Review: 11512 Hanging Golden Pothos
Posted by Huw,
This year has seen more Botanical releases than any other, and we're only just over half-way through it.
11512 Hanging Golden Pothos, which will be released next month, is undoubtedly a well-designed and attractive model, but unfortunately it suffers from a major problem that has affected other recently released plants as well.
Summary
11512 Hanging Golden Pothos, 372 pieces.
£54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99 | 14.8p, 16.1c, 16.1c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
Beautiful plant but ridiculous price
- Dual-moulded leaves, but not enough of them
- Organic-looking and realistic
- Expensive
- Needs a lot of space to display
- Leaves smaller than the real ones
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Golden Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) is native to French Polynesia and a popular houseplant elsewhere. The leaves are typically between 10 and 20cm long, so much larger than those in the model.
Source: Amazon
So, while this plastic version may not match the size of the named variety particularly well, it certainly looks like a real trailing houseplant from a distance.
The thing I particularly like about it is that it looks so organic: virtually every piece can be twisted, turned, bent or angled to your liking, so no two builders' plants will look the same even if the instructions are followed to the letter.
The plant comprises eight vines: four short ones in the middle (right, below) and four longer ones. The long ones are built using strings of click-hinges, of which there are 40 in total.
Instructions are provided for two configurations of the longer ones: one with two long vines (14 and 17 hinges in length) and two short ones (6 and 3), and the other with four of the same length (10 hinges each). I built the latter because it was easier to photograph on a table: the other configuration is shown on the front of box, with the vines hanging over the front of a shelf.
Of course, you are not limited to following the instructions, you can make them any size you like, but can only make four without adding additional connectors.
All of the leaves of real examples would be variegated (dual colour) but here only a quarter are: 12 out of the total of 48, almost certainly a cost-cutting exercise.
The vines are attached to vertical bars on the top of the 'soil' in the pot.
The pot itself is approximately 12 studs in diameter, and uses the recently-released 6x6 sloped corner curves to give the top edge a nice chamfer. The bottom half is built upside-down and an interesting technique is used to hold the four 'corner' sections in place.
It's quite a difficult model to display: the vines splay out in all directions, so require a lot of space around the pot to do so. The longer vine version partially solves this by having some of them hang down below the pot, but then you need a suitable shelf or windowsill to put it on.
That's not the main problem, though. The price of the 372-piece set is, frankly, bewildering: £54.99, $59.99, which equates to a price per piece of 14.8p, 16.1c. Perhaps if every leaf was dual-moulded, which is obviously a more expensive process than single-colour moulding, it might have been justified but, as it is, it is certainly not.
11511 Water Lilies set the bar for the highest price per piece a month ago, but this has now surpassed it.
If you can stomach the price, you'll be buying a lovely addition to your botanical collection that looks wonderful on display, but you'll find better value elsewhere in the range. 11513 Dark Flower Arrangement, for example, has 200 more pieces but costs the same.
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28 comments on this article
This review has removed the set from my wanted list :)
I don’t understand why this thing has to be expensive. The leaves are not even Lego. Some plastic foliage u can get from any fake flower shop for a few dollars a bunch. Haha. I can get a real money plant for less than $3 at a Bangkok market.
I had recently reconsidered and taken this off my list. I love the botanical range, but this one is not that interesting enough.
Oh wow, the review images make the set way more unsightly (especially for $60 USD!) than the official product images.
This one is probably a must buy for me as I love most all of the Botanicals and these trailing plants decorated my house as a youth and again now as an adult. I prefer the box variant (unfortunately not pictured) and can easily imagine it adding some “life” to one of my LEGO shelves.
It would seem that LEGO is now actively pricing in potential future retailer discounts which is unfortunate.
I Like plants, I'm buying this!
Costco in the United States has had some great deals on botanicals. The starting price tends to be 25% off, then down to 40% off after a while, and I got 11504 and 11510 for 60% off -- $19.99 each instead of $49.99. At 33% off, this looks good value.
The attached image of a real plant clearly points to the shade of green Lego needs in their palette to improve this line, a shade somewhere between olive and dark green. It feels increasingly obvious that the colour choices are tiptoeing around their lack of a darker de-saturated "plant" colour.
Looks so different from everything else released in the Botanicals line.
