas...

Browns and Blacks

Probably the most generally useful colours, these are sadly under-represented:

Again, slightly more 1x2s are found in the black group, but the selection is otherwise identical.

Blues

There are as many blue parts as yellow: the second largest groups in the whole selection; not surprising as these are the primary colours of LEGO.

I have less use for these. Again, they may be handy for restoring Classic Space sets; or perhaps they will find a use for Studs-Not-On-Top water displays, but it's not surprising that blue is heavily featured in a set which is geared towards kids.

The Entire Inventory

I've made a handy reference table to allow you to compare the parts selection for each colour. It's worth clicking on the table to bring up the full-size one, which doesn't suffer resizing degradation but unfortunately is too large to display in the post:

Before I'm called out on this, please note that the official LEGO colour names are Bright Red, Bright Blue, Dark Green, Bright Yellowish Green, Reddish Brown, Bright Orange, Bright Yellow, White and Black respectively.

One of the disappointments I encountered when I looked at the parts selection in detail was the number of 2-wide bricks in the bunch. I thought I'd have less use for these; they are great as filler for larger MOCs and landscapes, but for detailed adult builds, a preponderance of 1-wide bricks would I think be much more useful, particularly if you're building walls, or even if restoring older sets. However, they do have a specific use for which they are vital, as we shall see.

Another disappointment for parts-hunters is the lack of plates. You can get Basic Brick sets which contain a few plates here and there, usually with doors, windows, roof pieces and wheels thrown in (see this one, for example), but there isn't a brick box available with a decent selection of plates.

Suggested Builds

---

Next I thought it would be fun to have a look at what the box suggests you can build with this collection of bricks. We'll start with the models on the front of the box:

Polar Figures

An Antarctic Explorer talks to a couple of penguins, his voice muffled by the faux-fur of his parka. A nice, three-minute build, but recognisable despite the few blocky parts used. It's interesting that his legs are separate stacks of bricks, so you can even simulate walking by moving one leg forward and the other backward a stud. It's great to see the brighter colours used effectively - the lime of the jacket contrasts nicely to the orange 'gloves'.

Helicopter

This red-and-orange blob is clearly a helicopter:

This one took me a little longer than the last, as there is no clear reference on the box picture as to what is going on underneath, and I was at this point trying to conserve pieces to see if I could build all the models at once. I soon gave up on that!

Interestingly, this little build features as the cover model for the whole 'Individual Bricks' section of the Shop@Home site, in the UK at least:

Given the inherent difficulty of producing realism with bricks alone at this scale, this isn't a bad design, really, and I like the use of the white pieces to give the appearance of a cockpit bubble.

Pirate Parts

Arrrr, me hearties! From the left side of the box, we now build Pegleg Pete (my name for him) and his parrot standing next to a Jolly Roger flagpole, with his ship in the background.

The flagpole doesn't really do it for me: the skull is barely recognisable, and the tattered edges of the flag look a little lame. It took me a while to figure out how to build the ship; without the forced perspective of the box shot, it looks more like a toy boat than a pirate galleon, but hey. Most disturbing is the parrot, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Herbert's dog from Family Guy, albeit after an accident in a paint factory . (Thanks to Pandora for pointing out the resemblance).

Gymkhana Diorama

Next I've built the Horsey scene from the right-hand side. This is my favourite of all the suggested builds:

A surprisingly detailed horse and rider prepare to jump the stile, which itself uses an interesting cheat to make the poles; meanwhile an ugly goblin child disowns herself and proffers her torn garment-shred to a disinterested nag.

Figuring out how to build both horses with the limited number of brown parts available was quite a challenge, and the result is a pleasingly attractive and imaginative scene.

Street Scene

Finally, we come to the largest and most complicated build, as pictured on the box rear.

Here, a CubeDude-like man stands proudly betwixt his two-dimensional house frontage and his ineffective car, flanked by a number of what might be green-trousered minions with varying degrees of sunburn, but which are more likely to be flowers. Again, there was a bit of a puzzle in figuring out how to build the house, and for such a basic, blocky design - clearly aimed at younger kids - you need to employ some more advanced alternating-brick-offset techniques to construct the walls without them falling apart. Even thought the result resembles a four-year-old's school painting, actually building the scene was surprisingly enjoyable.

Clearly, the models suggested by the box pictures are meant to appeal to the (much) younger audience, and as such are of course rather simplistic; nevertheless, I'm sure parents too will enjoy the puzzle of helping to recreate them.

I, however, wanted to see what an AFOL would make of this selection of parts, so I let my creative juices flow for the next section ...

