Forward for a new contest which will allow the winner to receive a set which is not sold on the official online store and which is only available in the LEGO Store installed in the LEGO House in Billund in Denmark: the reference 40501 The Wooden Duck.

This 621-piece box is the first in a series of limited-edition sets that showcase key products from the LEGO Group's history, featuring here a reproduction of the wooden toy manufactured and marketed in the 30s by LEGO Group founder Ole Kirk Christiansen.

Some of the designers who visit the official LEGO House store take the opportunity to sign a few copies of the sets on the shelves they have worked on and I took advantage of my visit to Billund a few weeks ago to bring back a copy of this box signed by Jme Wheeler, a designer to whom we owe the LEGO Star Wars sets 75338 Ambush on Ferrix et 75329 Death Star Trench Run and who had worked on this very exclusive product with Stuart Harris.

To validate your participation and try to add this duck on wheels to your collection at a lower cost, simply identify yourself via the interface below and follow the instructions provided. As usual, it is a question of finding information on the official online store and then answering the question correctly. At the end of the participation phase, the winner will be chosen by lot from the correct answers. Participation is free and without obligation to purchase.

Your contact details (name / nickname, email address, IP) are only used within the framework of this competition and will not be kept beyond the drawing of lots which will designate the winner. As usual, this no-obligation competition is open to all residents of mainland France, DOM & TOM, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

The set is as usual generously provided by LEGO, it will be sent to the winner by me as soon as his contact details are confirmed by return email.

As always, I reserve the right to disqualify any participant who has attempted to defraud or hijack the entry system in order to increase their chances of winning. Hateful and bad losers to abstain, the others will have more chances to win.

Good luck to everyone !

No participation via comments, I leave the form open as long as the contestants who cannot read are not yet there. Then we close.

For information: the name / nickname of the winner is displayed in the participation interface once the draw has been made. I also notify the winners by email, but remember to check anyway.

Today we are talking about the set again 40501 The Wooden Duck, an exclusive unveiled yesterday that will be sold only in the LEGO House store in Billund. You will have to pay the modest sum of 599 DKK, i.e. a little over 80 €, to afford this first box of a series of products from June 22, XNUMX that will pay tribute to the toys that have marked the history of the LEGO group. Those who do not wish to make the trip to Denmark will also have to reimburse the gasoline, hotel costs and pizza from the vendor who will provide them with the set on the secondary market.

I'm not going over the history of the wooden duck on wheels reproduced here using plastic bricks, there is enough to say about this toy which should also mark the history of the LEGO group in its own way. .

In terms of the fidelity of reproduction of the duck on wheels, it is successful, it would be bad faith to say the opposite. All the markers of the toy from the 30s are there and on this point the set achieves its goal. LEGO has taken the attention to detail to include the string that in the 30s allowed a young Dane to pull the duck.

Because this is a construction toy offered by the world leader in this field, LEGO does not forget to provide us with an almost fun little feature: The duckbill opens and closes when the base is in motion thanks to a Technic beam pushed by the axis of the front axle and which raises the upper part of the spout. Some people will see it as a somewhat superfluous function on a pure exhibition product, but as usual, we know it's there and it makes us happy even if we don't use it.

The assembly of the duck and its presentation base is quickly shipped, we stack, we fit, we clip and we admire. The interior of the animal is filled with colored pieces, an appreciable bias that breaks up the monotony of the assembly of the almost monochrome blocks that constitute the base, the feathers and the wings.

And this is where this set, which should be a high-end product to the glory of the manufacturer and its legendary know-how, goes down in history: The color differences on the assemblies based on dark red bricks (Dark Red) and green are obvious and quite disfigure this model with the aesthetic yet very successful. On each of these two shades, we even reach here three different levels, from the lightest to the darkest. Great art, the injection points too visible on the blue parts of the base become almost anecdotal (see first photo in the gallery above).

The official visuals published yesterday already suggested such deviations but the images had been retouched to minimize the effect. When you have the real model in front of you, it is impossible not to notice these flaws and it would take a hell of a dose of bad faith to forget to mention this detail or downplay it.

I see from here those who will try to convince others that it is not so serious by drawing their usual panoply of arguments of bad faith: "... there is nothing to make a drama of it, it is a technical limitation ...","... it's intended, it gives a vintage effect to the duck ..." or "... I can't see anything, everything seems normal to me ...".

No, this is a problem that LEGO confirms without providing a solution. The manufacturer takes refuge behind a "tolerance threshold" invented by him to kick in touch and send back to the ropes all those who complain. At the moment, it's also the turn of the buyers of the LEGO Technic set. 42115 Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 to pay the price for this tolerance threshold with a nice mix of green on the body of their € 380 car.

To display the duck with a slightly washed-out look, LEGO provides a display that mobilizes just over 70 pieces out of the 621 items provided in the box. The two plates specifying what it is about are pad printed, as are the eyes of the duck.

The instruction booklet is embellished with some texts in English telling the usual legend and praising the know-how of the brand. The text is in English and I doubt that it will one day be possible to download a French version of the booklet, this set being exclusive to the LEGO House.

In short, the idea of ​​offering a series of sets that pay tribute to the founder of the LEGO group and his first creations is excellent. But Ole Kirk Christiansen would probably be annoyed to see that his successors have still not managed 60 years later to standardize the color of certain rooms.

We all know here that many fans will buy this box to keep it in the back of a closet without ever opening it and the finishing flaws will not affect these collectors. On the other hand, those who want to exhibit this model to show their attachment to the brand and its origins will be a bit for their expense even if they can try to save face by explaining to their passing friends that "... the different shades of red and green give a real vintage patina to this LEGO duck ...". On a misunderstanding, the explanation will perhaps suffice.

