Today we are quickly interested in The LEGO Movie 2 set 70836 Battle-Ready Batman and MetalBeard (168 pieces - 19.99 €) which will be available from December 26th on the LEGO Shop and in the LEGO Stores and in your usual toy store.

Nothing to rave about the content to build in less than fifteen minutes delivered in this box. Batman's mini-throne and MetalBeard's robot-crab (Steelbeard) are there to furnish and undoubtedly to reproduce a scene from the film on a reduced scale.

The construction intended for Batman has one and only feature: the pad printed sign which reads "You're Welcome"can be raised or lowered using the thumbwheel on the back of the build. Batman doesn't really fit into the hiding place under the throne due to his mask and imposing accessory with integrated half-tires. Both wings are fixed and do not move when activating the mechanism that deploys the panel.

There is a small problem with MetalBear and its robot crab. The construction is quite successful with the chest that opens at the level of the character's torso to reveal some bones and other sausages (the internal organs of the character according to the product description ...), but the whole is really annoying To manipulate. The crab's legs, which must be put in the right position so that the figurine stands upright, do not remain in place and everything sags as soon as it is touched.

The youngest who already see themselves reproducing some scenes seen in the cinema with their MetalBeard may be disappointed when they realize that the figurine hardly holds in place. Worse, if you add Maddox's minifigure into the lookout, MetalBeard often crumbles under its own weight, unless you find the perfect balance point. Even the polybag version 30528 Mini Master-Building MetalBeard seems more stable.

On the minifig side, we quickly forget Maddox, the second service knife with a post-apocalyptic pirate look. The minifigure is pretty, but not enough to make tons of it without knowing exactly who this guy is and how many seconds he appears on the screen ....

The supplied yellow star consists of a Tile pad printed which is placed on a large support with central tenon. Simple and efficient. Do not buy this box just for the star, there is the same in many other sets in the range.

Important precision these days: no stickers in this box, everything is pad printed.

The real reason to spend € 19.99 on this set is obviously the Batman minifigure Wasteland. Purists might be a little annoyed with the way LEGO and Warner twist the character and adapt him to any sauce, but this minifigure is really very successful.

The pad printing is magnificent, it is also partially masked by the torn cape and especially by the American football shoulder pad topped with two half-tires and it's almost a shame.

On the shoulder, the two half-tires are made of flexible rubber as for the other LEGO tires.

Do not think you are out of the woods with this little box at 20 €, the version of Batman provided in this box is different from the one that will be delivered in the big D2C set 70840 Welcome to Apocalypseburg (3178 pieces), some visuals of which are already available through the usual channels, in the company of Green Lantern and Harley Queen.

The two minifigs use the same accessories (cape, shoulder pad, mask) but the pad printing varies from one version to another, especially on the legs.

In summary, I say yes but just for Batman and on sale for less than 15 €. MetalBeard is much too fragile, it is not worthy of a children's toy at 19.99 €.

Note: The set shown here is put into play as usual. To participate in the raffle, simply post a comment on this article before December 28 at 23:59 p.m.. You have every right to disagree with me, this is not eliminatory.

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.

It's a skyline eagerly awaited in the LEGO Architecture range, we are therefore quickly talking about the set 21044 (649 pieces) which features Paris (49.99 €).

It is difficult here not to enter into the inevitable debate which consists in calling into question the choices of designers in matters of monuments or emblematic constructions of such and such a city. If the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre obviously have their place in this skyline, for the rest, it is in my opinion less obvious.

The Champs-Élysées can be summed up here in a few colorful buildings (?) And two rows of trees whose mission is to represent the famous avenue. It's really, really minimalist, and I think it would have been better not to try anything. Paris has enough immediately recognizable places and monuments and the Center Pompidou, the Vendôme column or the Concorde obelisk could have done the job at this location.

