Review: Pick a Brick models
Posted by Huw,
Last year LEGO invited selected LEGO Ideas members to participate in a Test Lab Challenge, developing digital models with fewer than 200 pieces from a limited range of parts.
Seven of the nine successful designs can be purchased at LEGO.com in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and digital instructions can be downloaded if you fancy building them with your own pieces.
We reviewed one of them, Billboard Fun, a few months ago and recently LEGO kindly sent us a couple of others to examine, so here goes...
Market Magic
This was designed by Martin from England who wanted his market stalls to fit in with a modern day City or a mediaeval scene. You might want to remove the till and a few other pieces if you plan to add it to your Castle setup, though!
A good selection of food elements are included: eggs, baked goods, pizzas, bananas and so on and overall it's a decent model that'll add a splash of colour and interest to your town or village scene, whatever time period it's set in.
Instructions can be downloaded, and pieces ordered at PaB where they'll cost about £24 / €28.
4-Season Greenhouse
Designer Steven from the USA says he was inspired by seasonal colours and the large number of plant pieces available nowadays when coming up with this model.
I like the design of the greenhouse, but it's perhaps a little too big for minifig scale, and brown would have been a far more realistic colour to use, but perhaps not so eye-catching and sellable. It includes a good variety of botanical elements and overall it's a decent little model.
Again, instructions are available online and pieces can be ordered at pick-a-brick for about £27 / €32.
Both models are good examples of what can be done with the relatively limited palette of pieces available in the Pick a Brick bestsellers list, although they are hardly essential purchases.
Word of warning: when you order the pieces from the online Pick a Brick service they'll be delivered mixed up in a large zip-lock bag, so if you intend to buy more than one of the models, it'll be best to do so separately!
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19 comments on this article
I bought Garden Dreams and thought it was a lovely addition to my Lego city.
I wanted to like the Market, there, but the fact it's halfway a market and halfway a kind of outdoor eatery/cafe kind of threw me a little bit, and I didn't quite know what to do with it.
I really like the greenhouse, though. I mean, yeah, it's large, but it's still pretty, and most Friends buildings are at that slightly-larger-than-minifig scale anyway.
I like the yellow personally. It is a better fit with the modern City and Creator color aesthetic that LEGO has going right now and thus thematically fits in with a lot more builds currently available. As a product idea it works well in the brighter color.
I’m curious why you think the greenhouse is too large. Many have that large sloping interior because greenhouses (also called glasshouses or hothouses) are designed to trap heat and moisture and you are essentially manipulating a mini-environment. You need good air circulation and space to do this properly.
Hmm…I guess it’s obvious I really like this little set and I like greenhouses! :D
I really like both models though I wish the baseplate of the stalls had room to place vendors behind them.
I also don't think the greenhouse is too large. I previously worked in academic/research greenhouses and have seen various other greenhouses open to the public. These greenhouses tend to be rather tall, for various reasons (to allow growing small trees or tall grasses/crops, to accommodate supplemental lighting and temperature/air circulation controls, and visual display). I will admit that I have also seen a few much smaller greenhouses (mostly on personal property or associated with horticultural vendors).
At least in the US, I tend to associate white or grey as the major greenhouse frame colors, though I have also seen black and green (typically with more ornate designs). I'm not sure that I've ever seen yellow or brown before.
WHY Lego is not marketing these???
Also yes without figures these prices seem weirdly too high.
These are the 2 that I was interested in but the program has never been available in the US any time I have checked and parts are unavailable when I check the parts list (yes, at some point I'll probably BrickLink them, but it's low down on my to-do list).
I was *just* looking into these again last night, wondering what happened with them. The links I found just redirected to PAB as if I was going directly to PAB. I had outdated links apparently. Was curious as I hadn't heard anything in a while.
Thanks for bringing these to our attention, Huw!
Here's a challenge for you: do they count as sets and, if so, can you magic up a way to add them to the database...? ;-)
@bananaworld said:
"
Thanks for bringing these to our attention, Huw!
Here's a challenge for you: do they count as sets and, if so, can you magic up a way to add them to the database...? ;-)"
https://brickset.com/sets/IDEASPAB4-1/Market-Magic - This is the market stall. You can probably navigate to the others from here.
@bananaworld said:
"
Thanks for bringing these to our attention, Huw!
Here's a challenge for you: do they count as sets and, if so, can you magic up a way to add them to the database...? ;-)"
They are listed already: https://brickset.com/sets/subtheme-Ideas-Pick-a-Brick-model
@Talint
@Huw said:
"They are listed already: https://brickset.com/sets/subtheme-Ideas-Pick-a-Brick-model"
Ah ha! Thanks, both. I think I'd just grown accustomed (read: spoonfed) to having in-line links in reviews. That'll teach me for being lazy!
These prices are crazy (who would have expected differently though)?
No matter, I'll just download the instructions, since Rebrickable tells me I have all the necessary parts already anyway.
