Clone OPatra

Yes I agree, and this would have been my exact reply to @Robert8. The foal girl had great, detailed and recoloured parts. The medium legs were also new in that colour I believe. The rocking horse girl has got literally nothing to her of interest. They could have at the very least picked a rare hairpiece and recoloured it, like Ms Marvel's from the Spidey 4+ sets, or a ginger recolour of the Hermione hair. Something. Anything! Fair point there. Closed-wing bird moulds are definitely more useful overall. We could do with a closed wing seagull for that matter. For MOCs based in reality, Koalas are native to and online live in Australia, that's why. The classic smile is the territory though. Anything else would be blasphemous.

Alright alright alright! Spaceman, Zookeeper mate, pottery maker, and surprisingly newspaper boy given his details are absolute musts for me. The Black Falcon, Orc and "French Queen" are a close second tier - not all their details wow me but I'll almost certainly get them. Carrot guy looks like something interesting is going on with his legs, so I'll wait to see the torso as well before making a call on him. The rocking horse girl and referee aren't great despite having a couple of good parts each. Really wish the rocking horse girl came with something else exciting besides the rocking horse, since the figure herself is so run of the mill. At this point, the only ones I definitely will NOT get are the T. rex guy and space robot alien.

Wowee what a list! At least if they have to force me to stop buying CMF, they do it with a bang (unlike S23's whimper). I can't wait to see all of the details soon, but I can't imagine there's anything that would make me NOT want to buy the orc, the zookeeper, the Black Falcon, and the Spaceman. Potter, newspaper boy, lady with dog and girl on rocking horse most likely as well. I'm never keen on the costumes and I don't care for that leaked space robot thing, not the referee really, though I like the recoloured hairpiece. Hopefully it'll be on PaB.

Well, for me personally I already got my order in of all the new parts that have been added through the June 2022 releases, but with 75% off VIP vouchers this weekend, I will no doubt redeem my miniscule amount of points and then have vouchers I need to use before they expire.

