Entry posted by xccj
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Hah, bet you weren’t expecting this one! (I dunno, is there any expectation really? “Oh look, he’s blogging again about some set he likes. Better keep scrolling.”)
Anyway, last month I was in a BrickLink store and saw they had like half the pieces to this set, which was one I’ve considered for a while (out of Galidor sets.) But then I found a store that was selling the original set for less than buying all the parts individually, so I just went with that. And even though we know the theme failed miserably, I’ll review it to find out why! 
Allegra was the second human of the Galidor characters and only female. Um, that’s all I know about her background. I guess the two human characters, her and Nick Bluetooth, were warped to some alternate dimension, where they could swap out limbs between a cast of alien allies and fight evil. I don’t know why the show failed as badly as it did, cause that premise is not bad, per say. I’ve never watched the show so I can’t really comment on it, but I guess it wasn’t very appealing. (But I would’ve said the same about Chima, and that show lasted for a few years.)
Anyway, onto the set. Allegra is a tall character (closer in scale to Gali Masters). She’s only made up of nine pieces, and I guess originally sold for $10, so that’s a pretty horrific price per piece value. (Oh, she also has two pieces for her robot worm pet.) Most of the joints here are click joints, similar to those used in the Bahrag and later in Knights Kingdom figures. They offer a fair amount of posability; heck, she even has bendable knees, and she came out a full year before the Rahkshi! Unfortunately, her arms don’t have elbow joints, even though her wrists do rotate. While the leg pieces can easily be switched from left to right, the design of her arms doesn’t allow for switching sides, which is unfortunate. She has another click joint in her neck, and also comes with a hair attachment. This is probably the most interesting piece here, because it has a standard axle connection. True, it is rubbery, so it doesn’t fit in standard axle holes quite as well as it should, but it allows for some more versatility. I’ll need to find a way to use that piece eventually. All in all, the pieces are very detailed (and large) but then this also makes them a little too specialized, in a way that even Bionicle never quite achieved.
The main play feature of Galidor was to swap around the limbs, which doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, but for Lego fans we were certainly hoping for some more options. The joint connections do fit into technic pin holes, where they’re a little loose, or even in the technic click hinge pieces like that came with the Bahrag or Knights Kingdom (or Exo Force robots or most modern mech sets. . . that click hinge design has not exactly gone away.) Granted, swapping out limbs between Allegra and Gali Mata didn’t produce the most desired effects, but it shows off what can be done.
She does come with a pet, to make up for the lack of anything alien or robotic about her appearance. I don’t know what it’s called, but it seems to be an orange worm that has robotic legs. The head has a connection point and can be detached (and connected to Allegra’s torso, for example) but overall it seems to just be a silly addition.
As an action figure, she’s not terrible. Her arms could’ve used elbow joints (I think some of the other characters had them, so she just got neglected) but she has otherwise decent posability and plenty of detail. However, as a Lego set, it’s flawed, partially for having too few pieces, but mostly because those pieces are not very compatible with standard system or technic bits. Even when they do connect, the style of the Galidor pieces is just too organic. It’s a Lego Brand action figure, and let’s just keep it at that. They improved their character buildings later on with things like Knights Kingdom, Ben 10, and this other theme called Bionicle, which both predated and outlasted Galidor. Still, Galidor has the knee joints first. Sorry, Rahkshi, you were a year too late.
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