Review: DOTS 41913 Bracelet Mega Pack
Posted by Alice,
LEGO has dipped its toes into wearable constructables a few times in the past, most notably with Clikits, which came out when I was the perfect age for them, but they were not very 'LEGO like'.
Its latest product, DOTS, has returned to LEGO system. The bracelet bands have studs that connect with standard LEGO tiles so you could say that they are more 'authentic LEGO'.
Up until now we've only had DOTS bracelets in individual foil packs but now we have 41913 Bracelet Mega Pack!
The box
The box art for this set is colourful and decorative. The side slips show a variety of 1x1 printed tile pieces but you don't necessarily get the same ones shown on the box. So, if you were hoping for the pizza tile (like me) you may be disappointed. The back of the box says you get 20 surprise charms and 1 super rare, so I guess every box is different!
Again we have a nice plastic tray with lid but this time it's blue! The bracelets fit perfectly down the middle section and the tiles can be separated into each compartment.
The tiles are packed in bags of similar colours.
Different shades of each colour are mixed together, so I found it a bit fiddly to pick them out. You could of course choose the colour you're working with and spread them out in the middle section.
Bracelets and tiles
I like the pastel colour selection of the bracelet bands. Perhaps the purple one could've been the lighter lavender shade to match the pastel theme, although this purple looks nice too.
Here are the surprise charms I received in my box. The back of the box stated '20 surprise charms included and 1 super rare' but as you can see I have 22, so I guess one is spare?
My favourite is definitely the Llama. I like the BFF tiles as this set is perfect for making with and gifting to friends so it makes sense to make best friend bracelets together. However, as I said, I was disappointed that I didn't get a pizza tile!
The instructions provide lots of inspiration. I had fun recreating and playing with the designs. The tiles attach very securely, in fact it was hard to straighten them up because they don't move around very easily.
When the band is bent round you can see that the tiles become more separated.
By the time I got to the fifth bracelet (the light blue one in this case) I had run out of the colour pieces I wanted to use for the specific design but there were a lot of tiles left in other colours, so I changed it up a bit.
As you can see here, all five bracelets are complete and there are plenty of tiles left!
Wearing them
I did a wear test as I wondered whether the pieces would come off easily. It was fine all day until I knocked it on a kitchen cupboard and a tile flung off, never to be seen again, so it does make me wonder whether a child wearing it could easily lose pieces. Having said that, there are a lot of spares!
Here's what it looks like on my adult wrist. I have fairly small wrists, so I had it on the second tightest setting, or if I set it one looser it would move round more like a bangle.
Had a bit of fun recreating the box art with my mum to show off our pretty new bracelets!
Not to be outdone by Megan's dogs wearing the bracelets as collars, I persuaded my cat Tiggy to model them for me.
One bracelet was not quite large enough to go round her neck, so I connected two. She doesn't usually wear a collar, but she didn't seem to mind it too much. It was a miracle that she sat still and looked at the camera for long enough to have her photo taken!
However, I would not recommend leaving it on a cat because they climb everywhere and it's likely to get caught. Perhaps they work better as dog collars after all...
Overall thoughts
It's a good set to make with friends. Perhaps at a party or sleepover, friends could build best friend bracelets together and have something to take away at the end. Or, it's a good set if you just wanted to have a selection of different colour bracelets to match your outfits!
I think they work well for AFOLs too, you can make your own design with the mega pack so you can make it as bright and bold as you like, or just keep it simple to show off your love of LEGO.
At £19.99 / $24.99 / €24.99 for 300 pieces it seems considerably more expensive than other DOTS sets but let's not forget we're getting 5 pretty bracelets. It works out at £3.99 / $4.99 / €4.99 per bracelet which isn't too bad compared to 'regular' bracelets and there are endless ways to decorate, redesign and have lots of fun with a LEGO bracelet.
The foil packs are £4.99 / $4.99 / €5.99 for 33 pieces which works out a lot more expensive so the mega pack is definitely better value.
