Toy Fair 2017: Technic, Creator, and More

[Hapori Tohu]

It's taken us a little longer than expected, but we've got another batch of Toy Fair coverage for you today. We're going to take a look at a bunch of the more free-form themes and those targeted at younger builders, which translates to Technic, Creator, Classic, Duplo, and Juniors. It's a lot of sets, but we won't have as much to say about them as we do other themes. We'll let you look at the pictures and make your own judgments. So read on to check it all out!

 

View the full article

[Aanchir]

The extending arm pieces for the telehandler are sort of specialized, but at the same time, I do think they're versatile enough to justify their existence. In the grand scheme of things, they're basically just like this part (or its classic equivalent, but with a gear function. And besides the extending arms of telehandlers, they've also been used for outriggers on trucks, and the inner part was used quite brilliantly as the ripcord of the ground launchers in Airjitzu Battle Grounds.

 

I'm kind of surprised that the Ocean Explorer set is an August release, since in Europe it was released in December! As big Technic sets go it's not the most functionally impressive, but I still appreciate it since Technic doesn't get a lot of boats.

 

Something really cool that was revealed at the Nuremberg Toy Fair is that not only do all of this year's sets include a printed "40 Years" 3M Technic beam to celebrate Technic's 40th anniversary, but also the Ultralight, Telehandler, and BMW Motorcycle can be combined into a new model using instructions that will be posted online in the second half of the year. And said combi model is actually a modern re-imagining of the classic Car Chassis set from 1980! Talk about a blast from the past!

 

Extreme Adventure and 6x6 All-Terrain Tow Truck are really awesome in a lot of ways: rare colors, unusual designs, and cool functionality. I would almost think the piece counts got mixed up somehow, but thinking about it could make sense that Extreme Adventure has a higher piece count due to its many tiny treads while the Tow Truck has a lower piece count due to its Power Functions and giant tires.

 

Overall there's no Technic stuff this time around that excites me quite as much as last year's Bucket Wheel Excavator, but there's still plenty to be impressed with.

 

Creator is doing some really creative new stuff this year. In the first half, the Blue Express, Red Racer, and Airshow Aces sets are actually modular, with each vehicle made up of two or three sections connected together by Technic cross axles. They can be mixed and matched in lots of different ways, and LEGO has also posted inspirational videos to the Creator site and the LEGO Facebook page on how you can create your own modular vehicles at this scale. These impulse-priced sets can be kind of forgettable sometimes so it's nice that LEGO is giving them an additional play feature that sets them apart from other, larger sets.

 

Mighty Dinosaurs is a nicely constructed, highly posable set with a sort of unfortunate name (pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs)! The ironic thing is that if they'd just called it "Mighty Dinosaur" (singular) it wouldn't have been a problem, since it's not uncommon for Creator set names to describe only the primary model (like this year's Sunset Street Bike). But that extra "s" implies the name is meant to describe all three (technically, four, since there's a bonus model on LEGO.com) models. I do hope we one day see more realistic dinosaurs in a LEGO set, but this does capture the iconic popular vision of these creatures pretty well for a brick-built model.

 

Robo Explorer is a fun set, and it and Air Blazer were both actually designed by Bionicle designer John Ho. I'm not as fond of its alt-builds as I have been with some of the other recent animal or robot sets, but it's still a really cute concept nicely realized.

 

Beachside Vacation sort of echoes the Beach Hut from two years ago, but I like its striped walls in some fairly rare colors, its raised foundation, and that adorable sea turtle build! The hammock is also a great new piece, and it's nice that it's seeing more use in City this summer. Park Street Townhouse, on the other hand, is brilliantly unique and a great parts pack (with ten of this useful piece, among other goodies). I also love Island Adventures with its brilliant sideways wing build and clever alternate builds.

