LEGO City 60012: Coast Guard 4x4 & Diving Boat Review

This weekend my lovely Wife and Daughter went out for a tea party at a friends. On the way home she stopped by our local K-Mart and found the LEGO City 60012: Coast Guard 4x4 & Diving Boat.

That night I started building said set. So lets have a look shall we.

  LEGO City 60012: Coast Guard 4x4 & Diving Boat. Yet again, the boat floats in water.

 The set contains 128 pieces and retails for $19.99.

 Comes with 2 Minifigures: Coast Guard 4x4 & Diving Boat and Trailer.

 Note: All photo's can be clicked on for a larger view.

 

 On the back they show us all the fun action that can be had in this set. Looks like you could have some swooshing around fun in the tub. If only the water would stay in the bath tub when I get in it. :-/

 When you open the box you will notice a lot of empty space. We get 2 numbered bags, a dingy, instructions and a sticker sheet. I feel that this set should have fitted into a box like the size of last years Endor battle pack.

 Here is the sticker sheet. 10 stickers in total to apply.

 The contents of bag 1. Not a lot to look at in terms of parts. I did notice that the flippers are not on a sprue, like they used to be in the past. Also we get the new mold life jacket, which I'm not a fan of.

The crew member Minifig has a nice new print on both front and back of the torso. He also comes with a standard single printed smiley face and a blue cap. He also gets the life jacket... It's just a shame that LEGO haven't worked out the neck issue yet.

A step by step shot of how the 4x4 is constructed. It's great to see a vehicle with doors again.

  A look at the front and back of the 4x4.

Side view with the equipment out. The use of a 2x2 jumper plate helps for easy removal. We get a scuba tank, mask and flippers

 Bag 2 really should have been in bag 1. A waste of space and plastic. This would have also reduced the size of the box too, like I already mentioned above. But I guess it more for the kids to do :)

Coast Guard Rescuer gas the same print as LEGO City 60015: Coast Guard Plane Rescuer. Only he has a 5 O'clock shadow stubble, single faced printing and a blue cap.

Simple looking, yet effective trailer.

Same with the boat. Not a lot to it but it really looks nice, maybe a seat would have added a little something to it?

Attached to the trailer.

All connected up ready for a rescue.

All Complete!

The spares that are left over. Interestingly we get a spare 2x3 blue plate. I had to go back through the instructions to see if I had missed a step. But then looked at the back page to see the part count to show 4. We get 5, so a thumbs up for something other then 1x1 pieces.

Overall this a cute little set with the possibility of some great playability when added to another set, such as the LEGO City 60015: Coast Guard Plane to act as a support crew. I really like the compact size of this 4x4 instead of the larger ones from the past that look too big on a City road.
The diver will have to suit up before leaving the shore due to not having a lot of room to fit any equipment on it.

I find it frustrating when TLG promote boats that float and then put stickers on them. Yes I can hear you say... "well don't put them on then". But for a child to see and want this set, like my son. They are going to want to do all these things. By putting it in water the end result will be that the stickers will fall off and it will loose the intended look that they like so much.
An extra Minifig and a surf board would have given this set a straight out of the box story line that kids would have loved to play out.
Nevertheless its a great companion set for one of the larger sets that will be out there soon if not already.

I recommend picking this set up and I look forward to picking up the rest of the series

Thanks for reading!

Let us know in the comments below, what you think of the set. I would love to hear others opinions on it.

Until next time this is Tan Tile... diving in for the next review.

 

Shop for me LEGO BLITZATHON from 11AM this Friday 19th July

Every now and then the guys over at Shopforme.com.au have a BLITZATHON.
On Friday the 19th of July... Starting at 11am and for every hour there after "Shop for me" will post a new BLITZ on thier Daily Blitz page until 11pm that night.

They usually have great LEGO deals ranging from 10% off to 40% off on some fantastic sets that they stock in-store.

So set your alarm for 11am this Friday and check out what they have to offer on their BLITZATHON.
I know I will be!

20% off LEGO At Toys r Us

Click for larger view.

If all the current Toy Sales aren't enough for you. Toys r Us are having a 20% off Lego Construction.
The list includes  Creator, Super Heroes, Legend Of Chima, The Lord of the Rings, TECHNIC, Disney's The Lone Ranger, Star Wars, City, Friends. With more in store.
The sale runs from Wednesday 10th July to Sunday 21st July 2013.
So if you missed something now you have more time to get what you need/want.

Happy shopping :-)

LEGO 76002: Superman: Metropolis Showdown Review

After reviewing the Clark Kent fig the other day I decided to pull this out and build it. We will take a look at this little Man of Steel set.
LEGO 76002: Superman: Metropolis Showdown.
The set contains 119 pieces and retails for $22.99. You will find it for $18.39 at Shopforme (as of 07/07/2013)

Comes with 2 Minifigures: Superman and General Zod.

The Front of the Box gives you in idea of what's intended  for this set.

Some Play Features include a... nothing to exciting. Shloooooomm?? Superman Shlooooomms?

With any typical set this size you get 2 unnumbered bags. One for the larger parts and one for the smaller parts. 2 instruction books? One to build the communication tower and one for the car.