What I Made

---

The very first thought I had when looking at the lovely piles of greens, oranges, yellows and browns was what a great organic selection it was. As you will see in what follows, this was to dominate the results of my MOCing endeavours. Every model which follows was built only with the parts from this set.

Fr00t Basket

Well this was quite obvious, really: what to do with the orange bits? Make an orange! The rest kinda followed.

We have an orange, an apple, cherries, grapes, a banana and an unspecified leaf. The black-and-white object at the front is meant to be a knife; as I was to discover, artificial objects are harder to represent at this scale.

Also difficult to render are spheres, which really require plates in order to get a smoother roundness. I also ran out of orange bricks, so the underside of the orange has a new strain of blue and white fungus Building the apple using both shades of green, and red, was fun; I couldn't quite get the shape of the banana right which again could do with plates to round off the shape a little more.

Dragon

Moving on from still life to life that you'd rather was still if you encountered it, here we have a dragon-creature sitting on his precious pile of gold and gems:

I'm quite pleased with the shape of the body, but you can tell from the red head and the flecks of blue in the tail that I started to run short of green bricks. I also forgot to give him wings - maybe they're just folded invisibly down the sides of his body.

He also detaches easily from his treasure:

His head, which is a little blocky, is attached via two 2x4 bricks clamped at an angle - above and below - a third 2x4 brick on the body. It swivels a little; to make him look straight ahead you have to disassemble this connection. It's the best I can do with basic bricks alone.

Maxi-Rufus

At this point, I tried to make a car, or at least one that looked like a car. I failed - there aren't enough bricks of any one colour to make a uniform body at a scale at which the wheels look round. Instead, I stuck with the organic theme, and out came a maxifig version of my Fabuland Avatar, Rufus Rabbit:

I've tried to recreate the Fabuland body shape as best as possible, but his head looks more like a feral rabbit than the cute Fabu-bunny that is Rufus:

He is, at least, holding a baguette .

This time, I attached the head at an angle using Pythagoras:

This results in a nice angle but maxi-Rufus's head has a nasty tendency to fall off.

LEGO Logo

Trying to think outside the box, I considered making a mosaic, but these are generally best done with similar shades rather than contrasting colours. Instead, here's an attempt at something which should be familiar to us all:

The limitations of the part count really started to show here. There are insufficient 1-wide black pieces to outline the letters, so I had to resort to brown; moreover, there isn't enough red to form a nice square shape. Otherwise, it's probably the best I could achieve. Though there's something wrong with that 'L' which I can't quite put my finger on.

Perfecting the Parrot

I felt kinda sorry for Pegleg Pete's rather pathetic parrot, and with the bright tropical colour palette on offer here, I wondered if I could do any better. Here's the result, perched on a pint:

I'm rather proud of this She was built from the head down; I couldn't get the curve of the beak any better without slopes and curves, but once the head was done the rest seemed to flow easily. It is in this sort of 'sculpture' that the 2-wide bricks really come into their own - the contours of the body would be almost impossible to make with 1-wide bricks alone, and now I'm thoroughly pleased with their inclusion in this set.

The colour palette is perfect for this; I've tried to render the layers of different colours of the parrot's feathers so there is as smooth a transition as possible:

I started to run out of pieces towards the tail, which is a little fragile. Inside, the sculpture is mostly hollow, but I've put some of the less-needed white parts to use in strengthening the structure.

Conclusion

---

Glancing at the pictures above, you'd be right that this is a set aimed at younger kids - nothing complicated, just some fun to be had building whatever they might imagine, whilst hopefully teaching them artistic and technical skills which may be valuable in later life. For the adult, there is the enjoyable aspect of puzzling out the construction of the box models, but this will necessarily be short-lived; what I have tried to demonstrate is that there is a lot more fun to be had in using the bricks as inspiration.

In case you're thinking I've gone overboard with showcasing my own MOCs here, there is a point. Before now, I had never really tried to build a sculpture, certainly not with basic bricks alone, and had I not bought this set it is likely I never would have. However, faced with the question of what might make this set desirable to an AFOL, and finding the parts selection a little lacking, I was forced to try my hand at something fresh (for me), and I'm delighted with the results.

This is back-to-the-roots LEGO at its very best. Start with a pile of bricks, and build whatever you want out of it. To any AFOL who likes to MOC, or is thinking about it, I'd recommend trying it.