There's a lot of decent competition in the $100 USD price point at the moment. Read on as I judge 75336 Inquisitor Transport Scythe on its own merits and compare it to last year's $100 Star Wars TV show foldy wing ship, 75314 The Bad Batch Attack Shuttle... if you're inquisitive that is. SET INFORMATIONNumber: 75336Name: Inquisitor Transport ScytheTheme: Star WarsReleased: 2022Part Count: 924Minifigures: 4Set Price (RRP): 99.99 EUR / 89.99 GBP / 159.99 AUD / 99.99 USD / 129.99 CADLinks: Brickset, Bricklink, Flickr set INTRODUCTION I have not watched the Kenobi show, nor do I have any interest in watching the Kenobi show, so this review won't be about comparing the set to its source material. Nonetheless, this looks like a fantastic Star Wars ship with four cool Star Wars minifigures. Now it's my role as reviewer to see if the set is as good a package as it looks, and, to make things interesting, compare it to a couple of other ships. Thank you to LEGO for providing this set at Eurobricks' request. THE BUILD Before we get into the build, a quick comment on the box art, which I have been passing over in recent reviews. The angle of the ship is kind of weird. The full thing doesn't even fit and it's hard to tell the actual shape of it. There have been worse examples of Star Wars box art but I'm really not sure why they went with this. Carrying on, I haven't taken pieces shots per bag because there is just so much black and grey. Because of how hollow the ship becomes, making room for interior detail and space, the designer couldn't use a rainbow of colours since those colours would have bled through. There are tiny bits of yellow, blue, red and tan, but otherwise, it's all black and grey everything. The first bag kicks off looking like nothing much, setting out a support structure common of modern sets - a combination of Technic and parts sandwiched between various brackets for strength. We also get two Minifigures straight away. Bag 2 builds up the pilot's seat area and front boarding ramp, plus a bit at the back. Bag 3 begins the front... mandibles(?) of the Scythe, which use a ton of brackets. At one point in the middle of building each of them the core plate begins to bow because of forces exerted against it by other parts, but it gets evened out by the end. Bag 4 finishes up the left-hand front mandible and adds side panels. The mandibles are quite cleverly kept in place by loosely slotting a bar into a Technic pin hole, and slotting a Technic pin into a brick-sized gap. It's techniques like these that LEGO designers generally wouldn't have used even ten years ago that really show how design processes continue to evolve to make achieving complex shaping possible in sets that are still buildable for kids. I love to see it. Bag 5 contains the mirror image of the sections from Bag 4, and there isn't too much more of interest from here on out. Bag 6 adds the back panels, Bag 7 finishes the sides, and Bag 8 completes the model with the folding part of the wings and the canopy. THE MINIFIGURES Regardless of any thoughts about their in-universe designs, these are some exemplary minifigures. They come decked out with all of the necessary detail to match their on-screen counterparts, and while the Grand Inquisitor and Fifth Brother have been done before, they sport new shoulder and chestplate armor to accurately reflect the Kenobi show. Fifth Brother's helmet looks like it might be the same as last time, but also works perfectly. They all have appropriate levels of torso detail front and back, and even the Kenobi figure is desirable with a good civilian but slightly sci-fi-ish torso, fun cut of poncho, and new slicked mullet hairpiece shared with the other Kenobi set. Speaking of that new hairpiece, I was surprised to see it in the set images because at a glance it looked very similar in size to Seinfeld's mullet piece that LEGO just recently introduced. In actuality, it's quite a bit more slicked back, though does compliment the shape and overall size. For accessories, everyone simply comes with their lightsabers - the Inquisitors with their special helicopter Inquisitor hilts that haven't been seen since the last time an Inquisitor appeared in a LEGO set, and