Hello Readers Of The Brick Fan. My name is Dave, I’m an AFOL from Central California. I am writing a review as a guest on Allen’s news and review website. Firstly I’d like to give a big thanks to Allen for allowing me to contribute set reviews to his blog and allow me to get a little more exposure. Now a little more about myself. I’ve been playing with regular LEGO ever since the Age of 2, and I’m 25 now. I primarily focus on MOCing in the less popular “Constraction” style of LEGO (i.e Bionicle, Hero Factory, and other figure building lines). My MOCs can be found on deviantART or Flickr. As a Reviewer, I look at sets primarily as a MOCer and from the standpoint of how a set can be utilized for its parts as well as trying to appreciate the build of the set. I like to use a basic “Pros Vs. Cons” style of reviewing. However, for the sake of writing here on Allen’s blog I will also be using his scoring system. Thank you for reading my reviews and I hope you find them helpful.

The LEGO Legends of Chima Lion Legend Beast (70123) was a clear first choice for me. When these sets were first announced, I knew right away which one I wanted first. These particular sets were of great interest to me for their inclusion of the new Micro ball and socket joint elements. The Lion I also feel is the coolest looking of the five sets. He’s definitely a first pick.

As I understand it, the Laval Figure is unchanged from previous versions of him in the 2013 sets. Though I believe the armor element he is wearing is new. This is my first Laval Figure, so for this reason I won’t go into the minifigure too much. He’s third LoC Minifig I’ve gotten and first of the lion tribe. The first two being Razcal from Razcal’s glider, and Crug from Crug’s Swamp Jet(given away free as a TRU promotion last year). One thing I can comment on though is that I have a much better appreciation for the Minifigs in this series after having watched the Cartoon.

Pros

  • The Build

    • The Lion itself was a pretty quick, but very fun build. There are a lot of SNOT techniques used and for such small sets they really pack a lot of part. I have to say that I’m quite impressed with the construction of the head and is in my personal opinion the highlight of the build. The way the designers were able to get such a convincing “lion” look in such a small space is a testament to how useful a lot of these newer elements are. When it comes to the Lion as a build I have no complaints. The only thing I think might bother some is the use of the light gray elements around the shoulder. Though I think if you make the effort to apply the stickers, that will then make sense as the Legend beast being outfitted with armor for battle since each LB is being ridden by its respective tribe member(Laval, Cragger, Eris, Gorzan, and Worriz). My main concern with these sets being targeted for children is that they might have difficulty with the stickers. There are quite a lot of relatively small areas that call for sticker applications and sometimes in weird angles. I didn’t apply mine because I plan on using the parts for MOCing purposes. Fortunately the face elements are printed so that a child can engage in play right away if they aren’t patient enough to apply the stickers. This is just one of many smart movies LEGO has done with this series.
    I attribute “playability,” one of the categories Allen asked me to score as part of the build. And I must say the lion has a lot of playability. I’d consider being able to pose the lion to stand on his hind legs, with ease I might add and sing Opera a strong indication of playability. Playability comes from poseability here it seems and the Lion definitely has that.

  • Parts

    • I think these set’s best quality is that they’ll serve as great parts packs to anyone who wants some of the new ball and socket elements, or the plethora of bows and brackets that come in these sets. I think LEGO made a very smart move by producing a bunch of sets that contain these new elements in not one, but two series of very cheap Sets. Mixles also features these new elements as well as their own offerings of interesting parts. LEGO seems to be on a roll of doing things right this year. I’ve yet to try out the new ball joint elements in MOCing so I can’t tell you if they work well in typical constration situations, but I do know I’ve seen them pop up in a few other people’s MOCs recently.

  • Brown

    • There’s a lot of it. Most of the build is tan, with some dark brown Bows for it mane and a little bit of reddish brown, and some dark tan 1X2’s. If you need more brown tones in your collection, both the Lion and the Gorilla are great “booster packs.”

  • Price

    • Considering there’s a minifigure included, I think for what a person get’s out of this set, its worth the $10(TRU had a buy one get one half off promotion when I got my two). Like i stated above, they’re great parts packs and I don’t feel $10 is unreasonable for this particular set. Whether that translates to other sets remains to be seen.

    Cons

  • Minifig is cumbersome

    • Getting Laval to sit on the Lion in a way that didn’t look goofy was a little difficult. This was even worse on the Gorilla set with Gorzan.

    Results

    Overall, I was happy with getting this set and I can’t wait to see what I can utilize all its parts for. The term “part pack” keeps coming up in my mind and that’s what this really is, a quick fun little build, but a pretty awesome easily accessible parts pack. I can see a lot of people getting multiples of these set. I know I’d like to.

    [easyreview title=”The Brick Fan Scoring Summary” cat1title=”Design” cat1detail=” ” cat1rating=”4″ cat2title=”Playability” cat2detail=” ” cat2rating=”4.5″ cat3title=”Value” cat3detail=” ” cat3rating=”4.5″ summary=” “]


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