Ice Cream Saxophonist is great!

With an ice-cream-ball-head, ice-cream-cone-legs and colourful hands, it's the perfect balance between a playful fantasy band member and a supervillain.

My suggestion: put the sax aside in an instruments store and put the Ice Cream seller with the bike from 31131: Downtown Noodle Shop or with TLM127: Ice Cream Cone, or in any of the many beach set lego has, and you'll never know what he's up to!

Set #43101 Ice Cream Saxophonist: LEGO Introduced a brand-new Theme in 2021 focusing on an App which used sets and special tiles that can be scanned in to construct musical videos on your phone or smart device.

I have no experience with the APP, I am an older fan of LEGO who still hasn't embraced the Smart Device world. My father was more into the new technologies compared to myself, it isn't that I dislike them, it's just I lack motivation to adopt them or embrace them since I have enough on my plate as it stands. A bit wordy, I suppose, but basically this is to explain that my reviews of this theme will focus more on the physical side, the bricks and avoid discussing the functionality of the app in question.

LEGO Vidyo included its own version of a Collectible Minifigures style release. They were called Band Mates and came packaged in Blind Boxes, a Set of 12 Series 1 and 12 Series 2 were produced, but with limited availability for Series 2. Series 1 however was pretty impressive.

The main drawbacks to these releases was the blind nature of the packaging, I am still missing the 12th member of the group, which is a shame because finding a few of her would be welcome.

The Ice Cream Saxophonist is listed as Number 1 on the checklist, he features an interesting new head piece shaped like an ice cream scoop dipped in chocolate fudge with a cherry on top, his face is printed with electric blue eyebrows and pink swirls for cheeks making it look as though he has candy decorations. His torso is dark brown and features arm printing for candy sprinkles and melting chocolate ice cream, he also is wearing suspenders of a bright blue with yellow striping. His legs are printed to resemble an ice cream cone.

The copy I am reviewing from has an unfortunate crack starting to form in his torso, so I am uncertain if this is a widespread issue for this torso or not, I will need to check some of the other copies I acquired in my search for a complete set to compare. Most unfortunate if this is an issue for this particular Minifigure.

He includes a saxophone for his accessory and a small buildable figure stand designed to hold three tiles, each Band Mate comes with three printed tiles. These are packed randomly, the copy I am reviewing features a lime green tile with cupcake print as seen in the image for the set, an orange tile with a print of a kitty cat and stars as the kitty flies through the sky or space perhaps and a black tile with a large moon and a gothic minifigure on the front. If these tiles have individual names I do not know, that might be revealed in the app.

Overall Vidyo was an ambitious theme, the sheer number of unique and new Minifigure parts is impressive and the Minifigures shine. The printed tiles are also highly collectible and very useful to populate Record/CD/Music Stores in general when Making your own creations of same, or could even decorate an entire Musical Studio if you were ambitious enough as labels or brand name posters celebrating music in general. Most Vidyo sets are going on deep clearance now, so if you were interested in the Minifigures I would strongly suggest tracking them down and adding them to your collections as soon as possible. I will be trying to get the entire Theme if possible myself as I do like the functionality and usefulness of the parts on top of the brilliant Minifigure designs.

As far as Ice Cream Saxophonist is concerned, he's quirky, delightfully fun looking and a great addition to any Minifigure collection. I would recommend him, but do be wary of potential torso cracks, and as always with blind packaged products, the secondary market is your friend. Recommended.

This was one of the Vidiyo figures I wanted most, and I was happy to get him in my second pull of boxes.

Packaging

You're buying completely blind, but you can buy smart. You should avoid repeats if you can reliably dip into one side of one full case.

Parts

The Ice Cream Saxophonist's parts are also pretty specific, but they work well for a lot of sweets themes. The saxophone is also nice to have. The BeatBit tile he's guaranteed to have is the green one with the cupcake design (LEGO puts the signature tiles leftmost in these photos).

The minifigure

I really love the concept of this guy, but I'm slightly iffy on the execution. An ice-cream minifigure with a scoop for a head and waffle-cone legs is a great idea and a nice companion to the Ice Cream Cone character from The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. The result is a little weird to me, though.

The head is a spherical shape and rather large with drips at the neck going in front and behind and he has chocolate syrup "hair" with a cherry on top. The hair is painted on and it's not perfect on mine at the edge. The ICS's face is a confident grin with swirly cheeks and what looks like blue sprinkle eyebrows, but I don't know how friendly the face reads and I feel like the line under the chin gives him an older Humpty Dumpty look that's mildly creepy. The eyebrows are a little distracting due to their color, too, and combined with the shape of the hair and the face, it can sometimes make him look like an older guy in a toupee. There's just something smarmy about this guy.

His torso shows a chocolaty shirt with a bowtie and suspenders and dripping candy stuff on his shoulders, and he has hands that match the colors of the drips on each side. I think the color balance goes a little too blue here, and with the brown and pink the palette feels a little heavy. More use of the pale yellow color would have brightened up the figure nicely, especially for one of the hands...though since hands have never appeared in that color before, it makes sense they wouldn't start here. The legs are nice, with a waffle-cone design that pairs well with the Candy Mermaid's tail, and you could easily swap their species by switching their leg parts. The sax is okay but not super exciting because it's the same old gold color and has no printing on the mouthpiece.

Overall thoughts

I'm glad to have this guy...but he's not quite it for me. I think the colors and facial design kind of drag down what should have been a purely sweet character, and so I can't say I'm fully satisfied. Perhaps this isn't the last we'll see of the ice cream head and another frozen-treat person will come along and do it better...but this all purely my aesthetic judgment and if you really like this design, feel free to seek him out. He's a fun figure.