The designer also chose to represent the only truly visible tower above the rooftops of Paris (outside the La Défense district in the Hauts-de-Seine) with the Montparnasse Tower. It was undoubtedly necessary to bring a touch of modernity to this skyline composed of historical monuments and balance the overall volume imposed by the Eiffel Tower, but this black and gray monolith does not bring much to this box. This construction will also be obsolete in a few years, the tower being the subject of a renovation which will bring it up to date by 2023 ...

The Grand Palais? Why not. Notre-Dame Cathedral could have taken the place of this building, it is a place visited by all passing tourists. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre could also have done the trick. And do not come and talk to me about the restrictions linked to the reproduction of religious buildings that LEGO has imposed on itself, Saint Mark's Basilica in Venice presents in set 21026 is a Catholic cathedral before being a tourist magnet ...

Not much to complain about the section representing the Louvre with its micro-pyramid. It's minimalist but rather convincing and it will please foreign tourists who are fans of the Da Vinci Code.

The question that must also be asked here is the following: must we absolutely caricature something to represent it? And that's the Eiffel Tower I'm talking about. Was it really essential to stick a big French flag at the top of the building? We are no longer in 1944 when French firefighters courageously hoisted a flag to the top under German fire.

Wanting at all costs to place a French flag in this box, you might as well put it on the roof of the Grand Palais where a flag usually flies ... Moving this flag would also have helped to give a little volume to what is at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in this skyline.

In my opinion, LEGO has still not found a convincing technique to correctly reproduce the Eiffel Tower. The LEGO model is far from being as graceful as the real one and we can also discuss the choice of the color of the parts: The Eiffel Tower is not gray, it is brown-bronze.

We will still remember the use of four transparent pad-printed windshields to represent the arches of the foot of the tower. It is convincing.

Thanks to the use of grids on the different uprights, the version of the Eiffel Tower present in this box has at least the merit of offering a rendering closer to reality than what the model of the calamitous set 21019 The Eiffel Tower (2014) proposed in its time.

Finally, in my opinion, the Arc de Triomphe is quite simply a failure. It looks like a Japanese garden portico, probably the fault of the overall scale of the set determined by the size of the Eiffel Tower. Same observation as for the Eiffel Tower concerning the color of this element: The Arc de Triomphe is not immaculate white.

In short, it is not worth doing tons of it, this box is ultimately only a luxury product for a souvenir shop with a somewhat approximate content and I do not think it pays a satisfactory tribute to The city of Paris. You will have to do with it and spend around fifty euros to get it.

If you prefer to buy some of the monuments in this skyline in detail and on a slightly less restrictive scale, know that you also have the LEGO Architecture references 21019 The Eiffel Tower, 21024 The Louvre et 21036 Arc de Triomphe in the secondary market.

Note: The set shown here is put into play as usual. To participate in the raffle, simply post a comment on this article before December 25 at 23:59 p.m.. You have every right to disagree with me, this is not eliminatory.

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.

I had forgotten this box in a corner, but it still deserves a brief attention. So today we are talking about the LEGO DC Comics set 76111 Batman: Brother Eye Takedown (269 pieces - 34.99 €).
Let's face it, this set mainly allows us to obtain two unseen minifigs in the LEGO DC Comics range. The rest of the contents of the box are not without interest, but many fans will remain a little dubious in front of the half-ball with one eye delivered here alongside the Batjet.

And this ball is Brother Eye, the satellite that houses an artificial intelligence capable of taking control of OMAC (One Man Army Corps) and impart different super abilities to him. If you don't flip through a few DC comics on a regular basis, you're no further ahead.

In this box, Brother Eye serves above all as a service villain to knock out with the Stud Shooters of the Batjet. A welcome little refinement, the satellite is equipped with a light brick that reveals a pretty pattern of printed circuits. The effect is very successful but you have to keep your finger on the button as usual. It is not possible to leave the light brick on.