 

The new 3-in-1 modular houses coming in the summer are an interesting departure from the sorts of houses and buildings we've had in Creator sets before, and I've seen some people quite disappointed that these are open-backed playsets rather than buildings like the Beach Hut or Park Street Townhouse that can fold closed, or other enclosed buildings like the Family House from 2013. At the same time, like previous Creator houses, they make impressive use of basic parts to create cool details, and also they maintain the 3-in-1 gimmick. I wonder if the term "modular" means you can combine parts of the 3 models into different combinations, or even combine modules between sets!

 

Turbo Track Racer is a brilliant large-scale car with some cool striped details. The gull-wing doors are creative, and it's neat that it reuses the Ferrari F40 windscreen.

 

The Space Shuttle Explorer is pretty awesome, and I hope it paves the way for more "spacey" Creator models in the future! The rover and moonbase alternate builds are pretty neat. However, what it gains in brick-built intricacy it lacks in authenticity. Compared to the shuttle from the 2015 Spaceport set, the Creator one has no elevons on the back of the wings, nor any landing gear.

 

I am a little disappointed that the Robo Explorer and/or Mighty Dinosaurs sets seem to take the place of the adorable animal sets we've gotten in recent years like Park Animals and Rainforest Animals. Other than that, though, there's a lot to like in this year's Creator range.

 

As tame as the Classic theme generally is, I encourage people to take a look at how clever the instruction manuals for the new Creative Boxes are (here's the Red Creative Box as an example). Besides the regular building instructions, they also include a designer bio (with more info on the LEGO Classic website), ideas of how to combine the sets together, inspirational builds showing other ways you can use the pieces, and inspirational photos of other sorts of things you can build in the set's main color. It's a surprising amount of content and effort to be put into a manual for such a small and simple set, but hopefully it will help kick-start people's creativity!

 

The gears in the new Duplo sets are cool and remind me of Gears! Gears! Gears!, another building toy I enjoyed as a kid. The Pizzeria is quite charming… between the Scarecrow Special Delivery set from The LEGO Batman Movie, the Heartlake Pizzeria from LEGO Friends, the Pizza Van from LEGO City, and this Duplo Pizzeria, LEGO sure has had a lot of sets focused on pizza this year! The Santa's Winter Holiday set surprises me since I hadn't seen it before, but I can see it being really popular! And I love the adorable mixed-race family in the Family House set. Duplo is good for that kind of diversity. The Duplo Batman sets are nice — just yesterday I was looking at those at Walmart and commenting on how adorable all the characters are! I'm not so fond of the overwhelmingly pink color of Minnie Mouse Bowtique.

 

In Juniors, it's cool to get the first ever Snow White mini-doll, but regrettably without any dwarfs. It's also interesting that the Batman set includes a unique Mr. Freeze minifigure. The new, smaller floating boat hull is interesting and I wonder whether we'll see it in other themes at any point. I'm kinda disappointed that there are no new Ninjago Juniors sets… either LEGO wants to space those out or they simply didn't go over as well as they hoped. Overall the new Juniors sets sort of leave me cold compared to past standouts like Family House (wow, how many different sets with that name can I mention in one post?), Snake Showdown, Mia's Vet Clinic, and Knights' Castle.

 

Thanks for the detailed coverage!

[VBBN]

I'm hoping we see some cool D2C sets for Creator this year. Another addition to the VW Bus/Beetle/Mini/Ferrari scale lineup. I know the Ferrari isn't in that same "Family" but it fits nonetheless and I would love some more sets in that scale. Since we've had a camping theme with the Bus, Picnic with the Mini and Beach with the Beetle, I'd like to see something come out with a Snowboard/Ski theme.

[Taria Pakari]

The blue and green creativity boxes have mixed up names on the article. :v

[Pohaturon]

Man, some of those Creator sets are really neat, especially the Robo set and the space shuttle.

 

The Technic, however, is outright magnificent across the board. It's a shame they're so expensive really, but many of these are awesome - that Ocean Explorer set is a beauty, and I find the little yellow stunt bike to be endearing. It reminds me of those older Racers sets which used the odd Bionicle armor element as décor, like the bike with the Nuva shoulder at the front, or the blue one with a Nuva chestplate as a fuel-tank. It's really neat!