Review: 43226 Disney Duos
Posted by Huw,
43226 Disney Duos, one of the sets released to mark Disney's centennial year, celebrates the animal sidekicks that are often the real stars of the films.
It contains four pairs of creatures that are sure to delight both old and young fans of the animated movies.
Summary
43226 Disney Duos, 553 pieces.
£42.99 / $44.99 / €47.99 | 7.8p/8.1c/8.7c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
Delightful recreations of popular Disney characters
- Miniature masterpieces, although some characters have worked better than others
- Stickers
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Stickers and instructions
The four separate builds each has a separate instruction manual which makes it ideal for building as a family.
There are a lot of printed parts, but also a few stickers, all of which need to be applied in order to capture the characters' likeness. You do have to wonder why they didn't just go the whole hog and print everything.
Construction
Given these are small models I won't dwell in their construction, but it's worth noting that the display stands are made using the 6x6 rounded corner plates that were introduced in Super Mario sets, coupled together with a 45 degree plate which debuted last year in Ninjago mech limbs.
The Disney 100 tile that accompanies each pair is printed in silver on a light grey piece.
Lumiere and Cogsworth
Best friends and servants who, under the enchantress' spell in Beauty and the Beast, take the form of a candlestick and a grandfather clock. The models capture their personalities perfectly.
Lumiere's candlestick is predominantly gold, and the hinged arms can be positioned in a number of ways. I particularly like the 'dripping icing' piece used at the top of the candles.
Cogsworth has a delightful printed face and wonderfully expressive arms that are also hinged.
Pua and Heihei
Pua is Moana's pot-belly pet pig, and Heihei is the bumbling accident-prone rooster who unintentionally accompanies her on her adventures.
The bird in particular is excellent, particularly considering how few pieces he's made with. His eyes are printed on a 2x2 boat stud.
The pig has hinged hips allowing his legs to be splayed, and his ears can be adjusted slightly, but there's no other articulation.
Nemo and Squirt
Squirt is the young turtle in Finding Nemo and its sequel. He's a cheerful, playful and colourful character with a very attractive print on his shell.
Due to damage to Nemo's the egg during a barracuda attack that killed his mother and siblings, the clown fish has one fin smaller than the other, which has been accurately replicated here.
His round face looks spot-on, but the 3x3 square white plate behind it looks a bit strange and spoils the contours of his body.The round piece that forms his cheeks was new last year, a long overdue corner curve, 1/4 Sphere 1X1X1 1/3, that matches the contour of other 1.33 high curved pieces.
Meeko and Percy
Pocahontas's pet racoon Meeko and Governor Ratcliffe's pug Percy are the largest critters in the set and like the others a combination of stickers and printed pieces have captured their in-screen appearances perfectly.
Percy has articulated front legs and paws, and his neck can be rotated, as can the racoon's.
Verdict
One thing that impresses me about this set is how it leverages many of the small pieces introduced over the last few years to create such diminutive versions of the characters while still keeping them recognisable and full of detail: a feat that would not have been possible even five years ago. In fact, it's a master-class in building miniature creatures.
They don't offer much playability, but of course they've been designed primarily for display, so they do look great lined up next to each other on the shelf.
Price-wise, the 553-piece set costs £42.99 / $44.99 / €47.99, which works out at roughly £10.50/$11 a pair which, when you look at it like that and compare them to say, BrickHeadz, doesn't seem too bad.
Overall, it's another wonderful set that will appeal to Disney fans of all ages.
I suspect it's a one-off, which is a shame, because there's so many more sidekick duos that are worthy of this treatment.
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42 comments on this article
It irks me that one of the duos is a Pixar film. For the celebration of 'Disney' I'd have liked to see something closer to the company itself, not a partnership studio (which was later of course gobbled up and assimilated borg-style).
And it's odd that we get so much Pocahontas stuff after 20 years of seeing almost nothing about the film.
The set itself is done well IMHO. Not my cup of tea and I'd rather have seen it closer to 40 euro, considering that would price each duo at 10 euro. But it's not too bad... if you want all of these. If you're not interested in a few you'll be forced to buy either all or nothing. I don't like it when Lego has perfectly fine small sets and still finds a way to make the entry price high by only selling them as a bundle.
Nemo isn't the star of that film!
I think these would do better if they were spread across multiple sets, about $10/10€ per duo. Because I'm sure the majority of people would only care about one or two of these duos, like I'm on the fence, because I only really only really want the Beauty and the Beast ones.
@Blumbirde : same here. The Beauty and the Beast ones are awesome imho.
Finding Nemo is a Pixar film for me, not Disney. Otherwise they could have also included R2-D2 and C3PO or some Marvel duo or one from any other property owned by Disney nowadays.
Moana wasn't a film I'd consider rewatching, so those two do nothing for me, and the final duo I don't know at all, or at least can't remember. Have seen Pocahontas just once, and that was ages ago. Didn't interest me then, doesn't interest me now.