Obi-Wan with his standard one. THE SCYTHE The Scythe makes for a fantastic model. The shaping looks complex but elegantly captured, and it's suitably hefty all around for the price. Despite seeing the undersides of studs on the folding part of the wings, it looks perfectly good displayed like this in landing mode. It doesn't have a bad angle, with the back also looking respectably detailed and covered up, with no awkward parts or colours showing through. Given that the wings are not attached with click hinges, they can theoretically be displayed at any angle, but fold them too far and gravity will do the rest. They can't be folded all the way down in landed mode, though. Playing with the set in flight mode is easy, as it's extremely sturdy and swooshable, which again seems like quite a feat given the shaping. To display it this way you'll need some extra pieces of your own, like I have added for the purposes of this review. It really does look excellent from all angles. The Scythe opens up for easy access to the copious interior space. The chairs are built to accommodate the Grand Inquisitor's and Fifth Brother's bulky armor, and there's built in space to hold all of the lightsaber blades if you're into goofy ways to store lightsaber blades. The sides have some good Star Warsy stickered detail which is easy to apply. With the lightsaber blades removed, the set can hold at least four more minifigures with room to spare, and most wonderfully, the top can be closed with minifigures fully standing up! It's also possible to open just the canopy itself, though only the minifigure in the pilot seat can really be accessed this way. Lastly, the front opens up to simulate the boarding ramp. I say "simulate" because this section doesn't actually connect through to the interior, and it's difficult or impossible to balance a minifigure walking down on the underside of studs, but it's nice LEGO included this anyway and could be good for display. COMPARISON WITH THE BAD BATCH SHUTTLE I bought last year's 75314 The Bad Batch Attack Shuttle pretty much just because I liked The Bad Batch show and because the set came with the entire "Batch" (minus Omega of course). I have never reviewed that set, but given that it's a shuttley thing at the same price point, I thought it would be interesting to compare the Scythe with it. Right away there's the obvious difference that, though the Bad Batch Shuttle set has 45 more pieces than the Scythe, it makes less visual impact because those pieces are spread between the shuttle and two speeders. The designers would probably say that they needed to include the speeders for "conflict in a box", yet they were cool having the entire Scythe face up against a lone minifigure in this set. Especially as the two speeders were nothing important in the Bad Batch show, I'd argue that the pieces would have been better invested into the shuttle. Just how much smaller is the Bad Batch Shuttle than the Scythe? Well, quite a considerable amount. It's a lot shorter lengthwise, as you can see here. The wingspan is decent, but the actual body of the Shuttle is much less tall than the Scythe as well, not counting the fin. The back of the Bad Batch Shuttle is one of its best exterior sections though, with good detail and shaping around the engines. Another place the Bad Batch Shuttle doesn't live up to the Scythe is in landed mode. The Shuttle includes no landing gear, plus the undersides of its wings are pretty ugly and not super displayable. Both sets give you the option of opening just the cockpit canopy or the whole top, but while the Scythe lets you actually access the pilot seat, the Shuttle's canopy hits the top fin and it isn't easy getting a figure in there. I illustrated how the Scythe, a ship for which the interior might never be shown on the actual show, has a fantastically spacious and well-appointed interior. The Bad Batch Shuttle's interior does feature heavily in the Bad Batch show, and yet the set has barely any detail whatsoever and with just enough space to barely pack in four figures, especially tightly in the main compartment. It's easily mod-able to take away the pointless locking crate and make space for a fifth figure, but it still