TL;DR:
- Original Price: $39.99
- Pieces: 310
- Minifigure(s): Mirabel, Antonio; also capybara & jaguar
- Sticker Sheet: Yes
- Pros: Animals, organic builds
- Cons: Minidolls, simplistic builds
Assembly:
Bag #1 - Start of Casita
Bag #2 - Finish Casita
Bag #3 - Start of Tree
Bag #4 - Finish Tree
Leftover Pieces
- Interesting Steps:
- Step 41 has us tuck a "chocolate frosting" piece beside the pet-wash station. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the capybara's smug expression...
- Interesting Techniques:
- In step 39 we place a sticker on a 2x3 bright light orange tile, and I'm pleased to say that the color match is pretty good, which makes it look like a child's drawing tacked to the wall. A transparent sticker would accomplish the same thing, however, and it's interesting that they went with the bright light orange vs the bright light yellow of the walls.
- The water feature completed in step 22 is nice, and looks good tucked away behind the foliage and tree parts.
- Interesting Pieces:
- Surprisingly, this printed 2x4 oval tile is only used in this set. It's a beautiful design and makes me wonder what mathematics were done to determine that this needed to be printed, vs the three other decorated tiles got stickers.
- The 1x1x1 1/3 quarter round white slope is really cool, and I wish it were a more common piece, given how useful I can see it being for microbuilds, architecture, and the same.
- The bee hive piece and printed bee tile is cute, even if stylistically it doesn't quite fit (because it appears in a lot of Friends sets, which likely determined the bee's design).
- Pain Points:
- In step 13, the bright light orange clip (the "snake holder") doesn't match the lime color of the baseplate, which is odd since it does come in that color, and would look a lot better if it matched. I don't think we're given the bright light orange version because it's used elsewhere in that color—thereby reducing the number of unique part/color combinations for the set—as this is the only such clip in the entire build.
- With all of the pre-printed tiles available, or even the fact that there's space on the sticker sheet, it would have been nice if the book had a printed/stickered "pages" tile, as well as a printed/stickered front cover. Granted, a blank book like this becomes much more versatile for use in other figbarfs and MOCs (unlike some more-specific ones, like the "Wingardium Leviosa" page tile from Harry Potter sets), but it does make for a cheaper look.
Apart from some odd choices (printed vs, stickered tiles and color choices, as described above), this is a cute-enough set. The simple techniques and openness of the final build are good for younger builders. While I'm not a fan of minidolls, these are good ones: extremely colorful and pretty much on-model for the characters. The bigger win for me is the animals: the jaguar is unique to this set (according to Bricklink) and capybara is only in four sets (all of them for Encanto, which has eight sets total).
The casita is relatively small and very open, clearly designed for imaginative play rather than architectural accuracy—for example, washing and brushing the capybara in the little basin—but has nice details like the sign and birdhouses to keep it from being a barren stage.
The tree makes use of several large trunk pieces—again, to keep it open and the build easy—but this stylization is again made up for with some nice details, like the beehive, the waterfall, and the flowers throughout the canopy.
On the whole the set is as bright and colorful as the movie, and would have been a great value at $30. At $39.99, however, it does feel like you're getting less bang for your buck...which is to be expected from licensed lines, even though the two minidolls together are worth only about $5 of that total. It's good for younger builders and definitely fans of the movie, but apart from the animals and printed/stickered tiles, there isn't too much to recommend it to other builders.
Score (out of 5 🧱):
- Price: 🧱🧱
- Process: 🧱🧱🧱
- Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱
- Play: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱
- Total: 🧱🧱🧱
Lego Instructions: here
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