Tag Archives: set

Rate My Set

Lego Set Reviews

With Elves going hungry this weekend we’ve dipped into Archives to remind you that The Lego Car Blog features an extensive Review Library of over forty official LEGO, Technic and Model Team sets. We don’t just write about LEGO, we build it too. Hand-picked by the office anoraks the reviews include official sets from the latest Technic line as well as classic flagships from decades past that now change hands for mega-bucks on eBay.

So before you buy a set, see how it’s rated by the experts; simply visit the Set Review Library and click on your chosen set!

Technic 42030 Volvo Front Loader Preview

Lego 42030 review

A few of our Elves have been on a secret mission recently, and today we get to show you why! After revealing LEGO’s new Technic sets for the first half of 2014 we can finally review the last set to join the Technic line up in the second half of the year.

This is it, a new addition to Technic’s officially licensed range, and the new flagship at the top of the 2014 line-up. LEGO has partnered with Volvo trucks to bring us a replica of their huge L350F Front Loader and, as you can see from the slightly dodgy picture above, it’s loaded with Power Functions goodies, including two RC controls, two RC receivers and a multitude of motors.

Functions are all remotely controlled, and include a linear actuated front bucket (itself a new part, attached by two other new-for-2014 pieces), articulated steering, and drive. 42030 also includes the portal hubs first debuted on the 8110 Unimog and a rear-mounted piston engine in a new green colour, which is going to look great in classic car MOCs.

42030 includes, as always, instructions for a second vehicle. This time it’s an articulated Volvo dump truck and it’s, as B-Models go, quite a good one. The Volvo Front Loader will reach stores in the second half of 2014, priced well out of reach of most children’s allowances, and it looks like it’s going to be one of the best Technic sets of the last few years. Start saving!

Lego 21108 Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Preview

Lego 21108 Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Preview

LEGO today released images of the latest official set to be borne of it’s Cuusoo programme. Created by LEGO fan Brent Waller, the new Ghostbusters Ecto-1 faithfully recreates the modified Cadillac Ambulance and characters from the 1980s movie. Over to LEGO:

This fun and iconic vehicle from the blockbusting ‘80s movie is fully loaded with all the paranormal detection equipment needed to track down those ghastly ghosts. It also features cool Ghostbusters logo decoration, removable roof, tracking computer and seats for 3 mini-figures.

Ecto-1 will take the set number 21108 when it reaches stores in June, priced around $50. Read all the details on LEGO’s Cuusoo blog!

Lego 21108

’70s Night

Lego 392 F1 Car

Long before this Lego Car Blogger was born there was a time known as ‘The ’70s’. The ’70s were a weird and wonderful era, where Radio 1 DJs roamed the earth and everyone was forced to wear massive trousers or brown, and listen to disco-funk continuously. LEGO were just starting to hit the stratosphere during this period, and their pre-curser to Model Team was beginning to produce some excellent large-scale vehicles.

One of these was the 392 F1 car from 1975, a marvellous primary-coloured affair complete with genuine sponsorship decals. Jens M. – one half of the building duo ‘LegoExotics’ – has reimagined the original, retaining the ace look and colouring whilst bringing it up-to-date by incorporating today’s modern smooth pieces. See all the photos on Flickr at the link above.

Lego 855 Crane

Our second ’70s redux comes from Bobofrutx, who’s taken the 855 mobile crane set from 1978 and given it a similar facelift. His version of the ’70s classic includes the features that showed the beginnings of Technic, including working 4-wheel steering, a rotating and extending boom and a working winch.

You can see all the photos at Bobofrutx’s photostream via the link above, and you can read The Lego Car Blog’s reviews of some of the classic 1970’s sets by clicking on the ‘Reviews’ tab in the main menu.

Don’t Show Me The Money

Lego Technic 41999 Review

The story so far…

The LEGO Company make the 9398 Technic remote control Crawler. It works well and looks awful. LEGO launch a competition to design a prettier body. Said contest is won by a talented Russian gentleman called Egor Karshiev, whose ‘Boss Crawler’ design gets the nod. LEGO announce they will only make 20,000 of these sets, with many unique elements and extra features, and sell them for the same price as the standard 9398…

Cue the most ridiculous speculator-driven feeding frenzy since Beanie Babies tanked…

As I write, just one month after 41999 was released, these change hands, sealed, on eBay for around £350; or nearly three times RRP. Many are being bought by the same UK-based buyer (not me!) in the hope they’ll keep climbing.