lacks detail overall and the cramped interior doesn't reflect the importance of the ship in the show. Oh, and don't think about closing the top of the Shuttle with a minifigure standing up inside! When it comes to comparing the minifigures included in both sets, it could be a toss up. The Scythe's figures are fantastic, but the Shuttle also includes the entire Bad Batch (minus Omega), and they are all highly detailed figures. Accuracy-wise, the Scythe's figures have the slight edge as they capture all of their detail better. Tech's helmet is comically oversized and really had no reason to be, and the fact that LEGO used a standard P2 helmet for Hunter, Echo and Crosshair has and always will bug me as it's just wrong. If they had introduced a new mould to share between the three I would have been ok with that, but a P2 helmet, especially for Hunter and Echo, isn't right. COMPARISON WITH 10497 GALAXY EXPLORER There's another spaceship with a solid interior on the market available right now, and that's 10497 Galaxy Explorer, at the very same price point to boot (though in Australia it's $20 more than the Scythe ). Of course this comparison is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but let's quickly see how they compare anyway. It should come as no surprise that the Galaxy Explorer surpasses the Scythe in length and heft, as it's one of the most generous deals at RRP available today. It's also a bit taller in its main compartment section, so the Explorer really is larger all around. That said, when it comes down to the details the two sets are similar in a lot of ways - both are easily swooshable despite being made up of complex shaping, and both have generously sized and easily accessible interiors with room to seat and stand figures. Speaking of figures, the Explorer does exactly what it needs to in the minifigure department and executes perfectly, so let's call it a draw. CONCLUSION 75336 Inquisitor Transport Scythe packs a pretty much perfect model that's both a joy to build and to play with, four lovely minifigures, and a decent size for its price. The set stays focused on its one ship without diverting parts to extraneous side builds, and really is a feat of design. It achieves complex looking angles ingeniously, and makes room for an exemplary amount of interior space while staying super sturdy. Its price point is also well chosen for the source material, allowing it to be large enough to achieve good detail and have playable space (unlike 75284 Knights of Ren Transport Ship), but not making it too large and expensive for its relative importance (unlike 75323 The Justifier). Now it's up to you whether you care. As far as Star Wars ships go, it doesn't look to be the most important or even memorable, but in and of itself as a design and as a LEGO set, it's fantastic. SCORE How do I rate this set? 10 MINIFIGURES Great selection with excellent unique parts and prints all around. A Joel Edgerton would've been great too, but I don't hold that against this lineup. 9 PIECES Nothing stands out as all that interesting, but there are a good amount of parts. 10 DESIGN Really great stuff. Sturdy yet hollow. Complex angles. Awesome. 10 PLAYABILITY Given how swooshable it is, and how much interior space it has and how easy that space is to access, I'd say it's pretty darn playable. 10 PRICE Also perfect for a Star Wars set, these days or any days. 9.8 OVERALL - It's a great set, full stop. But did I hype myself into this? Do you have the set and see some flaws that I have overlooked? GIFT GUIDE For a kid... It's a fun, swooshable ship that contains excellent baddies and the all important Obi-Wan to fight them, so it's good! For an AFOL... it makes for a satisfying build with excellent unique minifigures, and also looks good on display in landed or flying modes. I wouldn't recommend it as just a parts pack unless this AFOL LOVES black, but it would still make a good gift for a Star Wars-inclined AFOL. For a casual LEGO fan... I would also recommend it as a great example of contemporary LEGO set design, and as long as this LEGO fan likes Star Wars, it's a good gift. For a Star Wars super fan... They probably have it already. So get them a second copy!

