Review: 21337 Table Football

Great review, and very fair. The video is very helpful - I also thought that the play field was too small to be fun, but it looks like that isn’t the case.

The sturdiness is admirable as well. A shame the designers weren’t able to convince the Price Overlords that the $250 needed to be scaled back by at LEAST $50.

Now I will take my leave before the next Yellow Figs vs. Fleshies debacle…

I am rather lost at how the score counter part was chosen, especially since most foosball tables I’ve ever seen have rather loose sliders for keeping score.

Still, thanks for the video. I think it does help show off the attributes well.

I've never seen an Easter egg from the designer like that before, how fun! I wonder what the reception on this set would have been if it hadn't had all the baggage of the Ideas submission it was inspired by?

I agree with the review here. As a minifig kit and a fun little desk toy, it looks like a win to me. And while it doesn't look like a $250 set, given the minifig count and the old PPP metric, it doesn't seem -that- unreasonable.

Looks like a lot of fun, and I love the general design. Kinda sporty, kinda arcadey, it feels just right!

Forget your Blacktron, your Spyrius, your Aquasharks, your Pirates, your petty criminals in red vehicles, or even your Imperial Forces. The true battle in LEGO has always been between the Yellow Figs and Fleshies.

@Huw said:
"
Once you introduce metal parts it ceases to become LEGO, and they would no doubt introduce a whole load of other issues, such as wear on the plastic parts they pass through."

Metal axles have been on trains for years up until recently because they make movements smoother, there have never been concerns about wear. Sets from before the 80s have glued plastic wheels with metal pins for the same reason. They only don't use metal parts nowadays because of cost.

@Huw said:
" Once you introduce metal parts it ceases to become LEGO"

Aww man, so all of my vintage wheels are fake?

The New Elementary review of this set indicated that the score markers were on tight axle connectors to prevent them from being misaligned by rough play with the table and preventing players from fudging or losing track of the score. It may not be an agreeable choice in practice but it was done with a purpose.

I don't think a small fusball table is necessarily an issue, it's just the price. The set is like a $200 fusball set with a $50 Minifigure part pack. Each one would have been much more attractive on its own IMO. It would be interesting to see how many pieces could be taken out if the set ditched the team entirely and just used generic red and blue monotone Minifigures for each team.

Just the Minifigures and hairs add up to 100-150 pieces, much less the stand as well.

I think this is really neat, and that's from someone who can't stand football!
Like Chess, Drafts, Ludo, Atari, Typewriter or Trainer, the real things can be had cheaper, and work much better, but that's really not the point. If you want to actually play table football, obviously you buy table football. If you want a Lego model of table football, this is a great little novelty set with some neat features and a very handy selection of minifigures.

That looks like a beautifully designed set. Sadly, I cannot justify paying that much for it.

I love the minifigures and the concept, but the cover image of the video says it all: "this is a tiny set." The horrible price is what will keep the sales minimal.

@BelgianBricker said:
" @Huw said:
" Once you introduce metal parts it ceases to become LEGO"

Aww man, so all of my vintage wheels are fake?
"

You never forget treading on a Lego wheel that has a metal pin....

In the end it's a nice set, but considering the price I fail to see the value in this set, not even close. It's so tiny that it feels like ovepriced by at least 100 hundred euro/bucks or even more...

From my point of view I don't see any value in all those hair pieces and lego heads, did not ask for them when I voted for the Ideas project... I voted for the table football set to hopefully become real and not for the additional ballast included that increases the price to absurd amounts comparing to what you get.

Overall, major disappointment.

Don't care about the set at all, but a nice review and thanks for adding a video. Even if short, it adds a lot and fills any gaps with motorized/movable Lego sets.

@Huw said:
" @Anonym said:
" @Huw said:
"
Once you introduce metal parts it ceases to become LEGO, and they would no doubt introduce a whole load of other issues, such as wear on the plastic parts they pass through."

Metal axles have been on trains for years up until recently because they make movements smoother, there have never been concerns about wear. Sets from before the 80s have glued plastic wheels with metal pins for the same reason. They only don't use metal parts nowadays because of cost."

I should have been more specific "Once you introduce metal axles""

The axle being round or cross shaped doesn't make a difference. The only part the axle could impact would be the bricks with holes in the walls of the game table. The thin tabs on the common train wheel suspension withstanding metal train axles is in greater danger of breaking than an all around reinforced 1x2 brick with a hole.
Pushing an axle from left to right only results in force being put on the bushes that are on the axle and those will remain firm as nothing pushes the bushes unto the metal, just on each other.
The suspensions the figures hang off from could break if they could get stuck on something but that danger has been eliminated.
Carbon Fiber could have been used as does Blue Brixx for their long axles. The material still has a certain amount of flexibility to it with the ability to withstand more stress than plastic does. That this option has not been explored because of the cost of introducing a new element is too ironic considering this is a 250€ soccer table from Lego. You could get an actual soccer table for the same price or less.