I’ve just got the one, bought from LEGO for a very reasonable price, for the purpose of building it, displaying it, even *gasp* playing with it… I’m willing to bet that more than half of these plastic building toys will remain forever sealed in their boxes in the hands of collectors or, worse, speculators; unbuilt and unloved. A shame, because it’s a really good set, and here’s why:

Lego Technic 41999 4x4 Crawler

The box is pretty special. A simple, elegant design on the front showing a close-up of the distinctive dark blue panels that so lift this model; it’s made of sterner stuff than usual, too. Inside this treasure chest it’s fairly tightly packed with lots of good stuff; enough for a few hours of leisurely, pleasurable building.

There are four instruction books which are easy to follow, as we’ve come to expect, and there are no mistakes. The build is relatively straightforward, but there’s no shortage of cool features: Continue reading

New LEGO Set Review Library!

Lego Set Reviews

You can now find all The Lego Car Blog’s LEGO set reviews in one place!

The Lego Car Blog Team is pleased to announce the arrival of a new feature at The Lego Car Blog! We’ve been busy cataloging all our past set reviews so that we can bring you a new ‘Reviews‘ tab in the main menu; a resource that contains a library of every LEGO set we’ve ever reviewed! Clicking on a picture will take you straight to the review for that set, or to the comparison page where it’s matched against a similar set of a different vintage.

All newly reviewed sets will be added to this Review Library as well as continuing to appear on the homepage, and you can still find all our reviews via the Search or Category functions if you wish.

As always you can let us know what you think of the new Review Library via the Feedback page or the comments, and if you’d like us to review a particular set (or if you’d like to review one and get your name here on The Lego Car Blog) you can get in contact in the usual ways.

TLCB Team

Lego 21103 Preview – Brick To The Future!

Lego 21103 DeLorean Back To The FutureGreat Scott! LEGO’s Cuusoo scheme – where fans can publish their creations on the LEGO Cuusoo site, and those reaching 10,000 votes or more are considered for limited production – has generated its fourth fan-designed official LEGO set!

m.togami and Sakuretsu’s mini-figure scale DeLorean time-machine from the superb Back To The Future movie franchise was recently approved by LEGO’s ‘Jury’ of designers for production, and The Lego Group this week released images showing how the set will look when it reaches stores later in the year. The new set – numbered 21103 – will contain 401 pieces, including both ‘Doc Emmett Brown’ and ‘Marty McFly’ mini-figures, a skateboard, and of course, a DeLorean with a few ‘modifications’.

It’s too early for us to say what the pricing for 21103 will be, however the really cool news is that the designers have decided that the revenue they receive as a commission reward for creating the Cuusoo-winning product (1% of the total generated) is to be donated to the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation. If The Lego Car Blog gave out awards for the heroes the Lego Community of 2013, m.togami and Sakuretsu are surely top of the list.

So watch the video below, start saving, and join the discussion on Eurobricks. And congratulations to the winning duo, from all of us here at The Lego Car Blog, for making this exceptional project a reality.

B-Side

Lego 42000 Hot RodThe supporting actor of track sides, the B-Side is there only to fill the blank space on the back of the record. But sometimes the B-Side turns out to be better than than the A.

B-Sides famous for being more famous than their A-Side compatriots are rare things, but U2’s ‘Sweetest Thing’, The Smiths’ ‘How Soon is Now’ and er… The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody’ are today joined by Nathanael Kuipers’ 42000 Hot Rod, which is, somewhat remarkably, a more appealing model than the one upon which it’s based.

And the best thing about Nathanael’s work is you can build one too! Just buy LEGO’s 42000 Technic F1 Racer set and you’ll have all the parts you need. See how Nathanael’s done it on MOCpages or Flickr.

Better than the Original!

Better than the original!

31006 Alternative

The LEGO set 31006 is a nice on its own, but it also contains some useful parts. Many builders have used these to create another car/vehicle/thing, and this one impressed us the most.

This 31006-based Low-Rider by Peteris Sprogis is a mix of creative part usage and classic studs-up building. To see more of this dream car, click on the link above.

6653 Re-Booted

Lego 6653 Unimog

Town ‘mog

nolnet on Flickr revisits the early ’80s with his Unimoged version of the classic Town set 6653. We think his rebooted version is much cooler than the original! See more of nolnet’s work by clicking the link above.

Technic 41999 Preview – New 4×4!

New for 2013! New Lego Technic 4x4 Redux!

New for 2013! New Lego Technic 4×4 Crawler Redux!

LEGO have added another new Technic model to their 2013 line-up! This brilliant blue muscle car monster truck was developed from the winning submission in LEGO’s ‘You design it, we make it!‘ competition held at the start of the year.