Note: The set presented here, supplied by LEGO, is as usual in play. Deadline fixed at June 30, 2020 next at 23pm. 

Update : The winner was drawn and was notified by email, his nickname is indicated below. Without a response from him to my request for contact details within 5 days, a new winner will be drawn.

LEGO today officially unveils a new box, the reference 40501 The Wooden Duck, which will be exclusively marketed from June 22 in the store of the LEGO House located in Billund. Public price: 599 DKK or around 80 €.

This box of 621 pieces, the first in a new series of sets entitled LEGO House Limited Editions which will showcase significant products in the history of the LEGO Group, features a reproduction of the wooden toy manufactured and marketed in the 30s by the founder of the LEGO group, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

It should be noted that LEGO only sold wooden toys between 1932 and 1947 before offering an assortment of products also including plastic toys and then permanently withdrawing wooden products from its catalog in the 60s.

If you fancy putting together this tribute to a historic toy, you can download the instructions in PDF format (24.6 MB) at this address. There is currently no information going in the direction of the sale of this new box on the official online store, even temporarily, as was the case recently for the references. 21037 LEGO House, 40366 LEGO House Dinosaurs et 4000026 Tree of Creativity.

I received a copy of this duck on wheels, so we will talk about this product very quickly.

The LEGO database of instruction files in PDF format has been updated and there is now a new reference that should logically be exclusive to Billund's LEGO House: the set 40501 The Wooden Duck, a "limited edition" product that is placed in the same category as the other boxes sold only on site.

This new box features a reproduction of the wooden toy made and marketed in the 30s by the founder of the LEGO group, Ole Kirk Christiansen.

If you fancy putting this tribute to a historic toy together, you can download the instructions in PDF format (24.6 MB) by clicking on the image below. There is currently no information on the meaning of the sale of this new box on the official online store, even temporarily, as was the case recently for the references 21037 LEGO House, 40366 LEGO House Dinosaurs et 4000026 Tree of Creativity.

(Thanks to titidu5972 for the alert)

Today we're quickly talking about the product unveiled yesterday by LEGO, the LEGO House Limited Edition set. 40505 LEGO Building System which pays homage to different worlds of the manufacturer via a display in three sections decorated on the back with an exhibition space bringing together around twenty micro-constructions.

I'm not going to lie to you, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the contents of this box. The idea of ​​offering a museum-style setting is good, but the execution here seems a little too cheesy to convince me. it was undoubtedly possible to reproduce the atmosphere of the museum installed in the LEGO House in Billund without being satisfied with the gray walls visible here, the latter not really highlighting the overall diorama even if they fade visually to so that we can concentrate on the three modules offered.

I really think that the idea of ​​paying homage to three of the manufacturer's emblematic universes is excellent, that is also what this range of exclusive limited edition products should be used for, which only those who make the trip to Billund can afford. , but it should be kept in mind that LEGO asks us to pay for purely self-promotional products and that as such we can hope to obtain successful and convincing sets.

Highlight the first DUPLO train, the modular concept Town Map and the Technic ecosystem is a fairly coherent summary of what allowed the LEGO brand to exist and develop, it would simply have been necessary to stage all of this in a slightly less academic manner and free itself from classicism of this product with slightly sad colors

The niches placed at the back of the gray walls bring together around twenty micro-constructions which hover over numerous ranges and universes, it is rather well seen even if this micro-exhibition is hidden as if the designer had simply wanted to make one easter egg discreet which in my opinion deserved much better than being an accessory element of the product. These micro-constructions are individually probably no better than the content of an uninspired Advent calendar, but taken as a whole they constitute a real timeline of the history of the brand and I find it almost a shame that this visual summary interesting is relegated to the background.

LEGO has even provided a few additional pieces in addition to the elements usually provided in addition in its boxes to allow you to fill the space deliberately left empty at the end of the timeline with a creation from your imagination. It's up to you to complete this Hall of Fame discreet with a model of your own that will embody the way you imagine the LEGO “legend”.

On a more technical level, the three modules are quickly assembled, the supports are not very inspired but the constructions they house offer some interesting techniques, whether it is the DUPLO train faithful to the first model of the range marketed in the 80s right down to the colors used, the modular platform Town Map launched in 1955 which offers an assembly experience similar to what this range offered in its time with its modules which form a city made up of its micro buildings, vegetation and other vehicles or the reproduction of the LEGO Technic Chassis coach from 1977 which remains symbolic but relatively faithful even if the micro-model only uses classic bricks.

No stickers in this box of just over 1200 pieces, both Tiles specifying the subject covered and placed at the front of the construction as well as pedestrian crossings are therefore pad printed. We will also note that the three modules are not joined together, they are not clipped and are simply nested.

The result is an exhibition model around forty centimeters long which will struggle, in my opinion, to fully find its place alongside the other volumes of a collection (the references 40501 The Wooden Duck (2020) 40502 The Brick Molding Machine (2021) 40503 Dagny Holm - Master Builder (2022) et 40504 A Minifigure Tribute (2023)) which nevertheless offers attractive and successful products.

LEGO will have wanted to cultivate the vintage side of this homage but, as is sometimes the case, in my opinion we are more inclined here to clumsy old-fashionedness than to pure nostalgia. It's a shame, knowing that it will also be necessary to make the effort to fill the pockets of resellers on the secondary market to avoid traveling to Billund and complete a collection which seemed interesting to follow given the products already on the market. As usual, it's up to you.

Note: The product shown here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at March 11, 2024 next at 23:59 p.m. Simply post a comment below the article to participate. Your participation is taken into account regardless of your opinion. Avoid “I’m participating” or “I’m trying my luck”, we suspect that this is the case.

Update : The winner was drawn and notified by email, his nickname is indicated below.