An overview of all the parts included to build.

Superman and General Zod. They both have double face printing. A grumpy look and an even grumpier look.  :-) Really nice printing on these two. Those Kryptonian folks are an angry lot... Then again if your planet got blown to bits, you would be too. "Boy you can feel the tension... hey?"

Here you see the back printing

There isn't a lot to the build of the communication tower. What you see it what you get... not much

But I do like the Dark Tan 1x2 roof slopes and Tan cheese slopes. If you haven't worked it out yet i like my color Tan.   :-)

A Look at the back of the first instruction manual gives you a rundown of the play features.

Lets get to book 2 and start building the car. The next few images will guide you to build your own if you have the parts. I might even build a blue version of this.

It doesn't take long to build the car, but it does look slick.

One thing I did notice, is that the drivers area is a bit deep for a minifig to sit in it. The arms have to be put in a higher position then normal.

6 spare parts

just to show you the other play feature for this set.

All complete... "come on guys... get in a little closer"

"umm ok that's... err good... yep that will... do... you guys want to smil... never mind..."

a look at the 3 different versions of Supes... yep still grumpy.

"Guys, Guys Ok, Too close Too close... that's a wrap!"

This was an easy build. Not much to go "Wow" over, but it was not really aim for me... That said, the kids really like playing with this set. Flipping the car is a highlight for Jaspa

With any LEGO, I enjoy building and I still enjoyed this one too. I do like the car. The build was very different to any other cars I have built in the past, so that's a thumbs up.
The Minifigs are very well detailed so can't complain about that.
I definitely think this is better value for money with 119 pieces, than 6858 Catwoman  Catcycle City Chase ($24.99) with 89 Pieces or 6865: Captain America's Avenging Cycle ($29.99) with 72 pieces. giving you many more parts for around the same price range. So get it before it goes!

As always, drop us a line in the comments below with what you think of this set.
That's all folks!

Thank you for reading.

Tan Tile getting the "El" out of here...

LEGO City 60015: Coast Guard Plane Review.

Today I was able to finally sit down and build LEGO City 60015: Coast Guard Plane. An Exclusive from Target. Note: All photo's can be clicked on for a larger view.

The set contains 279 pieces and retails for $59.99. I picked it up for $47.00 from Target at the Toy sale.

Comes with 3 Minifigures: Coast Guard Plane and a Fishing Trawler that can float in water.

On the back of the box it shows you that the fishing trawler is in need of rescue by the coast guard. The boat be sinking!

When opening the box you will find that there are 4 bags. Loose in the box is a boat hull and the back piece for the plane. Two instruction manuals and a sticker sheet.

Here is a close up of the sticker sheet. Thirteen stickers to be applied throughout the build.

Now lets move on to bag 1. Below are the contents to build the fishing trawler. You also have 2 packets of string that you will use at the end of building the boat. Each one will need to be cut at 30cm (12in).

The Minifigures are really nice. Both have single face prints and no back printing. I love both the Dark Red cap and the Light Bluish Grey (Robin) hair piece.

A quick look inside before it's finished. not much detail inside the boat.

All complete! Including the sprouting leaks, a bucket and 2 fish in the create. This was a Very fast build... Not a lot of parts to begin with but still a nice looking boat. It also floats but didn't test it, due to the stickers on the back. There was about 20cm of string left over for each fishing line.

Front and back look at the boat.

A close up of the leaks in the boat.

Bags 2, 3 and 4 will build the plane in sections.

The contents of 2 don't have a lot in it. We start to build the plane!

The last Minifigure for this set is the coast guard pilot. Again a single face print but this minifig does have a new print on the torso and there is also a back print too.

This is the end of bag 1. It took me longer to apply these 2 stickers then it did to build this section.

Contents of bag 3. Again not a lot to look at. There are a couple of 1x3 white tiles at the bottom that you really can't see. White on white is very difficult to shoot.

This section would have taken less then 5 minutes to build. It was the Stickers that really slowed me down. I am a bit of a nut when it comes to stickers... They must be perfect! 7 applied in this section.

Bag 4 will construct pontoons. This looks like it will be quick to build too...

Step by step construction of the pontoons It took me longer to arrange the parts out in the picture above than it did to build the pontoons below.

The plane is complete! a very nice looking plane.

A side view of the coast guard plane.

Everything together. A nice looking set.

All the spare parts left over.

Overall thoughts of the set are that this is a very quick build. Each bag I opened seem to feel a little underwhelming. They could have gotten away with only 3 bags and could have reduce the size of the box in the process. The stickers took longer to apply then it did to build the whole thing, but I must say that they help the overall look of the set. TLG (The Lego Group) could have thrown in maybe a shark to have as an extra bit of urgency for the plane to come rescue the crew of the boat.

All in all a cute little set with great looking minifigs. It's nice to have a different type of  boat too, instead of a sports or a luxury fishing boat that have been done in the past. I'm going to need more blue base plates for the rest of this theme.

Thanks for reading!

Let us know in the comments below, what you think of the set. I would love to hear others opinions on it.

Until next time this is Tan Tile... drying off for the next one.