Receiving the most votes out of the 10 finalists, Egor Karshiev’s Boss Crawler has evolved into set no. 41999, and comes in a fantastic new blue hue. Underneath the muscle car bodywork sits the chassis from the 2012 4×4 Crawler set 9398, and we think it’s even better looking than the original.

Too see full details of the new set visit the LEGO Technic Designers Blog, and look out for the arrival of 41999 in stores soon!

Better Bike

Lego Technic Bike

Insert a sidecar for twice the awes… wait, he did?

With MOCpages back up and running there’s been an influx of new models uploaded. The Lego Car Blog Elves have been redistributed accordingly and are once again foraging far and wide to find the best Lego vehicles on the world wide web. Vehicles like this one. Nick Barrett must’ve read our recent review of LEGO’s own 857 and thought he could do better. And by gum he has. The clunky lines of the original motorcycle have been replaced by something far more svelte. See more on the revitalized MOCpages.

Lego Technic Motorcycle

Insert Wallace and Gromit for twice the awesome

New 2013 Technic Elements Preview

Technic Cog

New for 2013; Revised 8-tooth Gear

Possibly our most boring post to date, but if you’re a studless builder, perhaps one of our most important ones too. The Technic 8-Tooth Gear has been reworked so that it no longer slips inside studless beams. Hurrah! Each tooth has an additional step added to each side, forming a new ring that effectively widens the gear.

Also available in 2013 will be LEGO’s new Pull-Back Motor, first previewed in sets 82010 and 82011. Pictures courtesy of slfroden.

New Technic pull-back Motor 2013

New for 2013; Technic Pull-Back Motor

Technic 42000 F1 Racer Preview… er, again

Lego Technic 42000 F1 Racer

New for 2013; LEGO 42000 F1 Racer

Finally… The last Elf thrown over The LEGO Group’s perimeter fence returned today. We were beginning to think it’d been eaten by the guard dogs. Anyhow, now that it’s found its way back to The Lego Car Blog Towers we can complete our preview of the 2013 LEGO Technic lineup, with this, the 42000 F1 Racer.

We’ve actually previewed this set already, because someone (probably now an ex-LEGO employee) put one up for sale on eBay a few months ago. However, we thought it was still worth bringing you some high quality pictures.

LEGO’s 42000 marks a return to F1 style cars, although due to licensing regulations it may not actually be called an ‘F1’ car. In comparison to their previous officially licensed efforts from Ferrari and Williams, we’re actually a little disappointed by this set, but that’s probably a little unjust as 42000 will almost certainly be cheaper than its predecessors.

42000 will sit at the top of the early-2013 LEGO Technic range, and whilst it has no Power Functions or Pneumatics, it does feature some good old-fashioned mechanics, including; a working V8 engine, suspension and steering, and one of those slightly annoying ‘gearbox-that’s-not-actually-a-gearbox’ things to control a variety of functions. We predict these will be an opening engine cover (why not just have it on a hinge and give us a real gearbox LEGO?), and possibly a Drag Reduction System (DRS) on the rear wing, as employed by the 2012 Formula 1 cars.

Expect 42000 to be near the top of the tree price-wise when it’s released in early 2013. However, we think it’s not so far up LEGO’s pricing structure that it’s eliminated the need for a new flagship… You heard it here first!

Lego 42000 B-Model

Bonus picture; LEGO 42000 ‘A’ and ‘B’ models

Technic 42004 Excavator Preview

Lego Technic New 2013, 42004

New for 2013; LEGO Technic 42004

The penultimate set* in our search for LEGO’s 2013 Technic releases arrived today, scooped from deep within The LEGO Group’s fortified labs. And at first glance 42004 might not look particularly impressive. However, we think this may be one of the best sets of 2013.

Firstly, 42004 has two lovely one-piece buckets. People will buy this set for these parts alone. The design, like most modern Technic, is almost all studless beams, but unlike a lot of modern Technic (see our review of 42010 and 42011) this set has no Power Functions / Pull-Back Motor / Linear Actuator gimmickry.

Instead, it features lots of proper mechanical functions. It steers via articulation in the middle, the front bucket can be raised / lowered and tipped, whilst the rear bucket can swing, extend and tip. All of this is accomplished by simple levers and mechanics, making it one of the most functional, and yet cheapest, LEGO Technic sets in ages.

LEGO Technic 42004 will go on sale in early 2013.

*Actually we previewed LEGO’s 42000 F1 Racer some months ago, because we’re awesome, but we’ll be posting an updated Preview (as soon as the slovenly Elf looking for new pictures returns) in order to complete the 2013 set. Plus it gets loads of hits…