Thanks for LEGO for providing this set for review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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41 comments on this article
Tiggy models the collar very well.. so cute :)
I love the new pastel colours for these bracelets.
Tiggy is adorable! And as evidenced by the very last picture in the my bracelet review, dog models are very unimpressed with modeling after a while, especially when you don't have treats in your hand. I'm very impressed that you got Tiggy to model for you.
Your Cat is Adorable!!
Wow that cat is so realistic. To think it was built from lego...
Too bad about the pizza tile. But anyone else thinking that the pizza tile should be a quarter circle tile instead of a circular tile, so you can make a whole pizza on the bracelet? That would have been very cool.
Anyway, I'm not too interested in DOTS, being a teenager who doesn't have an interest in spare parts. Meh.
Thanks for the review, Alice! You're fitting right into the reviewing world. Before you know it, you'll be giving Huw a run for his money!
@Your_Future_President said:
"Wow that cat is so realistic. To think it was built from lego..."
I hate to break it to you, but...
Good review! I've actually been working on reviewing this for New Elementary myself.
At the risk of spoiling my own review, it would be rude of me to withhold the distribution rates of the "surprise charms". They're actually similar to the distribution of the tiles in the Extra Dots packs, but each one of these packs draws 11 tiles each from two assortments instead of one. And one of those assortments draws from three each of five "BFF" heart tiles and one "super rare" five-heart tiles, instead of from 16 different tiles. What this means is that the "super rare" tile is not actually any rarer than any other individual assorted tiles from this or the extra dots packs—it's just mixed in with the comparatively more common BFF hearts, instead of with an assortment of 15 other different tiles.
Seeing the small picture I thought: it looks like a real cat.
Is Tiggy included?
If you've ever noticed white hairs in my review photos, now you know the culprit...
At first glance I thought they were going to review a cat. I’m disappointed
@Bricktastic_builder said:
"Watch out! Huwbot heard the word “clikits!” Who knows, dots may be just the thing to get huwbot out of his clikit craze...
...or he might just start going crazy for all sorts of LEGO jewelry ;)
Great review!"
There once was a product called DOTS
Of parts it consisted of lots
They were modelled by Tiggy
She looked rather pretty
But the LEGO was claimed as Huwbot’s
@Zander said:
" @Bricktastic_builder said:
"Watch out! Huwbot heard the word “clikits!” Who knows, dots may be just the thing to get huwbot out of his clikit craze...
...or he might just start going crazy for all sorts of LEGO jewelry ;)
Great review!"
There once was a product called DOTS
Of parts it consisted of lots
They were modelled by Tiggy
She looked rather pretty
But the LEGO was claimed as Huwbot’s
"
Friend: What's your favorite song?
Me: It's complicated...
I demand a review of Tiggy the cat! xD
@Zander said:
"There once was a product called DOTS
Of parts it consisted of lots
They were modelled by Tiggy
She looked rather pretty
But the LEGO was claimed as Huwbot’s"
That's awesome! It's a shame there doesn't seem to be a better rhyming word than pretty, though :-( http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=tiggy&org2=l&org3=y&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl
Thanks Alice
I like your cat
@Lyichir said:
"Good review! I've actually been working on reviewing this for New Elementary myself.
At the risk of spoiling my own review, it would be rude of me to withhold the distribution rates of the "surprise charms". They're actually similar to the distribution of the tiles in the Extra Dots packs, but each one of these packs draws 11 tiles each from two assortments instead of one. And one of those assortments draws from three each of five "BFF" heart tiles and one "super rare" five-heart tiles, instead of from 16 different tiles. What this means is that the "super rare" tile is not actually any rarer than any other individual assorted tiles from this or the extra dots packs—it's just mixed in with the comparatively more common BFF hearts, instead of with an assortment of 15 other different tiles. "
Looking forward to reading your article. I haven't been able to find the complete series of random decorated tiles for this set anywhere. Bought two and ended up with ````` around 18 different ones = not all of them.
Meow!
It's Meowthra!
Tiggy is adorable!
The cat. The bracelet. This is just amazing! I love how that picture is the one in the newsfeed, this really made my day, thank you.