@8BrickMario said:
"The New Elementary review of this set indicated that the score markers were on tight axle connectors to prevent them from being misaligned by rough play with the table and preventing players from fudging or losing track of the score. It may not be an agreeable choice in practice but it was done with a purpose."

If it is about the score not becoming misaligned they could have put the axle connectors on 3mm hoses. That is the perfect middle ground between extra tights as most axles are and extra loose as the axle + hole connector combo would be.

@Huw missed opportunity to exclaim GOOOOOOOOOOAALL!!! at the end of the video instead of that somewhat reserved 'yea'. ;)

Can the players be spun a full 360 degrees, or do their heads hit the play field?

I’m glad to see that it’s more fun than most of us seemed to think it will be, though I can’t help but feel it’s still an overall miss when you factor in the price. As with many Lego sets, the more expensive it is the more scrutiny we should provide. At a cheaper price I’m more forgiving for the reduced size.

For around £350 I bought a full size 4 player fussball table. This lego version would probably give me half an hour of fun, if that. I was a big fan of the original but this just doesn't attract me at all. It's ok to say not everything works in Lego form. This should have stayed in the design room, in my view, or go back to the modular subbuteo style they produced in the early naughties

@Huw said:
" @darkstonegrey said:
" @Huw missed opportunity to exclaim GOOOOOOOOOOAALL!!! at the end of the video instead of that somewhat reserved 'yea'. ;)

Can the players be spun a full 360 degrees, or do their heads hit the play field?"

They can be spun all the way round. "

Only if you want to be banned... "No Spinsies!!!"

I feel like the XYZ is more expensive in Lego form than it's real counterpart is getting rather frustratingly redundant.

Of course a real table soccer unit is going to be cheaper off of Amazon, it's designed to be cheap to manufacture and mass produce and made of varied materials chosen to balance design considerations completely different from a Lego set.

It's genuinely hard to imagine a scenario in which anything faithfully recreated to scale is *cheaper* to construct from Lego - it's not a particularly useful point of comparison, in my opinion.

A more useful point might be how much cheaper would it be to functionally recreate a more spartan version of this set at home using bulk parts already owned or purchased from Bricklink. After all, that provides room for customization.

Good review!

I can understand why they had to scale it down, but I still stand with my earlier position that they should have adjusted the price accordingly. At €150, maybe even a bit more, but with just the 10 minifigs needed (either old school yellow or a variety of fleshies), this would have been a fun set. All of the other fluff would have been better in a set on its own, that would have been a great minifig pack. And the worst thing is these 22 figs don't even look like football players...

At least Huw seems to have a modest amount of fun with it! That's worth something I guess.

I still think the minifigures bump up the price way too much. Why would you want to customize your own full team if the build only allows half of each team to be used? Was it necessary to include that much customizability on top of that?

I would say it's trying to do too many things at once, which narrows the target audience whilst increasing the price:

Now it's only for people who: A) don't mind spending that much on a novelty set, B) like table football, C) want it to be functional and playable and D) want to be able to customize their own football team and/or are into custom minifigs, especially to make more with diverse skin colors.

These are wildly different. If you're not all of the above, you'll be paying more than what the thing you want will be worth, unless you don't mind paying extra for something you don't care about.

Want it for display as a (table) football fan and don't care about play? Tough luck! You pay for sturdiness!

Want it for the minifigs but you're not into football? Tough luck! You pay for the build they come with!

Want it for play but don't care about minifig customization? Tough luck! You pay for a load of minifigs thst don't even all fit in the build.!

Even the original Ideas voters only strictly voted for A, B and C!

No wonder this set is so divisive...
I think the designers did as best as they could with these 'goals' in mind. But this is the result...

I will *never* understand how Lego can't afford to print at least half the details for Speed Champions cars, but *can* print two separate tiles on this set that are COMPLETELY HIDDEN on the final product. Like... where are your priorities???

For Ideas sets, I don't expect they pick them intending to hit specific price points...so I don't think they designed this set thinking, "This MUST cost $250." I think they made a mistake trying to include so many skin-toned minifigures and hairstyles. They surely could have cut the price down somewhat by including simple red and blue minifigures with yellow heads. The Easter Egg tiles are fun, but printed tiles nobody can see is also a wasted expense. I get the impression that they could have done some additional cost cutting and ended up with a price around $225. Only $25 less on a set that's already over $200...but this set just seems HUGELY overpriced and they really should have tried harder to bring that price closer to something reasonable.

As much as I admire @Huw, the quality of his reviews and his unwavering dedication to LEGO no matter the circumstances, that statement about metal parts making it not LEGO anymore is cringeworthy to me.

LEGO has had so many metal parts over the decades (that worked perfectly with their plastic counterparts) that the only obvious reason for their discontinuation is penny pinching. Most obvious with train sets, where the new all plastic solution has nothing but disadvantages for the user.