At least with BrickHeadz you can choose which one or which duo you want.
I didn't realise they would all come in one set, I thought it'd be 4 seperate sets.
@Ridgeheart said:
"Some of these look so good. Others are the pig and the raccoon. It's the eyes; Meeko in particular looks like he's fallen victim to an overzealous taxidermy-hobbyist whose enthusiasm didn't quite make up for his lack of talent."
Same thing I was thinking! The standard eye print works okay for Nemo, but it really spoils Pua and Meeko, especially when set next to characters who have much more expressive faces.
On the whole... I dunno. I want to like these: but while a lot of them do look good, none are really characters who I'd choose to buy personally? Were a different selection of movies represented (especially if they were sold as individual pairs), I'd be right there; but this just doesn't include any characters who I have enough particular attachment to.
Really wish they sold these separately. Seems like they would have sold more.
"One thing that impresses me about this set is how it leverages many of the small pieces introduced over the last few years to create such diminutive versions of the characters while still keeping them recognisable and full of detail: a feat that would not have been possible even five years ago. In fact, it's a master-class in building miniature creatures."
There's a good chance Lego created these sets years ago for the 100th Disney Anniversary and they developed these pieces for the sets being developed at the time, including this set. Disney approval process is pretty hard and I guess they force Lego create new parts all the time.
I feel like Timon and Puumba and Abu and Iago would have been more natural picks. The selections are a tad all over the place.
I remain baffled that they sold this as one set and not four
Kind of bizarre that some pieces are printed and others are stickers, as Huw mentioned in the review. They should have gone the whole Pua and just had printed pieces for everything.
@Brickalili said:
"I remain baffled that they sold this as one set and not four"
They would have sold a ton of the Beauty and the Beast duo, but the others would have been shelf warmers, even if they limited them as exclusives. I guess this was the payoff.
@Joefish said:
"Nemo isn't the star of that film!"
…none of these characters are the star of their respective films.
Why they didn't do these as separate sets will forever confuse me.
Would have got Nemo and Squirt on their own, but have no interest in any of the others
I feel like if you swapped the pug and the raccoon's positions, then the pug's expression would take on new meaning.
Nice set but I've got to agree with everyone else, I thought at first glance there would be four sets. I'd have bought Beauty and Beast set straight away not interested in the other didn't even recognise one set.
Oh well might pick up just the ones I want on ebay when everyone else sells off the ones they dont want :)
@Joefish said:
"Nemo isn't the star of that film!"
Nop, Like Private Ryan wasn't the star of his film or Coco from Coco.
@starwarsfan14 said:
"Nice set but I've got to agree with everyone else, I thought at first glance there would be four sets. I'd have bought Beauty and Beast set straight away not interested in the other didn't even recognise one set.
Oh well might pick up just the ones I want on ebay when everyone else sells off the ones they dont want :)
"
You might as well buy the lot and break the ones you don't want down for parts. I can't imagine anyone is buying this set for Percy the Pug and will sell off Lumiere and Cogsworth for a tenner.
Meeko's eyes are very odd and totally unlike his eyes in the movie, which are quite distinctive. I suspect the regular round eyes would work better than the 'kawaii' ones.
I want that Cogsworth printed face round tile just to put on the front of my Hogwarts express!
Meeko looks like a polybag from 2010.
Oh I was hoping these would all be separated out so you could just get the pair you wanted to get. Not really interested in the whole collection, but Nemo and Squirt would be awesome
As others have already said, they should have been separated. Beauty and the Beast would sell the best by far, but that just means they need to choose better animal characters. Others have already mentioned Timon and Pumba and Abu and Iago. They could also do Flounder and Sebastian. It is very interesting how much Pocahontas is getting the spotlight now. Somehow I doubt it's because of an upcoming live action version...
@Binnekamp said:
"And it's odd that we get so much Pocahontas stuff after 20 years of seeing almost nothing about the film."
I assume either Disney or LEGO want to acknowledge and represent Native Americans and their history as they more or less haven’t since The Lone Ranger (say what you will about Pocahontas, Johnny Drop’s Tonto was more problematic).
In other news, THE TURTLE FROM MOANA!!! AND A CAT, OR MAYBE ITS A WOLF!?!?
@Kynareth said:
" @Brickalili said:
"I remain baffled that they sold this as one set and not four"
They would have sold a ton of the Beauty and the Beast duo, but the others would have been shelf warmers, even if they limited them as exclusives. I guess this was the payoff."
Mmm, dunno about that, I could see Nemo/Squirt being popular for being from one of the more beloved Pixar films and Pua and Heihei are from a nice recent(ish) film that a lot of Lego-aged kids are going to be into. It’s Meeko and Percy that I see being the baffling choice
@Kynareth said:
"They would have sold a ton of the Beauty and the Beast duo, but the others would have been shelf warmers, even if they limited them as exclusives."