In order for Brother Eye to stand up, it is also necessary to focus on orienting the two "feet" of the thing correctly. It is laborious and quickly annoying. An orbiting satellite normally doesn't need feet, but a young fan playing on the carpet in their bedroom doesn't care about these kinds of considerations.

To defeat Brother Eye, LEGO delivers a rather successful Batjet. It's simple, the finish is not exceptional, but the tradition is respected: The machine looks almost like a bat when it is laid flat.

The cockpit is spacious and well equipped, it can accommodate Batman who will however have to remain in a reclining position to be able to close the canopy and you can even customize the look of the craft using the slew of copper-colored Bat-symbols provided in a small bag apart.

The machine can be handled without breaking everything and it will easily find its place in a Batcave. Important precision, there is no sticker in this box, everything is pad printed. The feat deserved to be highlighted.

It is obviously on the side of minifigs that collectors will look to judge the interest of the set.

LEGO does not disappoint here with two very successful new minifigs: Batwoman and OMAC The Batman minifig version DC Renaissance is for its part already appeared (without cape because of glider / jetpack) in a box marketed this year, the set 76097 Lex Luthor Mech Takedown (44.99 €).

Batwoman is almost perfect if we forget the lack of red boots. The pad printing on the torso alternates between simple prints that highlight the athletic side of the characters and fine details on the red belt.

White head for a convincing effect through the mask which incorporates the character's red hair, the effect is convincing. The visor which frames the character's gaze, on the other hand, is of little interest, it disappears under the mask.

OMAC is also very successful. The pad printing is superb, too bad LEGO did not take the attention to detail to the legs of the minifigure. The blue punk crest does the job.

There is only one copy of this character in this box and it's a shame. We will console ourselves by saying that it is therefore the Buddy Blank of 1974. Two or three copies would have allowed to give a little more consistency to the army of soldiers controlled by Brother Eye in the arc Infinite Crisis.

Finally, as I mentioned above, LEGO provides a small bag containing several Bat-symbols that can be used to customize the Batjet or possibly serve as a weapon for Batwoman.
It is always that taken.

I say yes because the set allows us to get two really new characters and just for that. The rest of the contents of the box leave me a little indifferent, so I will wait for a promotion that will allow me to offer myself this set at around 20 €.

Note: The set shown here is put into play as usual. To participate in the raffle, simply post a comment on this article before December 25 at 23:59 p.m.. You have every right to disagree with me, this is not eliminatory.

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.

Let's take a quick look at the minifigs and other minifigures that the LEGO Star Wars 2018 Advent Calendar (LEGO P / N 75213) has got us getting so far.

I will spare you all the mini-things to build that do not call for unnecessary essays. You put them together, you try to recognize what they are, you put them in the back of a drawer and you forget them.

First minifigure provided in box N ° 2: Rose tico in the version seen in the set 75176 Resistance Transport Pod (€ 39.99) released in 2017. If you don't like this character and boycotted set 75176, you now have a cheaper copy. If, on the contrary, you adore Rose Tico and the set 75176 is already at home, you now have two copies in your collection. It's that simple.

By the way, there is nothing to gargle about the relative rarity of this minifigure. Just because a minifigure only appears in one set does not mean that it can be considered "rare", especially if this box is sold at a reasonable price.

Case N ° 5: A Bounty Hunter figurine GI-88 in a version already available in sets 75167 Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike Battle Pack (14.99 €) marketed since 2017 and 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City (349.99 €) launched this year. Okay.

Box N ° 8: One BattleDroid generic as you must already have buckets in your drawers. With a blaster. We could have hoped for better than such a basic figure and it would have been enough to pad print a grade or a detail to make it a unique and exclusive figure. But no.

Box N ° 11: Rowan freemaker, already seen in the set 75185 Tracker I (76.99 €) marketed since 2017. This character appears in the animated series LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. Many of you have probably never watched this ad disguised as an animated series (or vice versa) without much interest. It was for the youngest. Offer the minifigure to a young fan of the Star Wars universe, in return he will explain to you who Rowan is.