I'll wait for this to hopefully end up discounted at Costco or Sam's Club.
On it's own merits it seems like a decent set. But you know it's bad when even with the usual 30% discount factored in it would still feel pricey.
As nice as this model is, the price is concerning, as it seems a noticeable number of botanical sets are now becoming too overpriced for what they are.
At least licensed sets have things like IP and royalties to justify higher costs there. This looks like a hard pass from me.
@Deanobonk said:
"I Like plants, I'm buying this!"
I like plants, I have the real version of this species.
Costs way less and looks far better.
Other than not having to water the LEGO version, this set has absolutely nothing going for it imho. At least not at the outrageous price.
I think it was an interesting choice to tackle this kind of plant. Marbling leaves was the right and necessary choice. But this having so few marbled leaves kills any realism it tries to convey. Once again it feels too salient that Lego is more concerned about the bottom line than allowing their designers to go all the way. And in this case they even did the thing already! Marbled leaves were done! They cán do it!
Anyway, I like the overall design. Just bummed about the colors being so overwhelmingly one single shade of green.
Pretty nice looking.
I don't really collect Botanical sets. I have the Four Gentlemen, 3 cherry blossoms, and just pre-ordered the dark flower 11513.
But I love that Botanical sets always bring us many new molds and recolors. :-)
I like the real plant, I have one that has been with me for most of my life, it is really hard to kill this plant. I am very surprised to learn where this plant is originally from, it seems so well adapted to northern Europe. I was very enthusiastic to get this set, but that price is just ridiculous. Thank you Lego for sparing me this expense.
Oh and BTW, 'All of the leaves of real examples would be variegated (dual colour)'
That is not true for most of these plants I have seen. My real living one has almost exactly the same proportions of marbled leaves to uniformly green as in this set.'
Missing the 2 meter lone vines and dead leaves to make it look like the real thing
I also have a real one, growing out of my aquarium. No way am I being this one. Not even at 50% off.
Waiting for the hanging athos and aramis to complete the set.
I’ve been excited for this set and I appreciate the review. I’m not particularly botanically gifted in real life and I had a golden pothos that was by far and away my most successful houseplant, but it sadly (due to some errors on my part) didn’t survive a move a few years ago. Consequently, though, I’m quite fond of the species, and was really excited about this set. I’m disappointed it’s so expensive and undersized, but I feel like this was a very fair and insightful review and I remain excited that LEGO has made a set of a plant that I’m so fond of!
Man when this hits the -30 sales I will get like 4.
For pieces. Amazing.
60 euros? TLG has lost its mind
Really like this. Will get in a month or two when it's about £40. I don't know why people obsess so much about the RRP when it's not what most have to pay!
I picked up the peace lily when it was on sale, the last month. I can wait for a while until shops start clearancing this one out cheaply, too.
@sjr60 said:
"Really like this. Will get in a month or two when it's about £40. I don't know why people obsess so much about the RRP when it's not what most have to pay!"
Well, it does matter if you get 30% off starting with €60 or with €40.....
@WizardOfOss said:
" @sjr60 said:
"Really like this. Will get in a month or two when it's about £40. I don't know why people obsess so much about the RRP when it's not what most have to pay!"
Well, it does matter if you get 30% off starting with €60 or with €40....."
The only important figure is what an individual actually pays, not the percentage 'saved' on a totally arbitrary RRP.
@jBXavier said:
"I don’t understand why this thing has to be expensive. The leaves are not even Lego."
“Not even Lego?” That’s an absurd! Look at the bamboo leaves (30176) and palm fronds (6148) from the 90s. If those new leaf pieces aren’t Lego then those old ones certainly aren’t either.
@sjr60 said:
" @WizardOfOss said:
" @sjr60 said:
"Really like this. Will get in a month or two when it's about £40. I don't know why people obsess so much about the RRP when it's not what most have to pay!"
Well, it does matter if you get 30% off starting with €60 or with €40....."
The only important figure is what an individual actually pays, not the percentage 'saved' on a totally arbitrary RRP."
Only true if this set is gonna get regular 50+% discounts.
"All of the leaves of real examples would be variegated (dual colour) but here only a quarter are: 12 out of the total of 48, almost certainly a cost-cutting exercise."
OMG, I shudder to think of how much more ridiculously expensive the set could have been.