Category: Toys

I received the above for my birthday. It’s a new LEGO landscape, in a shadow box format. This is a popular set, and has been periodically unavailable since it was released.

This is my first LEGO set where the pieces are in paper bags. The bags are very strong and won’t tear easily so they seem like a good replacement for plastic. I believe the plan was for LEGO to transition all sets to using paper but since they announced this years ago that’s obviously taking them longer than expected.

Assembly begins with the frame, which is easy if a little repetitive. It’s bigger than I expected, about 40 cm on each side. Can you see the ‘mistake’ I made (and later fixed)?

The landscape is a fun build, and creates a very convincing forced perspective diorama. It doesn’t have a lot of unusual build methods or weird pieces, and was easy compared to other kits I’ve built.

The vibrant colours are the obvious standout feature of this set, with the sunset and brilliant water and (of course) cherry blossoms. Of course this is a somewhat fantastic Japanese landscape, but it does a great job including many iconic elements at micro scale.

A nice little touch is that the water running out of the frame is hinged which allows the set to stand vertically on a shelf (it can also be hung on a wall). This is a wonderful set, and I’m sure Lego will release other shadowbox landscapes in the future.

This was one of my birthday gifts:

It’s a MegaBloks model of Snake Mountain from the old Masters Of The Universe toy series. This is a recently released companion piece to Castle Grayskull which I built five years ago.

As with Grayskull the presentation of the box is wonderful. The fortress is made in two halves, each of which were packed into two separate boxes and over 60 different bags of pieces.

This took me a long time to make! I started it not long after my birthday, and worked on it a few sessions a week, only completing it recently. While the engineering is every bit as impressive as any Lego kit, the ‘grip’ of the pieces is much stronger and putting it all together wasn’t as effortless as Lego typically is. There were even a few instances where I made mistakes and had a devil of a time separating the pieces!

The above shows the completed model, which is about two feet wide and a foot high when opened. It’s also very heavy, and will need a large and secure place to display it (which I plan to be next to Grayskull atop a bookshelf).

It has many play features, including secret doors, trapdoors, a prison, portable snake, portcullis and various other ways for the figures to interact with it.

It came with six figures, and I also got five other new ones that were released around the same time (and yes, Scareglow glows in the dark). As with those that came with Grayskull, I love these tiny recreations of the original MoTU figures, and think they add a lot of charm to the model.

That’s the model closed up with the figures added. This is how it will be displayed, since you can bet I never want to struggle with taking it apart!

It was a fun build, looks great, and was a fraction of what it would have cost had Lego made it. If you like the design of the old Masters toys, this is an easy recommendation.