LEGO City 3179: Repair Truck

Of all the modern era sets that I have got to date, I am impressed with this one the most. There is so much to the model than just the standard build as I have come to expect.

Firstly, there are opening doors - the traditional ones from the early days of Legoland models. I do not understand as to why models these days don't have them - I remember nearly every model from the early 1980's having opening doors, as this really added to the play factor. So thus why not include them in the design of each model??? No brainer really.

The detail at the back for £10 model is very high - normally I would have expected the traditional Lego hinges in play here, but I like the use of the bendable arms instead, making the model more compact.

The additional touches of the storage areas works very well. Really good bit of detail here.

There is not much to fault about the model to be honest - if anything there is no additional set that contains the street lights, so if added within a Lego City it would look at little out of place - so consistency should be there, and this would be an easy win to produce like the tree and flower sets of many a year ago.

Overall, this is a rather good model - I am sure it would be easy to convert to a rail-track version with the right boogies in place. And if you wanted a 4x4 version, methinks a couple of square bits under the chassis would raise the drivetrain a tad and give it the off-road look.

Very well done.

LEGO City 4436: Patrol Car

If you shop carefully you can get some bargains on the interweb - especially from Amazon.

This little set was bought for half price (RRP£7.99), so it would have been silly not to have bought it! This is part of the new Forest Police theme that Lego have introduced for 2012.

I am not sure it would have been worth the full price - it was very quick to build (which seems to be the norm these days with Lego), with not that great amount of features.

I don't get why there are no opening doors anymore on these type of models - it's not difficult to do, and like my review of 3179, I am sure that it would add extra play value to the model.

I do now have a real gripe with this one - and really the rest of the Lego City models. Back on the day a car was distinguished by a smaller set of wheels - these filled the wheel arches and were in proportion to the model - set 6634 demonstrates this below:

And then we have the trucks which had what I class as 'chunky' wheels - as per below:



Which all looks good as it distinguishes a large vehicle from a standard car.

But these days, there is one universal wheel set that seems to apply to all vehicles - and to me that is not right. 4436 is a prime example of a car using what could be perceived as truck tyres. The old style wheels are making inroads very slightly in some of the new sets, but I would like Lego to go back to basics on this topic - make a distinction - not a generalisation to save on cost.

A fair model - additional bonus of the gate feature, but nothing to ride home about. I am glad I didn't pay full price.