Box N ° 15: One Death trooper already available in two copies in the set 75165 Imperial Trooper Battle Pack (14.99 €) marketed in 2017. If you are a fan of the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and that you like to accumulate Troopers of all kinds, you have undoubtedly already invested in several copies of the Battle Pack in question but thanks to this Advent calendar, you now have one more Death Trooper.

In summary, nothing exclusive or very exciting for the moment in this Advent calendar 2018 which is also currently sold. 23.09 € instead of 32.99 € on the LEGO Shop.

Now that everyone has had time to digest the announcement of the new Structure 2019, the LEGO Creator Expert set 10264 Corner Garage (189.99 €), we can quickly talk about this building that will stick to the Downtown Diner from set 10260 for a neighborhood with a 50s atmosphere.

Small neighborhood garage with a single gas pump, upstairs veterinary practice and apartment above with direct access to the roof, on paper this set offers varied spaces with services that will be welcome in your LEGO city.

If you collect the Modulars, you will not hesitate very long anyway, you will need this one too. If you don't have any, it's not certain that this set is the best place to start.

First of all, I note that the building actually occupies only a large half of the base plate on which it is installed due to the presence of the gas station and the canopy that houses the gas pump. It is also a set at an incoming angle which constitutes a street corner and can therefore take place in a corner of a shelf attached to the walls on two sides. There isn't much to see behind the construction anyway, as is often the case on Modulars.

If you want to play with the garage lift, remember to leave a little space behind the set to be able to access the mechanism that allows the thing to be raised and lowered. just pull on the blue and black element visible in the photo above to activate this function. Nothing super exciting, but to wow your passing friends even more, you can always leave a vehicle permanently in the garage with the bridge up and the curtain up.

It is a constant of the range Modulars, the construction phase alternates between truly creative sequences and stacking bricks for the walls of the building. We are not bored and we discover in passing a few tips that will perhaps be useful one day such as the cornices or the canopies of the upper floors based on blue windshields. When assembling the two upper modules, it is difficult not to have a feeling of déjà vu over the pages, the exterior structure of the two levels being almost identical from one floor to the other.

The bags of the set being numbered, it is possible to share the assembly with several on the condition of having the instruction booklet in digital format (to download at this address as soon as the PDF is online) in addition to the one provided in the box. Everyone can assemble a section during a family and friendly activity.

The whole set ultimately only serves as a pretext to install a garage on the ground floor, with its gas station and small workshop. It really is a tiny neighborhood garage, but the designer still managed to install a lift, a tire changer, a tool console and a counter on which the cash register is located. It's all a bit crowded inside, but it's always like that with Modulars and this one is far from the worst of the range in terms of size.

The staircase which provides access to the veterinarian's office located on the first floor, from the small blue door with its paw-shaped handle, simply crosses the workshop without any partition wall. To get to the apartment on the second floor, you must also cross the waiting room of the veto's office and there is no door (or hatch) between the two floors. Those who find nothing to complain about will persuade themselves that the vet is the mechanic's brother and that it is he who lives above with his ex-brother-in-law. The others will have to do with or lay plasterboard.

The garage is run by Jo, as the sign indicates. He is assisted by a female character with a smeared face who must be his daughter. Or his niece. Or her daughter-in-law. Or whoever you want.

In passing, one may wonder if the choice of the garage / veto / apartment combination is the most judicious. Having to go through the workshop to get to the first floor could have prompted the designer to set up the boss's office upstairs and move the vet's office to the second floor. But in this case, it would have been necessary anyway to go through the offices to go to the vet. Failed, this stair system is really poorly designed.

Access to the workshop is closed by a sliding curtain which can be raised using the dial placed on the exterior wall. The mechanism is simple but very ingenious and the dial is discreet enough not to disfigure the construction.

The roller shutter elements are slid in a groove which serves as a guide and prevents derailments. Like everyone else, you will spend five minutes raising and lowering the curtain. It's fun and it always works if you haven't made a mistake while assembling the mechanism.