I'm definitely keeping an eye out for parts from some August releases like at least Mordo's hairpiece and those dark tan seaweed parts from the Sanctum Sanctorum, perhaps some parts from the August Peach wave of Mario sets, the wimple from the castle hopefully, and then certainly all those hairpieces from Foosball. Not sure if all of that will add up to be a worthwhile enough order to me, and there should be lots of good stuff out of January, but those January parts might not hit the service until... April? June?

While not brown on brown (which might not turn out noticeable enough in LEGO anyway), Aquaman's hairpiece is kind of like that. Only other one of that ilk was Narcissa's hairpiece.

Do you mean pink? They have been available in BAM stations and also in that free VIP funky pack, so it's easy to see how people have lots of them at low cost.

I have created the new 2023 topic. So as to not make things even more out of order in there, I won't try and move the discussion that was already had from this topic over to that one. When there's new/more info to come out, feel free to use the new one:

Well I stuffed this up somehow and Lyichir's post became the first one of the topic, so I have added the set information up top. It provides good commentary to kick off anyhow!

Nah, it's a new thread for the new year's sets in every forum except Licensed where we determined that people kind of just like to talk about the Licenses in general and the conversations there get very labyrinthine. We might switch it back to the old ways in Licensed too, you never know, but it isn't "wildly inconsistent" when it's one way in one forum and another way in every single other forum. Here, I made a topic for you in the right place: Enjoy!

No it isn't. Maple was talking about what is actually a new whole cupboard type piece that uses a brand new three-wide door. The hair salon uses the three wide double doors that were introduced in 2022. I hope LEGO does indeed release a three-wide frame for the three-wide door, as that could be useful.

It's a new door as well. It doesn't have a stud on the inside and is shorter than regular building doors.

These new sets look consistently great. Not that I'll buy any of them myself, but I love seeing that they exist and perusing the details anyhow. I cannot wait for all these fantastic hairpieces though. Please add them all to PaB LEGO! (I mean I assume they will show up there as Friends hairpieces have up to this point, but there are always weird occurrences with PaB) Am I correct in thinking that the new main blonde haired Friend with the new shoulder length hairpiece doesn't appear in any of the sets revealed thus far though? Isn't that odd?

Yeah. Our GWP thresholds are always nonsensically high here.

Yeah, very true. Is it around in Australia? Would I have had to go find and add it myself? I spent over $50 AUD but nothing about it came up. EDIT: looked it up - the threshold is $119 here, which I did not spend.

Finally bit the bullet and placed my first "new PaB" order since everything I wanted was in stock at once. Somehow I missed the memo that it was going to be double VIP points this weekend - d'oh! Oh well, excited to be back in the game and I hope the imageless items in my order are what I think they are.

It's a natural comparison to make given the price points but I fundamentally disagree for a few reasons. The first is size. The school has about 7x14 or 15 studs of usable space on each level. The grocery store has 11x19 and that's not counting the side shelves which are kind of "interior detail". That's a huge difference. The second is realisation of subject matter. Real life schools have lots of different types of zones: entrance halls, classrooms, locker hallways, etc. What LEGO gave us was an entrance that opens right into a classroom that also has lockers off to the side, and a second level with a classroom. The grocery store has enough space to properly emulate a real life grocery store without things feeling shoehorned together. The details aren't perfect, but the actual store is large enough. When it comes to the road plate itself, its inclusion also feels much more natural in this set than the school because grocery stores (especially in North America and Australia at least) are associated with parking lots, whereas nobody thinks "oh what goes with a school? I know! A road!" Finally, the school bus build itself looks awful and uses a sizable number of parts in the school set, whereas these vehicles are small and look good.

