I recently picked up the Lego Creator 3 in 1 Mini Train set and, although I had some problems with it, putting together those trains reminded me how much I enjoy playing with Legos. I decided to indulge myself further and picked up sister product Lego Creator 3 in 1 Mini Flyers. I admit it. I was seduced by the helicopter prominently features on the packaging.
Containing 76 pieces (in theory) that can be used to make a helicopter, a jet plane, or a biplane, the set was surprisingly affordable for a Lego set of this size.This kit comes in a compact plastic case that looks sort of like a large, flattened plastic easter egg. It's very light and easy to transport and store and reseals very nicely. Opening the case merely involves running your fingernail (or a letter opener or a key) across the label on the front or back at the perferations that match up exactly with the lid. Once severed, the lid pops off and snaps back on very easily.
Inside the case is an instruction booklet and two plastic bags with the pieces. One bag had air holes in it - much like a bag designed to keep vegetables fresh - while the other was normal. This struck me as very odd and there was no apparent rhyme or reason to the distribution of pieces between bags. Obviously this doesn't have any real effect on the set, but I still find myself wondering why the two different types of bags were used.
The instruction kit is entirely visual and, unfortunately, often combines several steps into one drawing. This would be fine if the multiple steps were on different sections of the vehicle or were all easily visible at once, but some of the pieces are hidden (or, at least, far from obvious) and, since you never know how many pieces you're supposed to attach in each drawing, it's difficult to tell when you miss something until some later step doesn't work because you failed to add something four or five layers ago. This set also contains pieces in two different shades of gray as well as a lot of white pieces and it's not always easy to determine which shade is supposed to be used in any given step. Recovering from mistakes is difficult, often requiring completely removing everything you've done since the missed or incorrect step then taking it again from that point once you've fixed the problem. There is no excuse for this. Any instructions worth their salt present one task at a time and clearly distinguish between the different available options. I'm pretty good at figuring out how stuff is supposed to fit together and I was very careful because I had similar issues with the train set, but I still used the wrong piece several times.
Before I tried to follow those instructions, though, I actually took the time to match the included pieces to the list of expected parts. The train set I bought had a wrong piece which amounted to a missing piece, but that piece was fairly easy to overcome (it was one of the wheel set attachments so I just skipped one set of wheels and moved on from there). Unfortunately, this set was missing a whopping 6 pieces, several of them vital. For example, one of the missing pieces was the piece that attaches the rotors to the body of the helicopter so I was unable to fit the two main sections together or have an actual helicopter with moving parts. That really depressed me.
Unfortunately, it got worse when I tried to build the planes. The missing pieces formed important structural elements in the two planes and I was unable to get very far into their construction before their absence forced me to stop. The missing pieces here made the set almost completely unusable. It's going back to the store.
A few of the pieces that were included are very difficult to handle because they're so small and taking the vehicles apart once they're assembled takes forever. You'll need to take them apart as you only get pieces to form one vehicle at a time. I expected this, having seen the same setup in the train set, but at a glance there's nothing in the packaging that makes it clear that you have to construct one plane or the helicopter then take it apart to construct the next one then do it again for the third.
The three vehicles look distinct, but their body sections are similar (especially on the two airplanes) so there's a similarity to the construction that might irritate some people. The color palette used seems a bit dull to me - white, grays, black, and red - but I guess they fit the airplane mode. It might be nice to have some brighter colors, though, and a wider color palette would definitely have made the instructions easier to understand.
This Lego kit provides a very different experience than the Legos I played with as a child. This is a construction project and an exercise in following directions but doesn't engage your imagination in any way. At the same time, it provides specialty pieces necessary to do things like rotate helicopter rotors (assuming you get the full complement of pieces) that you're not likely to find in general Lego sets that inspire creativity. I can't help but feel like the helicopter alone would be worth the price of admission had the rotor connector piece been present, but I refuse to recommend a product with this many problems with its quality control. Lego needs to get its act together with these 3 in 1 vehicle kits and, until it does, I cannot recommend buying the Lego Creator 3 in 1 Mini Flyers.
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