The Artful Brick

TL;DR: Original Price:   $10.99 Pieces: 70 Minifigure(s): Female arctic explorer Sticker Sheet: No Pros: Well-designed minifig, also seal & baby seal Cons: simplistic build Assembly:  Interesting Pieces: I never noticed before, but the 4x3 open wedge with cutout fits nicely over the curved 2x1x2/3 slope, as shown in the picture below:   This was admittedly a rather expensive set. The minifig is nice but nothing special, and the only standout pieces were the seal and baby seal. The camera sub-build wasn't too bad, giving a bulky documentary-style video camera, but the snowmobile and ice floe builds weren't anything noteworthy. Score (out of 5 🧱): Price: 🧱🧱 Process: 🧱🧱 Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱 Play: 🧱🧱🧱 Pieces: 🧱🧱 Total: 🧱🧱🧱  Lego Instructions: here

TL;DR: Original Price:   $5.99 Pieces: 54 Minifigure(s): Knight (broad brim helmet), Knight (neck-protector helmet), Skeleton Warrior Sticker Sheet: No Pros: Nice figure printing Cons: low piece count Assembly:  Interesting Steps: The first page of the manual has some very important reminders: don't build on grass (or carpet, I suppose) but on a table, and sort the pieces into meaningful groups (by color or type). Also I know it's an Ikea-style infographic, but I found it funny that the red, blue, and yellow Technic axles and minifigure heads were split both into the color piles and the type piles, making it that much harder to find what you need.   Interesting Techniques: The use of a rubber band on a Technic axle and pin connector pivoting on a 4L bar to shoot the ballista bolts is a nicely-simple technique. Interesting Pieces: The minifigs in this set are old enough to only have printing on one side, but new enough to have nicely-detailed printing (including the st...

TL;DR: Original Price:   $4.99 Pieces: 75 Minifigure(s): No Sticker Sheet: No Pros: Cute builds, useful piece/color combo Cons: Missing instructions Assembly:  Build #1 - Dog Build #2 - Bear Cub Build #3 - Squirrel Interesting Steps: Dog - The use of 1x2 Technic bricks with two holes means that you can fit a 2x2 circle tile in (to round the belly's sides) between the leg attachment points. That said, this could also be accomplished with two 1x1 Technic bricks for the legs and then either a 1x2 Technic brick with one hole or else a 1x2 SNOT brick. That said, given that these 3-in-1 sets prioritize pieces that can be used in different ways for the different builds, it makes sense that they'd go with this solution, which provides four identical 1x2 bricks for use in other builds (for example, two side-by-side make up the bear cub's head). Interesting Techniques: For all the creativity that goes into most 3-in-1 sets, I found it surprising that two builds made use of muc...

TL;DR: Original Price:   $39.95 Pieces: 552 Minifigure(s): No Sticker Sheet: Yes Pros: colorful and cheap (if on clearance) Cons: cheap and confusing Assembly:  Bag group 1 - T-Rex & Raptor Bag group 2 - Tree Bag group 3 - Pad thing & Dish thing Bag group 4 - Motorcycle Bag group 5 - Jeep Bag group 6 - Helicopter   Leftover Pieces & Sticker Interesting Techniques: The use of scalloped SNOT piece to make tank treads is pretty efficient; with Lego you'd have to use the un-scalloped piece and add 1x1 round tiles or plates to mimic the effect Interesting Pieces: The tree branches are designed to only fit together one way; on the one hand, this ensures that the final build will look like the picture, but on the other hand it denies any creativity The textured slopes on the pad thing are neat, I could see them being repurposed for the paws of a statue lion a'la NYC Library, for example The grooved slopes on the Jeep's fenders are also nice non-standard parts...