Parts:

6/10

I bought this as a parts pack, and yet I must admit it doesn't really fulfill this objective. There are too many 2-wide blocks for this to be generally useful for the usual AFOL MOCs, in colours that are too bright for use in most realistic scenes. Plus, in this regard it really suffers for the lack of plates. I don't think, in retrospect, that this is its purpose at all; however...

Inspiration:

10/10

There is something wonderfully refreshing about just sticking a load of blocks together in new and imaginative ways, and a real sense of achievement in bringing these lumps of plastic to life. This was the big surprise for me with this set.

Price:

9/10

Short of a bulk order from TLG, I doubt there is a cheaper way for the average person to buy new bricks. However, it is unlikely that these are all bricks you require, so you'll be left with a load of stuff you don't need. In terms of the fun time you can have building with these bricks, though, it's excellent value for money.

Overall, a very surprising 83%! There is beauty in simplicity. For something different, buy this - just not as a parts pack.

Thanks for reading! This review was something of an experiment, so I'd be grateful to know what you think.

Rufus

See all the pictures on my flickr

If you want to learn how to make stellar reviews, join the Reviewers Academy!

[22kane]

Another good review, Rufus. This one I may actually get as I have a use for these pieces. I've never seen a review on a set like this before so thank you for that.

[Big Cam]

Fantastic review Rufus!! They may be basic bricks, but that's alot of models to build.

This is the kind of review that LEGO should be looking for as advertising for this sett, it really shows how these bricks can be used.

[Brickdoctor]

You're evidently a natural at building with nothing but basic bricks, Rufus! (what I like to call LEGO Sculptures) I never buy these sets because, quite honestly, I can't build a thing with this selection of bricks. And I doubt I could sculpt at all without plates, tiles, and jumpers. That parrot is lovely.

Oh yeah, the review's nice, too. But the MOCs are better.

[Rumble Strike]

A different and refreshing review, Rufus.

I really like that parrot, that's fantastic work to get the colours to flow like that.

[LegoDadRobb]

I enjoyed your designs, esp the parrot and the Fabufig - I'd like to see a whole series of giant Fabufig-inspired models.

My wife bought this set and it does have limited MOCing utility, but for less serious creations it can be a lot of fun. We decided to look up the name of an official Model of the Month, each build our own design using bricks from this set, and then compare our models with one another and with the "official" model on Lego.com. Loads of fun, and great for a simple party game (even with non-AFOL adults). I hope your review inspires this kind of funplay.

[ZO6]

Another fantastic review, Rufus!

I adore these brick kits. I can buy these boxes and the pieces will just disappear in to models here and there in no time. To sweeten the deal, these kind of things seem to run at 25% off quite regularly, so it'd be wrong for me not to keep buying them.

The models that you came up with look superb! Thanks for taking the time for putting together all those MOCs.

[-R8-]

I'd love to see more sculptures from you! You have quite the wonderful knack for it, and for some reason I haven't seen too many builders venture into that genre of building.

This is my favorite LEGO set on the shelves today. It is an amazing deal for 650 new bricks, which at 30 bucks costs only ~$0.046 per brick. Granted, BrickLink gives you choice of what color and type of bricks and pricing, but directly from LEGO, this is still a viable option.

Over the past year or so, I've probably bought five or six of these kits, and by now my brick collection has been near completely drained. While 650 bricks may sound like a lot, it's surprising to see how easily a huge amount of them can be eaten up in a few MOCs! I too agree that the lack of 1-wide bricks is disappointing, and it would be nice if the pieces count was perhaps distributed more equally.

Fantastic review of this modern day brick kit!

[WhiteFang]

Rufus, this is truly goes beyond of what an excellent review can do when you combines both reviewing and LEGO building together to show your sheer creativity in this set.

Seriously, I can never imagine that you pulled this off amazingly when I felt it was just sheer boring blocks of LEGO bricks. Surely, you had proven me wrong. All of your LEGO creations are incredible and I love all of it, especially the parrot and maxi-Rufus!

This review needs to be applauded.

[Ceroknight]

That parrot is very well done

I might actually buy this set just so I can have a go at it myself!

Thank you for the review!

[Rick]

They said it couldn't be done ...

Well, they were wrong apparently.

I'm really impressed at what you managed to build with the limited variety of pieces and without slopes or plates. I really like the (wing-less) dragon and the parrot is simply perfect. The limitations are a little more apparent with some of the fruits, especially the banana.

Over the years I bought a few of these basic brick boxes and indeed the limitations you mention didn't go unnoticed: too much blue, too many 2-wide bricks compared to 1-wide, and especially, a lack of plates. I do have two copies of 5584 Fun with wheels, which has a nice selection of basic bricks and plates, but even in that set, larger plates are not well represented.