If the floor is covered with Tiles on the exterior part of the construction, the interior of the various spaces is left as is by the designer. You will tell me that it does not change much since most of the fans who will acquire this box will be content to display it on a shelf and we will not really see what happens inside. And you will be right. But it's ugly due to the scale of the surfaces and furniture. The studs seem huge and that's a shame.

Many pieces of furniture and other decorative elements are present and some of them are even very successful. This set does not reach the level of finish of other references in the same range but it is still very honest if we take into account the available interior space.

At the vet, in addition to the aquarium built into the wall, we get a few animals and a whole series of medical instruments. It's in the theme and if you like techniques that allow you to reproduce stuff with a limited number of pieces, you'll be served.

I couldn't resist the urge to take the toilet out of the small corner room of the studio on the second floor. I would like to point out that the flush is not attached to the white pipe on which it rests, it is in fact directly attached to the wall of the apartment. In the photo below, she balances on the white mat.

Oddly, the second floor studio has a toilet in one corner of the room, but no bathroom, however compact. The bed installed near the glass roof also leaves me rather perplexed: it looks more like a hospital bed than anything else. The rest of the furniture is quite successful, always with that 50s connotation. Special mention for the taps, blue for cold water, red for hot water, which remind me of memories of my youth.

The roof terrace is also designed with exposed tenons. Too bad for the finish of this space which is clearly visible from the outside. A floor covered with Tiles gray with some hints of dark green and brown to symbolize the degradation of the coating over time would have been very welcome.

I have nothing against studs, but when it comes to a detailed mockup intended primarily for exhibition, I prefer not to see too many of them. In the radius of the things I would have liked to have obtained here: A cylindrical water tank on the roof.

As with the limousine from the 10260 Downtown Diner set, LEGO is providing a vehicle here, to liven up the city streets a bit. The tow truck is successful, it is in the 50s spirit of the box and it will find its place in all urban contexts. The doors open, the tow arm is raised or lowered via the wheel placed at the rear, it's functional. LEGO could have cracked a pad printing on the doors with the logo of the garage sign.

LEGO also provides a scooter in Medium Azure and his pilot who takes the torso already seen in the LEGO CITY set 60202 People Pack: Outdoor Adventures. Not essential in this box, but since it's there ...

A second vehicle to troubleshoot and put on the lift would have been welcome to ensure maximum playability out of the box without relying on the fact that fans have already purchased the 10260 set and therefore have the pink limousine which is from elsewhere staged on the back of the box of this new set.

I know many fans consider the parts allocated to these vehicles to "penalize" the level of detail of the set by cannibalizing inventory. But if LEGO sells me a garage with a lift, I would love to be able to use it to lift something other than the tow truck ...

As you already know, there are no stickers in this box and all the signs are pad printed. The Octan brand is displayed on the gas pump, supported by the use of the fictitious company's usual colors on the garage walls, the vet has a sign that references the world of Indiana Jones and Jo's garage sign includes a funny slogan under the half tire. These little details aren't everything, but they're finishes that are generally popular with fans.

In summary, we like it or not, each to his own. I like the petrol station theme and the color Dark orange used for the walls of the floors. I like a little less the lack of finish in the cabinet of the veto and in the apartment, LEGO had accustomed us to better.

The sacrifice of nearly half of the available surface does not bother me more than that, it was the price to pay to offer something really original with the gas pump and the passage covered by a canopy.

The vehicle provided is successful, the minifig endowment is unsurprising but sufficient. 189.99 € is a bit expensive, so in my opinion it is appropriate to wait at least for a doubling of VIP points or a promo to invest in this new element of the vintage district of LEGOville.

Note: The set shown here is put into play as usual. To participate in the raffle, simply post a comment on this article before December 15 at 23:59 p.m.. You have every right to disagree with me, this is not eliminatory.

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.