Member review of the week: Steamboat Willie
Posted by Huw,
Our #MembersMonday review this week was written by Odeinoichus who has contributed an incredible 1284 reviews over the last 10 years:
Animation Classic Brought to Life Lovingly
LEGO Ideas has been a huge hit with many releases. For the 90th anniversary of Mickey Mouse, LEGO once again teamed up with Disney and a fan designer who designed and built a project based on the 1928 Mickey Mouse short of the same name.
I had intended to purchase 21317 Steamboat Willie myself, but a surprise purchase from my brother had me getting this set this summer. I definitely felt it was worth picking up, but it’s hard to accurately review the cost of this set since it was a gift. As such, expect a glowing review that will not discuss the price-per-piece ratio too much.
Packaging
LEGO Ideas has always had excellent packaging design. The fully enclosed boxes which feature open up flaps are just extremely useful and versatile, you also have thicker cardboard stock being used with the boxes and each one features a unique design reminiscent of the source material for the set in question.
In this case the box is pretty much old film black and white greyish tones with the LEGO set prominently shown on the front and the back. This set is #24 and costs 120$ CND. The box is rather large and the manual is very thick. It also features a bit of a write up on the fan designer, the LEGO designer and the graphic designer. As well as a write up on the iconic Walt Disney short which started everything for the company in 1928.
Parts
This set features a lot of elements in white, black and grey. What is interesting however is that the first bag features a lot of standard yellow, blue, red, green and tan elements. Which is mostly hidden once the model is complete, because these are the parts used for the interior skeleton of the model. Rather than cast new colours for the parts in question, LEGO chose to use standard elements for the build.
Minifigures
Mickey Mouse: Mickey has no real print, aside from the two little buttons on his silver dual-molded legs the sculpt of the head includes his face of course, but he has no other printed detailing. He’s a simple mouse with humble beginnings and this Minifigure represents a time before his popularity exploded. His little cap sits on his head very well and features silver detailing.
Minnie Mouse: As with Mickey, Minnie features dual-molded legs. She has no printed detailing on her torso, her legs feature silver printing for her shoes, while the skirt element included is printed with dots and cast in that sharp silver colour. She has her little cap and a guitar, because LEGO hasn’t made a fiddle element yet. (Actually I believe in the short she had a violin along with the Turkey in the Straw music sheet, but again, LEGO hasn’t made that piece yet.)
The build
Bag #1: This is an Ideas set, which means there are a lot of steps to the build and a lot of different techniques compared to standard system builds. Case in point, typically you do not place plates in a staggered fashion, all of the studs must attach to the female ports underneath LEGO elements for strong connections. This is what is typically seen, here there are a lot of steps where plates overlap over empty spots in the model, meaning that they do not connect to anything.
The skeletal build of the interior of the ship is extremely engaging because of this as it forces you to start thinking of more advanced build techniques.
Before that though you get to construct a small stand piece with a Mickey icon on the front, this is meant to be a display stand for the Minifigures, but it’s also a little nod to how some of the Mickey cartoon shorts started, with an image of Mickey’s head in a grey background showing which character would be the focus of the short.
Mickey is also in Bag #1, this build was extremely satisfying.
Bag #2: Moving on we begin to make the actual ship itself. In this build you also make the smokestacks lower portion, which is linked to a wheeled play feature that mimics the animation of the short. This portion of the build is slightly repetitive in certain steps, but overall it becomes a solid model as you work to construct the iconic vessel piloted by Mickey in his cinematic debut. If that sounds repetitive I do apologize, but this is extremely impressive overall and I really love getting new Ideas sets, they always expand how I view LEGO builds.
Bag #3: Minnie is here and the rest of the ship is built. The paddlewheels and whistles and smokestacks for this river boat is extremely impressive. I haven’t even started it yet at the time of writing this review and I’m eager to start. The build here just looks awesome, and it is nice to see all of the printed tiles on this set. This is definitely worth picking up just to experience the build alone. It’s exceptionally satisfying, has a lot of nice detailing to capture the animation model and including a bunch of Technic elements hidden inside allows for a solid play feature… But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, let’s move on to the completed model section.
The completed model
Steamboat Willie: This model is extremely interesting in design and implementation. The only issue I find with the finished model is that, due to the nature of the build and the play gimmick which allows you to simulate the moving smokestacks you cannot fit the Minifigures inside of the steering area, or inside in general.
Everything I remember from the cartoon is here, the moving crane, the parrot, crates and other cargo and the three whistles on the top of the control area. This model isn’t perfect though, the large paddle wheels are built very ingeniously, but perhaps not very practically. The ends of the paddles like to pop off very easily when moving the finished model around. I’m amazed they couldn’t make this work without using so many clips as they can be notorious for holding things in place on finished models depending on the placement and what’s involved.