[JimBee]

Thanks for the geat review, Rufus. All of those colorful basic bricks would definitely come in handy if you needed more colors to aid the building of a MOC.

I also really enjoyed viewing your unique creations. My favorite was the dragon on his pile of treasure. I think the red head looks fine, I seem to remember one like it from somewhere...

[Clone OPatra]

You really know how to transform a basic box of bricks into a full blown, very entertaining review Rufus!

It's great to get a look at this type of 'set,' which can't even be called underrepresented in reviews. It's not represented at all (kind of like Duplo). It's refreshing to see that LEGO still cares about basic bricks, and their own suggested builds are quite the nostalgia inducers. Just basic bricks can't be turned into the highly detailed MOCs that AFOLs tend to make, but the MOCs that come out of them still have charm, like you've shown. It's like some modern art: rudimentary and simplistic, which makes it charming.

[Rufus]

Another good review, Rufus. This one I may actually get as I have a use for these pieces. I've never seen a review on a set like this before so thank you for that.

You're welcome! Glad you liked it.

Fantastic review Rufus!! They may be basic bricks, but that's alot of models to build.

This is the kind of review that LEGO should be looking for as advertising for this set, it really shows how these bricks can be used.

Thanks Cammo! Maybe I'll have a go at one of the smaller Brick sets, someday...

You're evidently a natural at building with nothing but basic bricks, Rufus! (what I like to call LEGO Sculptures) I never buy these sets because, quite honestly, I can't build a thing with this selection of bricks. And I doubt I could sculpt at all without plates, tiles, and jumpers. That parrot is lovely.

Thanks, Brickdoctor! You should try it - it's surprisingly intuitive. None of these MOCs took me more than an hour or so.

A different and refreshing review, Rufus.

I really like that parrot, that's fantastic work to get the colours to flow like that.

Thanks, Rumble!

I enjoyed your designs, esp the parrot and the Fabufig - I'd like to see a whole series of giant Fabufig-inspired models.

My wife bought this set and it does have limited MOCing utility, but for less serious creations it can be a lot of fun. We decided to look up the name of an official Model of the Month, each build our own design using bricks from this set, and then compare our models with one another and with the "official" model on Lego.com. Loads of fun, and great for a simple party game (even with non-AFOL adults). I hope your review inspires this kind of funplay.

Giant Fabu-figs, hmmm.... I like your idea of trying to build the official models, and you're right, building stuff with basic bricks is suprisingly good fun

Another fantastic review, Rufus!

I adore these brick kits. I can buy these boxes and the pieces will just disappear in to models here and there in no time. To sweeten the deal, these kind of things seem to run at 25% off quite regularly, so it'd be wrong for me not to keep buying them.

The models that you came up with look superb! Thanks for taking the time for putting together all those MOCs.

Cheers, ZO6! I'm a new convert to these sets, and will be sure to get some more, particularly if I ever find them on sale. Though they're surprisingly hard to get hold of.

I'd love to see more sculptures from you! You have quite the wonderful knack for it, and for some reason I haven't seen too many builders venture into that genre of building.

This is my favorite LEGO set on the shelves today. It is an amazing deal for 650 new bricks, which at 30 bucks costs only ~$0.046 per brick. Granted, BrickLink gives you choice of what color and type of bricks and pricing, but directly from LEGO, this is still a viable option.

Over the past year or so, I've probably bought five or six of these kits, and by now my brick collection has been near completely drained. While 650 bricks may sound like a lot, it's surprising to see how easily a huge amount of them can be eaten up in a few MOCs! I too agree that the lack of 1-wide bricks is disappointing, and it would be nice if the pieces count was perhaps distributed more equally.

Fantastic review of this modern day brick kit!

Thanks, R8! I should credit you as my inspiration for trying this - you're clearly already the Sculpture-master!

Rufus, this is truly goes beyond of what an excellent review can do when you combines both reviewing and LEGO building together to show your sheer creativity in this set.

Seriously, I can never imagine that you pulled this off amazingly when I felt it was just sheer boring blocks of LEGO bricks. Surely, you had proven me wrong. All of your LEGO creations are incredible and I love all of it, especially the parrot and maxi-Rufus!

Thanks, Fangy! Nothing boring about LEGO bricks!

That parrot is very well done

I might actually buy this set just so I can have a go at it myself!

Thank you for the review!

Go for it!

I'm really impressed at what you managed to build with the limited variety of pieces and without slopes or plates. I really like the (wing-less) dragon and the parrot is simply perfect. The limitations are a little more apparent with some of the fruits, especially the banana.

