lego classic

Red vs Blue: Classic Creative Colour Boxes go Head to Head

ramblingbrick classic, Lego, reviews , , , ,

The Rambling Brick, and many of our friends are in Australia.  In order to distract ourselves from the rest of the world seeing the LEGO® Batman™ Movie this week, while we wait until the cinematic release at the end of March, I present this little diversion…  #SameBatTimeAusNZ

When the LEGO® Classic sets were launched in 2015, they promised an invigorated era of sets where bricks, plates and miscellaneous bits were what counted. It felt like a return to the Basic Building Sets of the 70’s, although  the evolved part and colour palettes see us now having access to a veritable cornucopia of colours, shapes and opportunities. Not so many options, however, that we don’t need to come up with creative solutions.  All of the Classic sets come with an ‘inspiration book’ – typically including a selection of models that can be constructed simultaneously.  The boxes are typically illustrated with a rainbow like arrangement of the pieces, according to colour.

So imagine my surprise as I entered a local retail space and saw boxes crowded together, labelled LEGO® Classic, but having a limited spectrum of colours featured in the box art. Now, it didn’t take me long to work out what was going on: I was aware that there were Green, Yellow, Red and Blue Creative Boxes coming out this year, but I had missed their arrival on shop.lego.com and hadn’t bumped into any reviews of them. (Read on after the break… for more )

Continue reading →

Lego Classic: Retro Values with a Modern Aesthetic

ramblingbrick elements, Lego, reviews, techniques , , , , , , , , ,

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…

Continue reading →