Review : LEGO Disney 43179 Mickey Mouse & Minnie Mouse Buildable Characters

Today we are quickly interested in the LEGO Disney set 43179 Mickey Mouse & Minnie Mouse Buildable Characters, a large box of 1739 pieces which will be sold for 179.99 € from July 1st and which allows to assemble two emblematic characters from the Disney universe, Mickey and Minnie.

This new exhibition product is intended according to the box and the official description for a hyperactive adult clientele anxious to relax while playing LEGO and the first opinions on this set have been very divided since its announcement with on one side the fans of the Disney universe who find these two models very successful and the other fans who remain a little dubious or even frankly disappointed. And that's without counting on the public price of the product which seems to him to be almost unanimous: it's too expensive.

The good news that will add a dose of user-friendliness when assembling the product: LEGO provides two independent instruction booklets, Mickey on one side and Minnie with accessories on the other, which allows a two-person assembly to be relax as a couple or with friends. Please note, these are not figurines in the true sense of the word.

The two characters, here directly inspired by those seen in the episodes of the animated series Mickey Mouse broadcast since 2013 and which reintroduces "classic" versions of the characters, are in fact statues which have no articulation and which are permanently anchored on their base. It is still possible to change the direction of the arms by modifying the orientation of the two black curved pieces that form the limbs and to turn the hands, but that's it.

We start with the pretty plinths in the form of a photo negative or cinema film on which the two characters sit. The staging is very interesting, some will undoubtedly see characters who come to life when they leave their 2D support. As for the innards of Mickey and Minnie, the interior of the two pedestals based on frames Technic is full of colored parts, which in addition to facilitating the positioning of certain elements makes the instructions on a black background more readable.

The two large white plaques with pad-printed signatures then add a little collector's touch to the two statues and dress the surface bordered with bands, perfectly reproducing the perforation visible on the films.

The effect is obtained by inserting smoked glass in windows and it is really very successful. These 48 panes are the parts shown as using the new color that joins the LEGO palette: 363 Transparent Brown with Opalescense. The result is more blue than brown.

The two figures are firmly anchored on their support, which ensures the stability of each of the statues whose heaviest element is the head. Mickey's right leg is the most successful, it consists of two of the ten new pieces curved at 45 ° and smooth also used for the arms. The other three legs are more classic, they are straight with parts threaded on a flexible axis.

We can't escape the usual barrels used to symbolize something other than what they really are and two red elements form the bottom of Mickey's shorts. There are also two barrels at the base of the necks of the two statues, but these will be hidden during the insertion of the head.

The inside of the torso is a stack of colored pieces on which a few sub-assemblies are attached which are responsible for bringing a little roundness to the two models. If Mickey's shorts and Minnie's skirt are quite successful, the upper torso is in my opinion much less with angles that are a little too pronounced which produce a "pear" effect.

The hands of both mice are very well done with three fixed fingers, a movable thumb and the outer layer of the glove which is pad printed. Be careful during assembly, in the copy that I received one of these four pad-printed parts has a printing defect with a white spot.

To be honest, I'm one of those people who find these two figures a bit too rough to be really attractive. We obviously recognize Mickey and Minnie, difficult to confuse them with other characters, but all this is still too stylized to convince me. Up to the neck, we can admit that the designer did quite well. Above, it is much less obvious with a too angular rendering which gives me the impression of dealing with characters wearing a mask on the lower face.

The two heads are built on the same principle as the torsos with a stack of colored parts on which we attach sub-assemblies which try to give a little roundness to the whole. The remaining spaces are filled in with half-dome quarters in two different sizes and the nose is the result of a somewhat odd assembly that uses a white version of the piece already seen in red in the LEGO Star Wars set. 75247 Rebel A-Wing Starfighter and which made the heyday of the range Cars in 2017. This piece is also present in yellow on the back of Mickey's shoes.

At the end of the nose of the two characters, there is a copy of the helmet Space Classic in black plugged into a neutral head. LEGO also recalled when announcing the product that this helmet had not been produced since 1987. It's up to you to see which way you prefer to put it, the opening downwards if you place the two statues on a chest of drawers or upwards so that your friends will notice it and you can tell them this anecdote before going to dinner. The ears are made up of an assembly of two semi-circles with visible tenons fixed on a Ball joint. A few Tiles would not have been too much to smooth the inner surface of these ears a little, which as it is, seem a little thin to me.

From the front and from afar, the two characters are almost illusory and the whole will easily find its place on a shelf. Some approximations can be justified by invoking an "artistic" bias or the limitations of the LEGO concept, but in my opinion you have to be really lenient to consider these "interpretations" as faithful to the reference models. It is moreover by placing the two mice in profile that the difficulty of adapting round shapes with square bricks is felt a little.

The Minnie statue shares a lot of techniques and internal sub-assemblies with Mickey except obviously for the attributes specific to this character like the pumps or the skirt. The skirt, composed in particular on the sides of large pad-printed red windshields, is rather successful. I am less convinced by the pumps which are really crude if you look at them closely. Once again, it will be necessary to contemplate the model as a whole and from far enough away not to focus on certain sub-assemblies that are a little too rough to really convince.

Like Mickey Mouse, the mouse's gaze is a big half Dish in pad-printed bi-injection which covers the upper half of the face. LEGO had the good taste of pad printing the eyes on a white piece, thus avoiding the usual color shifts. Unfortunately, the eyes are not as deep black as their outline which is tinted throughout. Too bad, even if from afar, it passes.

To accompany the two mice, LEGO provides some accessories to assemble in the box: A vintage camera in Reddish brown on its tripod with new rounded corners, a cigar box guitar to a rope seen in Mickey's hands on many illustrations, a bouquet of flowers for Minnie and a book whose cover and interior are decorated with four stickers.

I would have preferred a picnic basket and a cinema camera, but we will do with these generally very convincing accessories that allow you to place items in the hands of the characters to boost the presentation a little.

In short, Mickey and Minnie or Michel and Monique, tastes and colors are indisputable and it's up to you to see if these slightly angular LEGO versions of curvaceous characters deserve your money.

To try to end on a positive note, I think the staging of the two characters is really effective and the props provided are very successful. However, I am not really convinced by the aesthetics of the two heads or by the prohibitive price of this exhibition product. But I'm not the ideal customer for this type of set: Mickey and Minnie scared me more than anything when I was young and I preferred the service ducks like Scrooge, Donald, Daisy, Gontran and the Castors Juniors.

This LEGO version will not change my mind about the slightly disturbing side of these two mice, quite the contrary, and so I don't really want to display these two smirking statues in a corner knowing that 'they watch me all the time, especially in the dark.

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