Over the years I bought a few of these basic brick boxes and indeed the limitations you mention didn't go unnoticed: too much blue, too many 2-wide bricks compared to 1-wide, and especially, a lack of plates. I do have two copies of 5584 Fun with wheels, which has a nice selection of basic bricks and plates, but even in that set, larger plates are not well represented.

Leave my banana alone! Ok, so it wasn't the best, which is why it's hiding . I've thought about getting hold of one or two of the smaller 'themed' brick sets: the castley one caught my eye. Cheers, Rick!

Thanks for the geat review, Rufus. All of those colorful basic bricks would definitely come in handy if you needed more colors to aid the building of a MOC.

I also really enjoyed viewing your unique creations. My favorite was the dragon on his pile of treasure. I think the red head looks fine, I seem to remember one like it from somewhere...

Thanks, JimBee! You've seen the dragon before? I promise I didn't copy it

You really know how to transform a basic box of bricks into a full blown, very entertaining review Rufus!

It's great to get a look at this type of 'set,' which can't even be called underrepresented in reviews. It's not represented at all (kind of like Duplo). It's refreshing to see that LEGO still cares about basic bricks, and their own suggested builds are quite the nostalgia inducers. Just basic bricks can't be turned into the highly detailed MOCs that AFOLs tend to make, but the MOCs that come out of them still have charm, like you've shown. It's like some modern art: rudimentary and simplistic, which makes it charming.

Thanks, Cloney! I'd love to see more reviews of this ilk, but sadly I doubt there will be much demand However, a Duplo review sounds like something worth trying.... probably just once

[Brickdoctor]

Thanks, Brickdoctor! You should try it - it's surprisingly intuitive. None of these MOCs took me more than an hour or so.

Maybe I will. Always wanted to try my hand at a maxi-fig; that'd be a good starting point.

The problem is, if you know me, I can't just build it straight up with basic blocks. If I did a sculpture, at the very least I'd end up SNOTing in tiles and half-plates.

[JimBee]

Thanks, JimBee! You've seen the dragon before? I promise I didn't copy it

No, no, what I meant was that a green dragon with a red head isn't uncommon, not just for Lego. More specifically, I couldn't "tell you were running out of green bricks from the red head". Of course I didn't think you stole it.

[Masked Builder]

I really like that parrot! While this is a fairly simple set, it has some half decent parts. Good stuff to stock up your MOCing supplies.

[KeepLeft]

I really enjoyed your review what with you both making the models displayed on the box and your own creations. The back to basics approach was a great inspiration as too often I think that we can only create great pieces with specialised parts. The dragon was well done and the fruit just inspirational. This review reminded me when I was a child and would use just basic blocks like these to build whatever came to mind. I like these basic brick sets as they form the bulk of my scenery for my city. Set 5512 is my favourite block set with 1600 pieces for R600 (about $75) here, it is the best option to bulking up my brick collection. I feel like going back to my childhood now and building a plane just using these bricks. (It had a wingspan of 40cm and the fuselage was about 12 studs wide though on landing the wings always fell of the fuselage, though using mostly 2x4 bricks what can you expect ).

[shawn_low]

These were going on special in SIngapore (equivalent of US$20 or so) and I picked one up. Left it on the shelf for months. Was bored today so ended up opening it, pouring out the parts and decided to build a Minion from Despicable Me. I nearly had enough parts. Was pretty happy so ended up going up and picking up two more boxes of these.

The Parrot MOC is great and so is the Lego sign (the L looks OK to me). In any case, I think the box doesn't have that many useful parts for serious MOCers but there is a freshness in trying to make the best MOC with imited types of bricks (mainly 1 to 2 wide).

Nice review! Now go review set 10664: it has 1600 bricks (no plates but some round studs and slopes).

[John The Aussie]

Great review, mate.

My 5 year old son would love to build that parrot. You wouldn't happen to have progresd pictures?

[Super Goblin]

It would be great if they made a set like this with just one stud wide bricks, I don't have much use for that many two wide bricks.

[Rufus]

It would be great if they made a set like this with just one stud wide bricks, I don't have much use for that many two wide bricks.

I thought the same - but as I said in the review, they can be really useful for sculptures. And even if that's not what you're building, they make great filler for larger MOCs.

My 5 year old son would love to build that parrot. You wouldn't happen to have progresd pictures?

No, but I've got the LEGO Digital Designer file:

Parrot.lxf

Hope that helps!

Warning: it's a little fragile around the tail area.