Review: 41047 Seal's Little Rock
Posted by Huw,
Series 6 of the Friends Animals bags has reached the stores in the UK bringing us three more collectable scenes featuring new animals.
I understand that series 5 has been difficult to find in North America so I don't know if that's a sign that they are not selling well and are thus not being distributed widely there. That's certainly not the case in the UK where they seem to fly off the shelves.
41047's title sums the contents of the set up nicely: a seal and a little rock.
The anthropomorphised seal has a comfy rock to sit on, a fish to catch and accessories that every wild seal needs: a see-saw and ball to play with.
The set contains parts in a veritable smorgasbord of Friends colours, including aqua, medium lavender, medium azure and lavender which is particularly uncommon: I think these are the first usable parts -- a 2x6 plate and three 1x2 palisade bricks -- as opposed to bows and so forth I have in this colour.
The seal is brand new in this set and it's very nice. Although it has the doe-eyes common to all Friends animals, I don't think they look too bad on it and, at 2 and 1/3rd bricks high, it wouldn't look too out of place in a minifig scale zoo
Once again, you really can't go wrong for £3 and as I always say to wrap reviews of these sets, it'll go down a treat with the target audience and makes a great pocket money toy or gift from granny.
The three sets are available at shop.LEGO.com in the UK but haven't appeared in our product feed yet. Apparently LEGO has changed some back-end systems on the shop and it's caused a number of problems, including this.
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21 comments on this article
I reckon 'veritable smorgasbord' is the best phrase I have ever seen in a review!
I like most of these sets, mostly for the animals themselves, but also some great parts. My son loves the penguins from the earlier series. Selfish request: can we get a fox? I need a fox for my LEGO Ideas "The Little Prince" project. And I need it badly....
"Veritable smorgasbord" - has someone been watching repeats of Top Gear on Dave? ;)
I was thinking I'd pass on the seal and get the other two for the animals... I've got to stop reading Huw's reviews! At least it's only £3. :P
So, the question is, will you be able to buy the Seal's Little Rock in Little Rock???
As far as US, I haven't heard of Series 5 appearing anywhere here (not sure about Canada). I was lucky enough to see Series 4 at my local Target about two or three months back, and picked up two of Tiger's Beautiful Temple. I don't think it's an issue of not selling well; it was the first time I had seen Series 4, but I have not seen any of them anywhere since. The display hooks--empty, and still tagged for Series 4--are still out (even though the store has completely reorganized in the meantime), as if in anticipation of more Series 4 stock or the arrival of Series 5.
For some reason it seems these are released at random times. I swear we had one series go all spring, summer and fall, then we get another one right before Thanksgiving-December and then another in January-March and then one series April-November.
They must just not be selling well. Earlier this year I found some S2 on clearance at Marshall's, and they don't get a whole lot of LEGO.
Seeing them in a store on clearance doesn't mean anything. It could be LEGO found some older ones (because I bought some from Marshalls too) and just wanted to clear out boxes or anything. We would have to wait until the annual sales report until we know.
Series 5 is scheduled to be in US Lego stores late September early October. I don't think this is due to bad sales of the line but just more so to spread out releases. Series 4 has sold well in my local store.
I never thought to look for Legos at Marshalls....
The colors are great in this set, but can't we get a different color fish?
Marshall's is great if you are looking for a slightly older theme. They normally get a few random sets throughout the year, and then 4-8 sets at Christmas time and they are always 25% off MSRP.
^Thanks for the Marshall's tip. I never would have thought to look there. But now I will over my lunch break tomorrow.
I've never heard the word "smorgasbord", which turned out to be a Swedish word.
Funny thing is, we call "Swedish-table" what that word means :)
I just found these in an Australian shop this afternoon!
Great review as usual. Thankfully, I have two sisters who love these bags, so I have a very good excuse!
Yeah, this is not about sales at all. This happened with the previous series release. series 4 did not come out in the US until about the time series 5 hit the UK. For whatever reason they have skewed the releases. Since series 6 is now starting to crop up, yes, series 5 should be hitting the US soon. These should especially sell well since the ones from series 5 fit well with the jungle theme that was just release.
I love these, glad to see they're getting more 'air time' as it were :) ...But this little fellow isn't a seal, he's a sea lion! Hind flippers on seals are angled backwards, the ability to rotate forward/under itself (as this merry chap is posed) is actually sea lion trait. It makes it easier for them to gamble about on land, hence their popularity in use for shows (the ball and seesaw enclosed) ... Animal label fail!
^ Thanks -- you learn something every day!
Or it's an inaccurate seal. It doesn't have visible ears, which are a trait common to sea lions. I went through this very same, is it a seal or sea lion through process when I first saw it and ultimately decided it doesn't matter.
My wife likes to pick these up for our daughter. I don't know how much she actually cares, but we might as well keep buying them since we have all the rest. I'm hoping series 5 comes out soon enough.
Really? I think I saw Series 5 in a toy shop recently...
Eh. No interest for me at all. I don't like the seal and I am frankly sick of these single-use colors that don't match anything else in my collection, minifigure parts excluded.