Jack Stone’s Got An Eye In The Sky With His Ultra Cool Police Copter
Written: Jun 22 '03
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Pros: Great design, two figures, blue canopy, retracting cable.
Cons: No real accessory pieces except for the video camera and radios.
The Bottom Line: Keep an eye on the city with this nifty police copter!
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| Freak369's Full Review: Jack Stone LEGO Police Copter |
The Jack Stone series was created to bridge the gap between the stimulating but oversized Duplo bricks and the somewhat small standard sized Lego elements. Somewhere along the way we got a new hero – Jack Stone – and a city full of heroes like the fire chief, the cargo plane captain and the police chief. While these sets mostly appealed to boys, girls seemed to have a great time assembling the buildings and making city scenes rather than crashing planes, chasing the bad guys and blowing things up. I’ll be the first to admit that this series seems slanted toward the boys but this set attempts to even the odds by adding in a female copter pilot.
Police Copter
A snap to build and fun to play with, this police copter will help you have an eye in the sky when chasing the bad guys. The top and side propellers are functional and give this little baby a great look when in motion but the metallic silver exhaust pipe on the side steals the show. This piece needs a little special handling to keep it bright and free of scratches but if you think that this set will see a lot of action, give it a coat or two of clear nail polish to preserve the sheen. The blue canopy lifts up and down for the copter pilot to get in and out of the cockpit and sadly, there’s only room for one to fit comfortable but Jack was never know for sticking to the safe side of transportation. Make sure you take a look at the awesome stenciling on the canopy as well as the ‘police’ logo on the rear tail of the copter. It’s the little things that really make this set attractive and trust me – there are a lot of them.
The retracting cable might be something that smaller kids will need help with. The cord needs to be knotted tightly around the spool before it is placed into the housing or it will fall out if anything is attached to the hook. You’ll need to do the same thing with the hook that gets attached to the other end. The cord is a little longer than necessary so don’t feel that you have to stick with the very ends of it when making the knots. While this is a really nice feature and looks great when its attached to the front of the copter, it doesn't function all that well and requires a lot of work to retract the cord. You should keep an eye on this part of the toy to make sure smaller children don’t get this wrapped around their arm or leg and have it cut off circulation or cause a nasty ‘rug burn’.
Copter Pilot
One of the few times we get to see female figures in the Jack Stone series and she's stuck inside the copter. Unless this figure was wearing lipstick you’d have a hard time telling it was a female since most of the head is covered by a copters helmet and visor. The torso is done up in black and blue and for once the all black arms aren’t a complete disaster. She has the police silver star logo as well as stenciled pockets and belt and looks just a little cooler than the others in the series. Some sets that were originally released didn't have the 'police' logo stenciled on the back of her uniform but luckily I got one of the sets that did have this and even though you don’t get to see it when she’s in the copter – it’s sort of nice to know its there.
Jack Stone
This is the standard Jack figure that you'll find in most of the sets but that doesn’t mean he won't get a thorough review. This figure has the Jack Stone swirl logo on his chest with an all black torso and all black arms. His legs are blue with a minimal amount of detail to them. One thing that always turned me off about the series was Jacks hair – you'd think they would want to give him a more stylish look or at least make the figure so you could remove the rock hard hair and replace it with a baseball cap or hat. Even after all this time, it's still a little hard to look at these figures and accept them as a Lego creation because of one little fact – they have noses and standard Lego mini figures don't. We won’t even get on the subject of ears either [another thing the standard figures don’t have]. Jack comes with one accessory – a video camera – or at least that’s what it looks like to me. The two small hand held radios are rather useless and were lost about five minutes after the set was cracked open. I think I heard them get sucked into the vacuum cleaner a few days after and opted to ignore the rattling noise rather than retrieve them.
Instructions
I had to laugh when I noticed the small sentence on the box "Idea Book Included" – because they sure aren’t instructions! As I’ve mentioned in almost all of the Jack Stone set reviews, the instructions are the one thing that really sucked about the series. Instead of being given a step-by-step plan to build the vehicles or scenes you are given one or two illustrations with directional arrows showing where the pieces go. For accomplished builders this is a piece of cake but for kids or adults just starting out – placement of some elements might be tricky. My best suggestion is to keep the box handy, you can get a good idea of where a majority of the pieces go from looking at the front and back of the box.
The Bottom Line
This is a great mid sized set that has a lot of replay value. It can be built several different ways and if a child has other Jack Stone sets, the overall design can be dramatically changed if desired. Barring the warnings about the cord that’s used for the retrieval line, this set is suitable for kids ages four and older proving that they are aware of some of the dangers of taste testing the various bricks and elements. For the price, this is a great addition to the series and allows a child to have a lot of fun not only building it – but finding creative uses for it as well.
To check out some cool games, learn about other Jack Stone sets and learn about the heroes visit the official site here www.lego.com/jackstone.
The Stats
Set Name: Police Copter
Family Set: Jack Stone
Lego Set: 4604
Number of Pieces: 20
Age Recommendation: 4 and older
Ease of Assembly: Easy
Time of Assembly: 10 - 15 minutes
Cost: $ 6.99
As always … thanks for the visit!
^V^ Freak ^V^
© 2003 Freak369
Other Jack Stone Lego set reviews…
Res Q Wrecker
Fire Response SUV
Bank Breakout
Red Recon Flyer
Red Flash Station
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $6.99
Type of Toy: Blocks
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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