I recently got the Cyber Explorers, it's the cheapest of the series I think? enjoyable build, cute robots
these sets do feel weirdly overpriced though, with their absence of minifigs or paper instructions
I think this scheme is very convenient in that each set is just a pick-a-brick part list. Add a set you like, then amend the parts list depending on what you already have, or what you want more of.
E.g. You like Market Magic, but don't need the base, pizzas, or cash register, and you've saved over £4.
I wish I had easier access to Lego stores as there's only a few of them in NZ
@Ridgeheart said:
"I don't have a problem with these builds. I like them very, very much, and even if I didn't, the market would be a lovely parts-pack. I'd very much like to add that greenhouse (in more muted colours) to my haunted house; the scale would even be a plus there. The builds are good. The last one was good, too. It's awesome that there's a secondary program for talented builders who can provide us, their brothers and sisters and others in building, with excellent new models.
BUT.
NOT.
AT.
THESE.
PRICES.
Come on, I don't care what your metric is, those prices cannot be justified. I'm real sorry, Martin and Steven. I wish I could support your builds, but I won't. And it's not your fault."
You completely missed the point of this "sets". They are mostly free instructions for models you can easily build from your own pieces or from pieces that easy to get from LEGO stores PAB wall. The option to buy the exact pieces to build those free intructions is exactly that: AN OPTION. Completing those parts is a manual labor not an automated one, scaled for "optimal" price as is with normal sets. Hence the price is higher. But you really, REALLY do not need to buy those pieces like that. You can buy them from bricklink, used, or from your local ebay or craigslist.
@Ridgeheart said:
"I don't have a problem with these builds. I like them very, very much, and even if I didn't, the market would be a lovely parts-pack. I'd very much like to add that greenhouse (in more muted colours) to my haunted house; the scale would even be a plus there. The builds are good. The last one was good, too. It's awesome that there's a secondary program for talented builders who can provide us, their brothers and sisters and others in building, with excellent new models.
BUT.
NOT.
AT.
THESE.
PRICES.
Come on, I don't care what your metric is, those prices cannot be justified. I'm real sorry, Martin and Steven. I wish I could support your builds, but I won't. And it's not your fault."
The prices being compared to set prices is an interesting thing to look at.
If these were official boxed and packaged sets with instructions the prices would be ridiculous.
But these aren't, they are simply a pre selected list of pieces in pick-a-brick that is costed at the individual prices of those pieces.
What does that tell us?
That sets get a massive discount on price compared to loose bricks.
That buying pieces direct from Lego is often more expensive than going to secondary sources like bricklink.
That Lego is potentially making a massive mark up on loose pieces. (But they then order picking is manual rather than automated, so labour costs are higher.)
And what a lot of MOC builders know already: That anything you source pieces for yourself will be at least twice the cost of a Lego set with a similar part count.
This entire thing is like Lego Factory/Design by Me. Community designed models from a limited parts palette you can buy the pieces for but are expensive.
However, Factory/Dbm had select sets like Market Street sold on shelves and prepackaged for fairer prices. All the rest were "order the pieces online expensively" stuff like this. But there was an enormous Gallery anyone with a Lego account could submit MOCs to, which you could buy the parts for, but also get the .lxf file and look at the digital model brick by brick, auto-generate instructions for you to build it without paying a cent, and so on. Unfortunately, the gallery and the thousands of uploaded MOCs have been lost to time because LEGO discontinued everything LDD related. It is arguably the greatest travesty to ever affect the Lego community.
Sure, Bricklink has aped this in years since, but their Stud.io community made creations PALE in number compared to the array of stuff from Lego's lost service.
@Norikins said:
"This entire thing is like Lego Factory/Design by Me. Community designed models from a limited parts palette you can buy the pieces for but are expensive.
However, Factory/Dbm had select sets like Market Street sold on shelves and prepackaged for fairer prices. All the rest were "order the pieces online expensively" stuff like this. But there was an enormous Gallery anyone with a Lego account could submit MOCs to, which you could buy the parts for, but also get the .lxf file and look at the digital model brick by brick, auto-generate instructions for you to build it without paying a cent, and so on. Unfortunately, the gallery and the thousands of uploaded MOCs have been lost to time because LEGO discontinued everything LDD related. It is arguably the greatest travesty to ever affect the Lego community.
Sure, Bricklink has aped this in years since, but their Stud.io community made creations PALE in number compared to the array of stuff from Lego's lost service."
The official LDD gallery being destroyed, along with the loss of MOCpages (Thanks Sean Kenny!) are regarded as the greatest losses ever by many AFOLs. If Brickshelf ever goes down for good, that will be among them as well...
I'm the fan designer of the 4-Season Greenhouse! Fun to see a review of it on here. I actually submitted it with brown (yellow was the color of the 'Spring' themed model I submitted), and they went with Yellow for the final design. I ended up really liking the change!
Appreciate the review!