Display Stand: Included alongside the highly detailed Steamboat is a small Mickey Head stand, this stand can be used as a backdrop piece, or if you remove the parts on the back used to hold it up can sit flat on a shelf for Mickey and Minnie to stand on. It’s a fairly solid additional build and quite fun, it reminds me of all the cartoon intros with Mickey’s head, which is probably what they were going for.
Overall opinion
I am a huge fan of Walt Disney as a company, even some of their more questionable ideas in how they handle certain franchises isn’t that big of a deal for me. They make quality entertainment ninety-seven percent of the time, and when combined with LEGO, a quality toy manufacturer, you can’t go wrong. The model in this set was designed and implement excellently and while some of the build felt a bit troublesome until it was all finished (I actually got confused as to how to make the smokestacks with the attachments while building.) overall it’s a very nice piece and a great set to sit alongside the likes of Disney Castle, the new Disney Train and many others.
As I received this as a present I will not comment on the price, but suffice it to say I strongly recommend picking up this set for any and all Classic Disney fans. I actually wouldn’t mind if LEGO expanded from this one set to include other iconic Black and White set pieces from Disney’s many years of animation. It’d be nice to get some Black and White inspired sets for the likes of Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, not to mention Goofy and Donald. Strongly Recommended.
We'll select another review to publish here next Monday so if you'd like to see yours here. get on and write one!
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13 comments on this article
I'm glad I just picked up this set. It will be on display in our baby's nursery!
I like the use of wedges rather than large boat pieces, resulting in 751 pieces so a price of £80 seems reasonable for Disney, although I think this is more for nostalgia collectors than for kids playtime.
Strange comment that Mickey does not fit inside the bridge as the front of the instructions show him in the cabin, as the floor is quite low on the inside making the lower deck not usable. The set has wheels so that if you push it along the paddles turn and moves the smoke stacks . This mechanism can be seen better from underneath using the 3D view at 21317.
This set is so underrated because of it's slightly high price.
Love this set, its an absolute beauty in my eyes.
Worth the £80 imo, and has sentimental value for me as I got t from Disneyland Paris last year on holiday, ahhh the good old days when holidays didnt mean 14 days of isolation.
This is a great set, but unfortunately it has a rather prohibitive price. If it were to be $15 cheaper, I would recommend it a lot more.
You can fit the minifigures inside, it's just not as easily accessible as you might think. But the roof section comes off easy enough that you can fit a figure in.
@Huw the article on how to write a review and insert photos is no longer available at least not at the link I found. Might be helpful if you are gaining possible new reviewers.
I just finished this model last week (my latest in catching up on my collected kits). I love the animation to it, though there's a small problem with one of the smokestacks getting stuck in one position after a bit. But it's now on the shelf, so doesn't get pushed around a lot. This model has a very good mixture of interesting build techniques and playability, and of course the nostalgia for us old-times.
@tallblocktoo said:
" @Huw the article on how to write a review and insert photos is no longer available at least not at the link I found. Might be helpful if you are gaining possible new reviewers. "
I no longer have a copy so I removed the link! It must have been unavailable for some time.
I guess I should rewrite it, although to be honest it's easy enough...
1284!!! Wow and I thought me writing 6 reviews was good boy I gotta get on the ball!! Nice @odeinoichus
@Huw said:
"I no longer have a copy so I removed the link! It must have been unavailable for some time.
I guess I should rewrite it, although to be honest it's easy enough..."
Oh okay. Thanks.
as stated in my review of the set. i think some of the characters are missing compared to the movie it's based on. also the parrot looks too nice.
Nice review, but re
"The skeletal build of the interior of the ship is extremely engaging because of this as it forces you to start thinking of more advanced build techniques."
Advanced build techniques? Seriously?
This set has hardly any advanced build techniques. Even SNOT is used only very occasionally.
The most "advanced" technique would be the way the bow and stern are connected upside down using Mixel ball joints. The majority of the build is just brick on brick.
My 8-year old built this set without any input from me. That's how simple the build is.
That is not to say that the build is bad in any way, but it certainly isn't advanced by any standard.
I'm glad I got this at a substantial discount though as the RRP is grossly overpriced for what little you get.
I really like this set and it's a real shame that it's the only Mickey Mouse universe minifig scale set we've ever gotten, I would love something based on A Goofy Movie
You had a copy with number 24 ? Damn, you opened a rare, misprinted, future collector version of the set ! :)