Review: 21041 Great Wall of China
Posted by Huw,
21041 Great Wall of China is something of a departure for the Architecture range in that it doesn't replicate an entire structure and consists mainly of landscape rather than a man-made building.
It's also the first that's been designed to be purchased in multiples and displayed end to end.
Box and contents
As is usual for Architecture sets it's packaged in a flip-top box and the perfect-bound instructions provide information about the history and construction of the wall, in English and Chinese.
Unusually, though, the parts are not predominately white and tan. Most of the large parts are dark green, many of them slopes, including for the first time 2 x 2 x 3, of which there are 13.
Construction
Before the wall itself can be built the surrounding terrain needs to be constructed. It takes shape quickly and easily and, as you can see, is almost solid.
What struck me as odd, though, is that it's virtually symmetrical, particularly the taller hill. One or two slopes differ from one side to the other but not many, and not enough in my opinion given that terrain is usually more random.
Printed tiles are provided for the base, as usual, one in English and one in Chinese. The instructions suggest to use just one but I put one on either side.
The completed model
The wall itself is built in small sections that use clips, bars and hinges to produce the angled and sloped connections, A ball joint is used to mount the lower tower on the hill.
From a distance it looks pretty good but look closely and you'll see a few unsightly gaps here and there. Of course, it's the best we can expect given the squareness of the parts.
The studs-up terrain looks OK but is a bit plain and not up to the standard we are used to seeing in MOCs on Brothers Brick these days.
As you can see above, the wall itself sits centrally on the hilltop so it's possible to butt multiple sets next to each other to make a longer section of wall. The base has been designed to facilitate this: the ends can be removed easily to leave the hillside flush with the end.
Unfortunately I only have the one set to can't try it for myself.
Verdict
I can't say that it's one of my favourite Architecture sets but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It captures the 'essence' of the wall well while not being based on any particular section of it.
It's a much quicker and less challenging build than others, but it still looks great on display and probably even more impressive when you have several.
I have no doubt it'll be hugely popular in LEGO's largest emerging market and that's probably one reason why it's been made.
I believe it'll be available from shop.LEGO.com on 1st June; I'm not sure what the price will be yet.
Thanks to LEGO for providing the set for this review, which is an expression of my own opinions.
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26 comments on this article
Coming August 1 to Shop at Home in the U.S. for $49.99.
Thanks -- and 1st June, £44.99 in the UK, it seems.
It's a shame they didn't include Technic bricks on the end to clip multiple sets together. I don't see any other method to keep the sets aligned.
Thanks for the review, Huw. As always, great photography. I like the set and all that dark green.
Huw, two questions: Are those clear pieces representing water? Also, can you tell us if this is the first time in an Architecture set that a portion of the base can (purposefully) be removed? I also can't think of any other set that can be combined with a duplicate. I think that's clever.
Very disappointed that it doesn't replicate the entire structure. Was also hoping to be able to see it from space.
For a set so small it’s got a lot of great detail, the architecture theme continues to impress.
Nice review, how many of them can I get away with before the wife starts to grumble
^ra226
Good luck with seeing a lego set from space
May need little brother to lend me some cash for this one
How about a Great Wall of Trump next? Lol
@LuvsLEGO_Cool_J, yes and yes.
@tomahawker, that does seem to be a missed opportunity but they can be connected together easily using your own 2x4 plate.
Thanks for the review Huw!
If on the Statue of Liberty I easily found 10 obvious mistakes , here is a better case. I didn't like, the same as you, the same left-right landscape (because of this is a repetitive building at that stage) and the incredible gap in the walkway in the tower (at least here they cover it with the upper floors.
If you want people to have a view of the 2+ combined you can publish the picture from the back of the box where they suggest it.
I combined 2 of them and like @tomahawker said, it is visible the gap between the 2 sets if you only put them closer. So I united them with a 2X4 Plate on the base and a 2x4 Brick under the walkway (both invisible). But like this unfortunately because of well-known tensions of LEGO large buildings, now the end of each sets are raised 4mm from the table.
Including in the building instructions everyone is announced that "visibe from space" is a myth .
Some clever person should calculate, based on the apparent scale of the model, how many sets we'd need to build to represent the entire wall. I'm going to estimate "lots".
I also built it recently and found the build of the terrain a bit plain. However I really enjoyed building the towers and I think they were done very well in that scale and it is good we got a building from someplace else in the world.
One think I noticed in this set and the Statue of Liberty was that the instructions quality is inferior to that of previous Architecture sets. The paperback and the pages are somewhat thinner than they used to be. I checked some past sets and learnt that this was already the case with the Guggenheim Museum one. The Capitol seems to be the last set to have the better booklet quality.
Anyway I think this round of sets was one of the best so far.
With multiple sets you could ... oh, I dunno, crazy idea but just throwing it out there ... build sections that are different to those in the instructions. This being LEGO 'n' all. Just sayin'...
@Polynices: By my calculations you would need 314,295 kits to recreate the full scale.
1:281 ratio
30 stud model wall segment length
4.5m rela wall width
2 stud model wall width
21,196km total real wall length
@ra226: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html
Cool concept but doesn't get me excited about a set as much as many of the past sets. Will still definitely obtain one though.
The great wall is around 8800km, not 21k km. I think your math is off a bit geodav ??
^ The section built during the Ming Dynasty is that long, but the overall structure - including trenches, mounds and branch structures - is well over 20,000 kilometres. There's some debate among the experts, a bit like with the lengths of the Amazon and Nile, but "over 20,000km" is generally accepted.
By my calculations ...
The set is 32 studs long and each stud equates to about 3m (based on a wall thickness of 6m), so let's say that the set represents a 100m long section. To build the entire wall to scale would therefore need 200 thousand sets (20,000km÷100m).
Of course, that's based on 20,000km of actual wall, rather than the mixed bag of walls, trenches, earth mounds and indeterminate lumps that make up the overall structure.
Anybody else care to have a go?!
:-D
wouldn't the written language simply be "Chinese" not "Mandarin?" thought the written was the same, it's the spoken that is different (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.)
otherwise nice review and yeah still wavering on buying this one
OK< thank you. I didn't know that.
This one looks great, but might have to get the statue of Liberty instead. Nice, detailed review!
I was thinking this would be a great parts purchase, but not for $50. I've never been a big fan of the architecture sets, but this does look really good I'll have to admit.
I just saw the set today in a Swiss retail store for CHF 59.90 (+/- 51 €)
@GeoDav, @Polynices
The set does not seem to represent correctly the towers/wall length proportion (towers clearly being too close together) meaning, the number of sets required - counted based on wall length would not match one based on the number of towers.
Also, no record remains for the total number of towers in the wall while its majority was still present.
Surviving parts of the wall are easier to account for and according to some unverified info from the Web (hehe, https://answers.travelchinaguide.com/question/286659.htm ) the number of towers still present sums up to just over 200. Meaning: just over a 100 sets should suffice to rebuild _now - existing_ parts of the Great Wall.
Enjoy the building! ;)