4641 Speed Boat

Not a long post today, but one for the sake of completism. At the same time that I bought Uruk-hai Army, I picked up 4641 Speed Boat. Picking up the set felt a lot like buying LEGO did as a kid: I had extra money in my budget, there were sets at the store that I could buy for that price, so I did. In actual fact, I was willing to spend a bit more money than I did... but LEGO is expensive these days and none of the sets that I was actually interested in fell below the budget thresh-hold--at least not without making it impossible to pick up the Uruk-hai Army. Nonetheless, I picked up Speed Boat. Why?

Well, as you can see, Speed Boat is not a particularly large set. One of my brothers got it for Christmas, so I've seen it before, and I knew it was "swooshable" (or whatever the maritime equivalent is... swoopable?) but ultimately forgettable. Even the fig is a relatively generic Octan fig. So why buy it? The answer is that for the price of less than three dollars, it was one sale and I didn't own it. LEGO is producing awesome enough sets these days that picking up sets on sale is less frequent than it once was--thankfully those "halcyon days" of 2003 or so are long gone--and LEGO is also more expensive than it once was. You can't even pick up a Collectible Minifig for less than three dollars most places. And with my own budget tightening, it was not only an opportunity but one I could afford. There was also a certain amount of "collector's instinct" involved. I've never been a LEGO fan who limited himself to primarily one theme: Castle, Pirates, Town, Space, etc. I've always aimed to have at least a little of everything--and more of some--and the fact of the matter is that City is at the back of the line these days. Part of this is because, although City has some new and awesome sets, it's just going over ground that they've covered for years and years: police and firemen and planes and race cars; at the same time, LEGO is putting out some new and wonderful stuff: Lord of the Rings and Monster Hunters and Collectible Minifigs, etc.

4441 Police Dog Van

One of the sets that I received for Christmas was part of the 2012 line-up of new City sets, though in this case "City" is a misnomer because the "Cops and Robbers" theme has in fact left the city and taken to the forests. This has been cause for excitement in portions of AFOL-dom because of the new bears found in a couple of sets, and because moving into "State Trooper" territory is one of most drastic moves that LEGO's police force has ever made.



As you can see, though, set 4441 Police Dog Van does not come with a bear. What id *does* come with is a "State Trooper/Sheriff/Not-Mountie" in a van with separate compartments for dogs and criminals (the dogs have a far more finished accommodation), a car for the criminal, and the entrance to an abandoned gold mine.

Of the three major components of the set, the gold mine is the least interesting, though the parts that comprise it are excellent and the bee/wasp's nest is a nice, albeit simple, touch. The dog van is better: a robust design with my first set of the new, larger tires for the now-classic wheel-well, and a good assortment of parts. The main problem with the van that I've noted is that, depending on the exact alignment of parts, opening the door to the dogs' compartment can pop off the roof over the driver.

That leaves the car, which I found to be a lot more fun than I expected from the pictures. If spaceships are swooshable, what are vehicles? I'm going to go with "vroomable," which is exactly what this car is. It's like a badass version of 8402 Sports Car, which I also own and find quite vroomable.

Unfortunately, the felon driving this presumably stolen car is a bit lacklustre; although I like the grey jacket-over-striped-prison shirt torso, one begins to run out of uses for criminals in striped shirts and tuques quickly, and after getting two in the Advent Calendar right before Christmas, I was doubly disinterested in him. Fortunately, it was easy to return his car to the dealership where another fig got a great deal, and the "State Trooper" fig is more than awesome enough to make up for him.

5766 Log Cabin

Celebrating Thanksgiving--well, digesting it anyway--I'm going to take a look at one of the sets I picked up at the LEGO Store last weekend. This is the second year in a row that I've visited the LEGO Store in mid-November, and it seems like it's a good time to go there. They already had some of the 2012 sets out, including the new Dino sets and some of the new city sets. The main set that I was after, however, was a 2011 set, 5766 Log Cabin.



Like the other Creator sets, Log Cabin's appeal is a combination of a robust design (in one or more models) and a phenomenal quantity of basic pieces.



The minifig is a bit plain--though the green backpack is a *bit* rare, though not super-useful. His kayak is a rather attractive design from the top--less so when you hold it up, because of the "boat round" pieces underneath.

3367 Space Shuttle

It's getting to be about a month, maybe more, since I made an order at Shop@Home to buy a set that was apparently out of stock when I last visited the LEGO Store, back in early September. That set was 3367 Space Shuttle, the first NASA-based LEGO shuttle I've managed to acquire, though LEGO has been making them for decades.



As a $30 set (USD), the Space Shuttle is a fairly good size, large enough to adequately capture a sense of weightiness. I admit that I thought it was a bit expensive when I was buying it online, because all the pictures of it made it look a bit smaller than it actually is, but I was convinced once the set arrived and I put it together. Among other things, this swooshable ship has *heft*. It's also a fairly good parts pack: other than the specialized cockpit piece, there really isn't anything in this set that I would be averse to having multiple copies of.



As a playable design, Space Shuttle is composed of a cockpit and a cargo hold containing a Canadarm and a deployable satellite. The satellite is less complex than some we've seen in the past, but surprisingly cute. (I'm particularly thinking of this one from the Spaceport theme of 1999, the last major minifig-scaled series of NASA/Space sets--though there have been some impressive standalone and non-minifig sets in the years since). The cargo hold might be more fun if it had room to stow extra astronauts or aliens, but the room is there, if one leaves the satellite in space--also if one rooms the Canadarm.



As for minifigs... well, no one is going to buy this Space Shuttle as an army builder, but since I already have two Spaceport astronauts and two Launch astronauts from the Dacta 30 Minifigures (9293 Community Workers), I'm not really in the market to get more astronauts anyway. And as far as getting an astronaut at all went, I was quite happy that the Astronaut that DOES come with this set has the new "Space Police III" helmet, as well as the "Atlantis" bodysuit.