Why did you comment the same thing twice in this very topic? It's not like any more was said on that subject for you to reiterate it... Personally I don't find the set $20-$30 too expensive at all after thoroughly looking at it. $10-15 too much in the US at most. For kids it's actually a fantastic playset, whereas for us adults possibly looking at "just" the parts, then it feels expensive for the price.

60347 Grocery Store by Clone OPatra

LEGO's first ever normal mainline grocery store set is already tipped to retire at the end of the year, which will give it a mere 7 months of availability. Should you pick it up before it goes, and did LEGO doom it to fail? Let's find out. SET INFORMATIONNumber: 60347Name: Grocery StoreTheme: CityReleased: 2022Part Count: 404 Minifigures: 5Set Price (RRP): 59.99 EUR / 54.99 GBP / 99.99 AUD / 69.99 USD / 89.99 CADLinks: Brickset, Bricklink INTRODUCTIONThree years on from Heartlake City Supermarket, I had given up hope of ever seeing the shopping cart piece again. One random 4+ Friends set, and that was it, or so I thought. I was pleasantly shocked to see the piece return when images of this set came out. And then I noticed the new prosthetic leg, and the new corn, and the reuse of the pea suit, and the new veggie stalk... This set appears to have a lot going for it from a parts perspective, but as many people have pointed out, it seems very over-priced, as is the norm for the "road plate system" sets. Come along as I discuss what works, and what doesn't, in 60347 Grocery Store. Thank you to LEGO for providing this set at Eurobricks' request. THE BUILDWith only 404 pieces and a 6+ age rating, this set offers nearly as basic as builds get these days. As you'll see in the small amount of spare parts, for better or worse, the set lacks small details overall, though larger parts can mean it feels like you get more money's worth from fewer parts. The first bag kicks things off with the two included vehicles, which are basic builds but will interact well with the set. The little car harkens right back to four-wide vehicles that were the norm pre-mid-1990s. Bag 2 quickly lays the groundwork for the grocery store itself, and I will say that I found the build process a bit scattershot. The breaks between bags seem rather random, and it felt like I was adding a few parts over here and then over there and then back over here. It didn't flow as smoothly as I'm used to. Bag 3 completes the interior detail and brings the store up almost to its roof level, again stopping in a fairly arbitrary place. Bag 4 finishes the set with the top of the store and lovely brick-built carrot sign, and adds part to the road plate, which is included along with the large plates for the grocery store in a separate non-numbered bag. THE MINIFIGURESThe minifigure lineup in this set packs a remarkable amount of value. The man with the exclusive prosthetic leg has an exclusive torso as well, the shop owner Mr. Produce only comes in this set and the Advent Calendar and everything besides his hair is exclusive to him, the little girl's jacket only comes in two sets, the peapod costume makes its first appearance in a set after debuting in CMF Series 20, and even the woman's green jacket underneath the costume has only appeared a handful of times. This collection of characters feels beyond reproach to me, and includes all the figures one would need to play out scenarios with what's included in the set. You have the man and child customers, the shop owner to work the till, the "backroom" worker to drive the forklift, and the peapod promoter woman who can also double as a customer with the costume swapped for the included hairpiece. My only query would be why the promoter would be wearing a peapod outfit when the store has a big carrot on it. Of course, the real reason is that LEGO hasn't made a carrot costume yet, but within the universe of the set the peapod doesn't make a whole lot of sense. THE ACCESSORIESA grocery store needs groceries, and it bears mentioning that LEGO did not skimp. In addition to all of the accessories I have laid out here, there are also two orange juice cartons and two milk cartons that I didn't pull off the shelves for the picture, plus some generic bottles. The shopping cart really is a lovely piece, large enough to hold some things, but still a good size to scale with minifigures. The corn also makes a fine addition to LEGO's vegetable collection, and actually scales tolerably, unlike most LEGO food which was created to scale with Scala or Belville figures! THE VEHICLESSo far I have heaped praise on the minifigures and included accessories, and that praise isn't going to run out quite yet with the vehicles. They do their job well with minimal numbers of parts and minimal complexity. The wee little car is a fun throwback to Town, but now it's an EV! The forklift is perhaps a little heftier than LEGO forklifts of old, but looks great and can accommodate a minifigure sitting or standing, given the tall roll cage originally introduced in Power Miners. For a dark time in the early 2000s LEGO stopped including their classic opening doors on vehicles. They have probably been back for just as long at this point, but I still love the little touch of having an opening door even if it is practically useless for play. Speaking of play, I suspected that the forklift might be able to lift the car given their respective sizes... and I was right! THE GROCERY STORENow we turn to the big picture, and the titular grocery store. I will say, right off the bat, that the footprint of the whole set doesn't strike me as absurdly off the mark especially for the European prices, nor is the size of the grocery store too small necessarily to achieve a fun and proper grocery store toy. Sure it might be more the relative size of a service station or health food store than LEGO's one actual convenience store set, but what I mean is that unlike 60329 School Day for example with its woefully sized school, there's enough square studdage allotted to the grocery store to make for a decent grocery store. What's more, the road plate has some actual use here as the parking lot and loading area, and isn't tacked on for no