Review: Friends pet play cubes
Posted by Huw,
Friends Play Cubes were introduced in January this year and have been released in four tranches of five sets -- occupations, shops, jungle and summer -- although you can be excused for being unaware of them because they've been short-lived and in some cases hard or impossible to come by.
In normal times they would probably fly off the shelves when people see them in brand stores and toy shops but, well, we've not exactly been able to get to them much this year, have we...
LEGO.com has been the only place the majority of us have been able to get them, then, and a few have never been listed there: two of the Jungle ones were not available in Europe and the summer ones didn't make it to North America. Those that were available could only be purchased for an average of about 8 weeks. Many have never been sold at BrickLink and those listed at eBay command extortionate prices.
Five more have just been released in Europe so it's probably as well to buy them as soon as you can if you intend to. What's interesting about them is that the cubes now have faces on the front and appendages on the outside in the form of ears or feathers which utilise a brand new curved bracket piece.
41665 Stephanie's Cat Cube
Like this year's cubes they each contain a surprise inside: this time that is the titular pet in a random colour: bright orange, lavender, dark pink or teal.
I lucked out with a teal pussy. Brown, black and white might have been more appropriate but not as pretty!
The main reason I bought them was to examine the new curved piece used for the ears. It's a curved bracket, the likes of which we've not seen before, and its design number is 69906. No doubt it will soon turn up in more useful colours than pink and bright orange.
Two small vignettes are built on the special 2x6 plates: a small tree with a blue bird perched on top on one side, and a cat scratching post on the other.
Stickers are provided to adorn the inside faces of the box but the chance of aligning them properly in a restricted space with nothing to line them up with is negligible, so I didn't bother.
Stephanie is attired in a new top with a cat face on it and a hairband in the shape of cat ears, which is also new.
Unlike the boxes of last year's play cubes, both front and back are the same, solid, colour to enable the fronts to be printed with animal faces.
41664 Mia's Pug Cube
It must be my lucky day: my pug is teal as well!
This one features a dog grooming area on the left and a bucket, dog faeces and a shovel on the right. Delightful!
Like her friend's, Mia's top also features the face of her pet.
Verdict
Little girls will love these fun little Polly Pocket-like sets and will most likely want to collect them all. Given their inevitable short shelf life it'll be best to buy them all now while you can.
I'm told by our resident Friends expert (MeganL) that the girls have not been assigned their usual pets: Stephanie normally has Dash the dog, and Mia Twister and Mimi the bunnies. Their signature colours have not been used for the boxes either, as has been the case for previous cubes. I wonder why?
They are available at LEGO.com, and also at Amazon.co.uk for next day delivery which is the best place to buy them at the moment given that LEGO is still not shipping to the country.
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14 comments on this article
The prints restrict the versatility of the cubes but the idea is fun and they look cute enough.
‘I lucked out with a teal pussy.’
Yikes, that doesn’t sound too healthy...
@huw Have you tried out those curved brackets over any standard curved bricks?
These new bricks are the perfect fenders!
Not sure if I will try to get these. I preferred the previous iterations without the cutesy animal faces printed on the cubes but I get the appeal for kids. Was frustrated at being unable to complete my "Jungle" set since I was never able to find the Emma one which was the one I really wanted the most. Never saw the "summer" wave here in the states and it wasn't offered to us via Shop @Home. I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase the exclusive pets for each from Bricks & Pieces. Not sure if I will bother getting the pets for this wave as some of them are fairly pricey.
@deathmoth said:
" @huw Have you tried out those curved brackets over any standard curved bricks?"
Not yet, but I will do so ASAP!
The cubes are fine and the pets are cute, but I am all about those minidoll torsos.
I managed to get a full set of cats from series 1 on eBay... on their way from France... otherwise the animals are almost impossible to get hold of, even on Bricklink. I guess that they were mainly bought by children with their pocket money so are hiding amongst their Lego collections. They may turn up in bulk lots on eBay one day...
I didn't like these play-cubes, at first, but they've really grown on me.
They are hard to find, here in Australia. The jungle series were only available on Lego.com, but the other three were available in shops (indeed, most places still have piles and piles of the summer ones, but it's the middle of summer, here in Australia, so...). According to the pamphlets in the summer cubes, the next series is going to be winter-themed, and I'm really looking forward to those. I guess maybe we're not getting these pet-themed ones, which I'm okay with, because I think they look pretty silly.
As much as I hate stickers, I haven't had too much trouble applying the wall-stickers to the cubes I already own. Putting a sticker on the inside of the cube is a little stressful, but I've mostly managed.
Wow, I didn’t know about the summer series.
Cat headband in the new cube is hilarious.
I think little kids in general would enjoy these cubes, not just girls.
Gonna check this out for the brackets as well, but definitely will try to get them as cheap as possible, given how little actual value is in there.
Ha! I wasn't wrong when I thought I spotted dog poo in one of them when the first pics came out!
I still don’t get why LEGO makes so many different kinds of these things.
@Be_hapi said:
"I still don’t get why LEGO makes so many different kinds of these things."
Because they want to mo monopolize.