Finding Nemo - $940.3 million global box office, Finding Dory - $1.029 billion global box office
Moana - $682.6 million global box office
Beauty & the Beast - $440.1 million global box office
Pocahontas - $346.1 million global box office
Yeah, I'm sure it would be the characters that netted nearly two billion dollars at the box office that would be the shelf-warmers.
The negative wheel of fortune landed on stickers instead of price this time, then.
While Lumiere and Cogsworth look great, I'm afraid the other 3 pairs are just 'who?' to me.
Would only consider at a big discount!
I too think Lego isn't doing itself a favor by releasing this as one big sit. Sure, in itself €45 seems pretty decent for what you get. But at €15 a pair these would be nice little gifts, or something kids would buy from their pocket money. But €45, that's serious money for both of those cases, and then there's a lot of competition, from Lego itself and from other toys.
Apart from that, I'm not a big Disney fan and didn't even know all of these characters, but I do still think they look pretty good. It does baffle me though that while they did mostly prints, there's still a few (important) stickers. Why not go all the way?
@Huw:
All the printed pieces appear to be either common elements (previously used eyes) or compound curves. The stickered parts are prints that would be exclusive to this set and either go on flat parts or parts with simple curves. I understand that it seems weird to get a mix of both prints and stickers, but I see nothing here that raises my eyebrow in the slightest.
That chicken has seen some things. He's got the thousand-yard stare going on...
If these were separate sets, I'd definitely get Nemo/Squirt and Lumiere/Cogsworth, and I'd consider picking up Pua/Heihei (I mean, half of that duo was voiced by Alan Rudyk), but I've never seen Pocahontas, nor do I want to, so I'd leave Meeko/Percy on the shelf.
I'm not impressed with these at all. The cutest ones to me are Nemo & Squirt. I concur with others that they should have been released in pairs rather than a bulk pack that many are only interested in one or two of the pairs. Thoroughly disappointed in most of the 100 Year Celebration sets released so far. Too much focus on the most recent 20 years rather than the entire 100 year history of the Company. I don't blame Lego for this as the Disney Company itself has mostly been ignoring anything older than the last 15-20 years for this big celebration from what I've seen and experienced in their parks & merchandise releases for this historic celebration.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Huw:
All the printed pieces appear to be either common elements (previously used eyes) or compound curves. The stickered parts are prints that would be exclusive to this set and either go on flat parts or parts with simple curves. I understand that it seems weird to get a mix of both prints and stickers, but I see nothing here that raises my eyebrow in the slightest."
What about the dog's eyes? Were they used in something before?
@Agnew:
Okay, there's one flat piece with a new print. However, this goes back to the Chima Legend Beasts, where they printed the faces and stickered the fur/scales/claws/whatnot. The idea there, and I don't recall the specific source of this knowledge, was that kids could build the model and start playing with it right away, and an older sibling or an adult could help them with the sticker application at a later time. Every character here has printed eyes. Lumiere, Cogsworth, Squirt, and Heihei all have new prints on compound curves. Meeko, Nemo, and Pua all use a standard printed eye tile. Percy is the only exception to this, but I still don't see anything unusual here.
I'm done with stickers.
Won't buy any sets with stickers anymore.
Come on LEGO do better.
@OttoT said:
"I'm done with stickers.
Won't buy any sets with stickers anymore.
Come on LEGO do better."
You just saved yourself a ton of money then, because stickers aren’t going anywhere.
@OttoT said:
"I'm done with stickers.
Won't buy any sets with stickers anymore.
Come on LEGO do better."
https://brickset.com/article/58636
@PurpleDave said:
" @Agnew:
Okay, there's one flat piece with a new print. However, this goes back to the Chima Legend Beasts, where they printed the faces and stickered the fur/scales/claws/whatnot. The idea there, and I don't recall the specific source of this knowledge, was that kids could build the model and start playing with it right away, and an older sibling or an adult could help them with the sticker application at a later time. Every character here has printed eyes. Lumiere, Cogsworth, Squirt, and Heihei all have new prints on compound curves. Meeko, Nemo, and Pua all use a standard printed eye tile. Percy is the only exception to this, but I still don't see anything unusual here."
I'm pretty sure that element has to be printed since it's partially covered by another element. Lego uses printing in such instances because stickers would impact the clearances between the parts.
@Binary_Code:
That’s possible, but they could have probably shaped the sticker around the nose, and there’s still the fact that not printing the eyes leaves an unatickered version looking like its soul was consumed by the Shadows of Rokugan.
These look great. I wish the Super Mario builds were this detailed.
So what should do the ppl that care only for a half of the characters? They should have made this 4 separate sets, or even better - more than 4, with more characters!
@crazywitchdoctor said:
"So what should do the ppl that care only for a half of the characters? They should have made this 4 separate sets, or even better - more than 4, with more characters! "
1) Don't buy them and go without
or
2) buy the required decorated parts on BL, along with any other parts you need
or
3) buy the parted out models on ebay
or
4) buy the sets and sell the characters you don't want.