Building Up a Solid Concept in Creature Construction

Today we have another brick built creature. I am going to make the call, and declare it a cat …or a brushtail possum. But I don’t think it really matters. If there is one thing that the Christmas buildup 40222 has reminded me, it is that there is a need to use your imagination  when building with bricks. Lego city and minifigure scale is all very well when you have your creatures, pets and animals predefined with an independent mold, but to put things together from scratch, and to interpret what others have built takes a little imagination. Through the creatures that we have brick built with this set, we have seen a number of different techniques for building animal faces, years, posture, legs and tails.  I love the way that the eyes position here makes you think the cat(possum?) has a great big grin on its face!

Play well.

Lego Classic: Retro Values with a Modern Aesthetic

When LEGO rebooted their ‘generic brick’ sets last year as ‘Classic’ I was pretty excited.  Whilst I enjoy the creator and mini figure containing sets, the building often feels a little bit constrained. It’s like we aren’t being encouraged to experiment too much with building any more.  Now, my early experiences with lego were before the release of the mini figure, and in those early days, box art would often demonstrate alternative builds without instructions.  So the classic sets are available in a variety of sizes and price points, from $AU25 (224 bricks) through to the $90, 1500 piece, creatively named ‘Large Creative Box’.  In between are a variety of building sets and also ‘supplement sets’ these $AU30 sets come without wheels or plates, but a variety of bricks, as well as some ‘eye tiles’.  There is even a ‘bright’ supplement set: featuring much of the Friends color palette. I would love a ‘landscape supplement’ full of greys, greens and browns, but leaving out the purples and trans red and so forth…

Today I am looking at 10702 – Lego Creative Building Set.  Whoa… lets look at that word again: Creative.  That’s like ‘building without a net.’ It was purchased on special, $29.99, rather than the standard $39.99: 25% off.  It contains over 570 pieces in 41 colours. That was around 7 cents per piece; 73 cents per colour, 13.9 pieces per colour. Forty one colours? you’d think they were ice cream flavours.

The box is shaped like an old school toy box, made of corrugated cardboard and  contains several transparent poly bags, filled according to color family.

These images show us all the colour, and representative of the parts selection. I ran out of space in my light box so…

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