other reason than to be a road plate. Unfortunately for the set, the devil is in the details, and the details leave something to be desired. Things start off fairly well out the front of the store, with the good and striking carrot sign, the veggie stalk stand holding wrapped flowers, and the crates with fruit and veg. It definitely gives me "fresh produce grocer" vibes, and I can forgive that different items are mixed in the crates because it's a toy and at least fruit and veg are often displayed in or on crates like this. Heading inside through the new for 2022 double doors, I want to reiterate that there is plenty of potential space for a good grocery store. There's room enough for minifigures and the shopping cart without things getting too cramped, which is great. Things start falling apart when taking a look at the actual groceries presented inside, and how they are presented. The crate of bottles reads like empty bottles for recycling. Baked goods in tall green crates look all wrong - these should have been in something like LEGO's barrel or on a built up display. There's also just not enough stuff in this section. If there were 2-stud or even 1-stud deep shelves here, things would have looked better and more items could have been included. The fish counter looks ok, though it's a little awkward being combined with checkout. The shelves along the side of the store also feel disappointing and awkward. They use up a lot of space to only hold two 1x1 items per shelf, and come across feeling bare. I also can't tell if these sections were supposed to be coded as refrigeration or not, since they look a bit like drinks. It would be much better if they had worked in an actual transparent door for a refrigeration or freezer section, and then maybe shelves with more variety of items like breakfast cereal for example, rather than just bottles. The two most play-oriented areas of the store actually work out as the best. Near the entrance is a bottle recycling machine, which uses minimal floor space and has a good collection crate for bottles on the other side. Over near the checkout counter is the loading/conveyor area. Approaching with the forklift, a crate can be slotted through the yellow and black striped technic parts which do a fantastic job emulating one of those ubiquitous plastic-strip barriers between spaces. It's a lot of fun pushing a crate through and then watching the parts fall back down behind it. Interestingly, these parts in this colour configuration were previously used like this in a 2020 Employee Gift set. However, this feature is probably why LEGO has used so many crates throughout the set even when they aren't the best thing for the actual products displayed inside. Outside, the parking lot has the details it needs, with a parking sign for Mr. Produce's car space and enough room to maneuver the forklift. CONCLUSIONThere's really a lot to like about this set. The minifigures and accessories are fantastic. The exterior looks quite good. The road plate has some utility and isn't just a tacked-on road for the sake of it. The vehicles don't use too many parts and look good. Overall, there is quite a lot of value despite the set having only 404 parts - value in the parts, and importantly, lots and lots of play value. The only really lackluster part of the set in my opinion is the interior of the store. Though it has enough floor space, the way it uses that space is awkward and ill-conceived when it comes to the display of products, which is a pretty core aspect of a grocery store! And now the price. I've read the argument that LEGO price-gouged this set because people are hungry for a grocery store. I've heard the notion that the road plate needlessly pushed up the price. Personally, given how much value the set provides, the price doesn't seem as far off the mark as I expected just looking at the pictures. An RRP of $10 less in the US, or $60, would be much better. I wouldn't expect anything lower than that as the RRP in today's day and age. As it is, if the types of things included appeal to you, I'm hard pressed to NOT recommend this set just because of the price. It could well be another three years until we see the shopping cart again... or more. Get it while you can. SCOREHow do I rate this set? 10 MINIFIGURES Great parts, great rarity and exclusivity, perfectly good amount. 9 PIECES Lots of fantastic accessories plus some very new parts, and overall ok volume though more parts for shelves and things would have been better. 6 DESIGN This was tough to score because a lot about the overall design is great, but the fact that the inside of the store is poorly designed really knocks it down. 10 PLAYABILITY There are all the right things included for play inside and outside of the store, plus well-functioning (and educational!) sections like the bottle return and crate unloading. 6 PRICE Again difficult to score especially given the regional differences. In the US it's bad, but in Europe it's ok. I still had to knock off some points. 8.2 OVERALL - With fantastic parts, figures, play value and a good exterior look, 60347 Grocery Store is a pretty strong City set, and not just for the novelty of being a grocery store. Lackluster interior details and a slightly too high price (depending on region) are the only things going against it. GIFT GUIDEWith the holiday gift-giving season coming up, does 60347 make a good gift compared to other sets at its price point? For a kid... the play value really is there, provided the kid in question likes something not too actiony. That said, two vehicles.... that's plenty for a chase. For an AFOL... the set packs a fair complement of desirable parts for AFOLs, making it a decent gift. Buying it just for the rare parts might make the price feel worse honestly, and it isn't something an AFOL would most likely want to display, so bear that in mind. For a casual LEGO fan... I'm not sure this makes a great gift for someone who casually likes LEGO. It really skews kid or true FOL who will appreciate the cool parts. I'd look elsewhere in LEGO's catalogue for a gift for someone that might want to build and display something. Next week, I'll be getting Inquisitorial.