Also I find it almost amusing how every article regarding this set here on Brickset feels like an apologetic piece, trying to somehow sweeten the fact that this set has got to be one of the worst in LEGO history and simply fails on so many levels. Sure, it might be fun for a couple of minutes until you realize how much better a proper table football game is. Sure, the minifigure parts are great, but completely unnecessary and uncalled for in such a set, while proper table football player figures are typically as uniform as possible. It just doesn't make any sense at all other than to partially justify the exorbitant price of the set.

I still fail to understand how people are simultaneously complaining that Lego is "penny-pinching" by not introducing expensive steel cross-axles for this single set in order to make it substantially bigger, and complaining that this set is already too expensive/a "cash grab". Almost like pleasing everybody wasn't ever going to be possible, and the designers did their best to balance playability and affordability. But I'll probably be labeled an "apologist" for suggesting such a thing.

How many Ls has Lego taken in the last 2 weeks? Another set that is over priced for what it is. What else is new?

@Autoboty: The printed tiles in this set are existing designs, and thus could be pulled from Lego's existing inventory. Speed Champions going largely prints would require the creation of a heckuva lot of new ones that wouldn't have much, if any potential for reuse.

@Autoboty said:
"I will *never* understand how Lego can't afford to print at least half the details for Speed Champions cars, but *can* print two separate tiles on this set that are COMPLETELY HIDDEN on the final product. Like... where are your priorities???"

Those two seperate tiles are used in many other sets, they are generic. So the cost of production and more importantly- cost of storage managment is almost the same as non printed part. When you introduce all printed elements for just one set then you have a storage managment issues which drive up the price. If lego would make everythin in one factory then it would be way easier. But this is a mega huge international company that makes parts for one set in different parts of the world. And that is why stickers are used so much- it's MUCH easier and costeffective to have blank universal parts for automated worldwide processing. Of course then we have Duplo and 4+ range where there are only prints, no stickers. And this is where my explanations falls short, because surely if lego can make all prints for toddlers then it should be able to do it for collector items for adults for exorbitant prices. This is a thing I would like to be questioned by @huw when interviewing lego designers.

Not really an issue for GBC indeed, though I have to agree with Sariel that having just a single spare for such an essential, easy to lose yet rather uncommon part is a bit unfortunate.

But hey, if you would lose both you can always try to use those extra heads instead ;-)

@krysto2002 said:
"I feel like the XYZ is more expensive in Lego form than it's real counterpart is getting rather frustratingly redundant.

Of course a real table soccer unit is going to be cheaper off of Amazon, it's designed to be cheap to manufacture and mass produce and made of varied materials chosen to balance design considerations completely different from a Lego set.

It's genuinely hard to imagine a scenario in which anything faithfully recreated to scale is *cheaper* to construct from Lego - it's not a particularly useful point of comparison, in my opinion.

A more useful point might be how much cheaper would it be to functionally recreate a more spartan version of this set at home using bulk parts already owned or purchased from Bricklink. After all, that provides room for customization."

I think the real issue though is overall value. With sets that aren’t designed to really be functional, and are just for display (Titanic, Saturn V, etc) the value comes in how they look and are built. With sets like this and the piano, which have actual functions in addition to the build, it’s natural and expected to compare to the real life counterpart and factor in how they work. When one is expensive and has functions, you should expect that they work quite well. If it were cheaper, you would be more forgiving.

Yes, a Lego version isn’t just about how it functions compared to the real thing, but it’s a factor that shouldn’t be ignored.

@Brick_t_ said:
"Sorry but, what is "looking like a football player" like ? It's probably among the top 3 sports/game played in the world, whether it is a professional way or at the amateur level. But I really can't figure out what is exactly the "typical" look of a football - soccer player. No offense at all in my question, I just wonder. To me the minifigs selection looks like a good and representative variety of random people who have good time and fun while playing the game they like."
Dare I say the typical football uniform consists of a shirt, shorts and socks? Leaving a fair bit of skin exposed. Not something resembling pyjamas, or as others have mentioned, a Star Trek uniform...

And Lego can do it, just look at 71014-17
(Unfortunately, wrong team....)

If you hadn't seen this set before and were shown one of those minifigs out of context, would your first thought have been "Ah yes, that's a football player"?

@WizardOfOss said:
"
Could very well be the reason (Lego cutting corners as usual, despite the very high prices), but is it weird that I would rather prefer 10 good minfigs over 22/44 poor ones?"

I agree here, LEGO making this into a hybrid minifig pack certainly isn't optimized at all, and adding shorts and shirts would require 24 more parts ID's as obviously LEGO cannot go the sticker route there (1 sticker sheet = 1 part ID), LEGO keeps somehow bringing this up a lot, that it's a matter of storage.

In comparison , using yellow skin tone with detailed dual moulded legs/arms would only require 4 parts for a red and blue team instead of 24.

Looks like all the "storage space" went into the extra heads and hair pieces unique to this set instead.