It has been working for me all day, but I'm in Australia.

Thanks! Yes there's something just slightly off about it, which is a shame because the front of the car looks really good.

SET INFORMATIONNumber: 76912Name: Fast & Furious 1970 Dodge Charger R/TTheme: Speed ChampionsReleased: 2022Part Count: 345 Minifigures: 1Set Price (RRP): 24.99 EUR / 19.99 GBP / 32.99 AUD / 19.99 USD / 29.99 CADLinks: Brickset, Bricklink INTRODUCTION LEGO finally got me, a non-car enthusiast, truly wanting sets from their car line this year. I'm excited to see what I make of Speed Champions firsthand. Thank you to LEGO for providing this set at Eurobricks' request. THE BUILDFrom what I gather reading other people's Speed Champions reviews, the builds encompass a core component of the line's appeal - seeing all the fiddly bits and building techniques come together to capture a car's details at this scale. This set doesn't seem to be any exception, with lots of SNOT, sub-assemblies, offsets, etc. that kept the build engaging the whole way through. After adding some parts to the standard Speed Champions base, work quickly kicks off on the rear of the car, which ultimately gets attached upside down with a small ball joint and then locked in place with the 8-wide curved part that goes over-top the whole thing. The majority of the set's few printed parts - 2 1x3 light grey plates with black trapezoids, trans-red tiles with printed black lines and a 2x4 slope with silver dots - are also found in this section. Next, work commences on the inside, which involves adding the faux roll cage, the trademark NOS cannister to go fast (& furious), and more SNOT sub-assemblies with stickered panels that form the side windows. I tried my best to get the stickers right up to the top and side edges of the part, but it is a place where bad sticker placement could certainly spoil the look. Attention then turns to the front of the car, with space created for the super-charger that pops out of the top of the hood. The very front is also somewhat complex with the inset headlights and achieving as thin a front grey section as possible, though not as involved as the rear. The very last thing to add is the roof top. I read an interview where the designer discussed it being a main goal to capture the rounded corners of the roof, unlike previous LEGO Chargers that had inaccurate square corners. This has been achieved by not connecting the actual roof with any studs at all, and instead creating a sub-assembly that wedges in. It works well, and also makes the roof easy to pop off and access the interior. All in all, the build makes for a complex, involved and satisfying experience. THE MINIFIGUREFittingly for Speed Champions, though perhaps disappointingly for FF fans because there are so many characters in the franchise, the only Minifigure is the main man, Dominic Toretto himself. But... yeah this doesn't look very much like him or Vin Diesel. Without the context of the car I wouldn't recognise who this figure was supposed to be at all, and even with the car, I don't see much resemblance. Nice to get bare arms in the new warm/medium tan colour though. I forgot to picture him with his included wrench, sorry. THE FINISHED MODELGiven how complex the build felt, the finished car strikes me as surprisingly boxy. It looks less complex than it really is. That said, the core details certainly make it unmistakable, and it captures those details more cleanly than LEGO's previous Dodge Chargers, though the previous Speed Champions version made an admirable effort at 6-wide. The front of the car looks pretty good overall, with the inset super-charger, the grey outline to the headlights section, and the overall proportions. But without even comparing it to real-life images, something feels off about the back. It simply looks far too chunky, like a spider abdomen tacked on. Even with all the fancy techniques in the world, LEGO is limited by its geometry, and it could be that being a whole plate thinner would have been too much at this scale. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but there's something about the entire section behind the driver compartment that doesn't look quite right. The very back looks good again though, with well-done and good looking details like the tail lights and exhaust pipes. The interior includes the necessary details, which are done well. Positioning a minifigure is awkwardly limited by the windscreen piece, since the figure's left arm pretty much has to be down, but that isn't too noticeable once the roof is back on. CONCLUSION To conclude, it bears mentioning that if you look up pictures of the real car, you'll see that, like most cars, it's covered in subtle curves all over, while the LEGO model is squared, squared, a little angled, and squared. Nearly no curves to be found. The super-charger on the hood is also super-out-of-proportion. However, it being LEGO and an official set that needs to hold up, I wouldn't knock it for not being covered in curves. It's a LEGO-ification of the car and not a die cast model. That being said, it still needs to look good for what it is, and the chonky whole rear ever so slightly spoils the look in my opinion. Oh and of course it's way out of scale with minifigures because real humans tower over the real car, but again, not a big deal. SCOREHow do I rate this set? 6 MINIFIGURE It's the right character to include but looks nothing like him, so I can't give this too high a score. 9 PIECES Nothing amazing, but some printed parts and plenty of regularly useful goodies. 8 DESIGN Overall I think the design is successful, but the rear just drops it down a little. 9 PLAYABILITY  Vroom vroom, roll roll, take figure in and out - what more do you want to do? 10 PRICE  Interestingly, the price of this set seems to have risen in some regions over previous standalone 8-wide Speed Champions sets, but not in other regions like the US. That said, the price still seems right for the set and I would have no problem recommending it at full retail. Given it is a wide release, discounts should be available eventually anyway. 8.4 OVERALL - It's a pretty good set, though not without design flaws. And Dom looks nothing like Dom. GIFT GUIDEWith the holiday gift-giving season coming up, does 76912 make a good gift compared to other sets at its price point? For a kid... it's a good car. I really don't think a kid would be concerned about the proportional issues I have raised, and as Speed Champions goes, this might be less complex than others. Once it's finished, it's pretty solid and shouldn't fall apart during play. For an AFOL... I would probably lean towards some of the other Speed Champions sets, or something else entirely. The piece count is quite good for the money on this one, but no parts are too interesting. For a casual LEGO fan... this makes a decent gift. The build is fun but not TOO challenging, the model looks recognisable and therefore good enough for display on a shelf or a desk. For a Fast & Furious superfan... You can't NOT buy LEGO's only Minifigure-scale FF set if you're going LEGO shopping or a Fast & Furious superfan. That said, the main character doesn't look like himself, but maybe if you buy 75573 for Letty, that'll soften the blow. I'm probably going to. See you next week for some grocery shopping.

Well all of the previous animal-head masks used in this theme have had faces, while the CMF bunny mask only had ears. The CMF piggy mask did have a face, but since the bunny one didn't, you could see it as LEGO introducing a new piece for consistency, not because they're going to use it for anything else.