@twentythree said:
" @Lyichir said:
"Good review! I've actually been working on reviewing this for New Elementary myself.
At the risk of spoiling my own review, it would be rude of me to withhold the distribution rates of the "surprise charms". They're actually similar to the distribution of the tiles in the Extra Dots packs, but each one of these packs draws 11 tiles each from two assortments instead of one. And one of those assortments draws from three each of five "BFF" heart tiles and one "super rare" five-heart tiles, instead of from 16 different tiles. What this means is that the "super rare" tile is not actually any rarer than any other individual assorted tiles from this or the extra dots packs—it's just mixed in with the comparatively more common BFF hearts, instead of with an assortment of 15 other different tiles. "
Looking forward to reading your article. I haven't been able to find the complete series of random decorated tiles for this set anywhere. Bought two and ended up with ````` around 18 different ones = not all of them."
That's almost the full set! Only two missing. For my review I only got one set with 13 of the different possible tiles, but I was also able to verify what the other seven possible tiles would be. The maximum number of different tiles you could get in a single set would be 17 (assuming you got all five types of BFF hearts, the super rare tile, and 11 different ones of the second assortment). The nice thing is that the distribution rate for these assortments (which each draw 11 tiles out of an assortment of 16) is that any given set has a roughly 50% chance of a particular tile appearing at least once. And the wide variety of other colored tiles in this set makes buying another set a little less painful for dedicated DOTS collectors, despite having a much bigger price tag than the cheap Extra Dots packs.
Okay, now, I just want more Lego limericks.
@Slobrojoe said:
"Too bad about the pizza tile. But anyone else thinking that the pizza tile should be a quarter circle tile instead of a circular tile, so you can make a whole pizza on the bracelet? That would have been very cool."
A quarter pizza tile does exist outside of the DOTS theme. It's been around since 2017: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=25269pb003T=C
I always had an intuition that something was missing from this great site but could never quite put a finger on what it was. Now I know with crystal clarity what was missing: CATS. The natural habitat of the domestic feline is being surrounded by piles of logically organized Lego pieces, pawing these piles and returning them back to a state of whimsical disorder.
NEED MORE CATS ON BRICKSET
_I_ wouldn't suggest leaving it on a cat because they're liable to resent you while you're sleeping. That cat looks like it has just sighed conspicuously.
@Slobrojoe:
There already is one. They made it for Friends in 2017, when they did a pizzeria and a pizza van (how those girls can still look so anorexic is beyond me). The toppings appear to be black olives, mushrooms, green bell peppers, and basil leaves (how those girls can actually keep that pizza down is beyond me).
I give the cat 10/10 - purrfect!
Beautiful cat. She has lovely colours.
My childhood cat used to bat my Fabuland figures around and then whizz them under the sofa and I had to get a long ruler to rescue them.
Scala had jewelry in 1979-80, long before Clikits. Though there was a polybag (3900) branded as Scala in 2000 which looks to be a proof-of-concept for Clikits.
I really enjoyed this review, thank you. I have fallen totally in love with the DOTS range. I Just love all the pretty colours and patterns. I have purchased a few bracelets and the jewellery stand, which I won’t be using as a jewellery stand but will be using the pieces for enhancing my family birthday table decoration. I like the idea of bordering an MOC with a mosaic pattern.
It would be good if the title of this article had “DOTS” in it as this article doesn’t come up when searching for DOTS news.
The Cat is Huwbot
Excellent idea for a collar, but my dog, Harry, would hate it!
Could I suggest a specific article that experiments with different colour backgrounds to determine which one the cat stands out from best ? I'm afraid that (predominantly) white on white makes it rather difficult to pick out the cat ;-) ? I know you've done experiments like this in the past, Huw !
@Huw
Slight revision to the @Zander limerick:
There once was a product called Dots.
Of parts, it did contain lots.
T’was modeled by a cat,
Who quite patiently sat,
But the LEGO was claimed as Huwbot’s.
^ Perfect! :-)
@WhiteDove said:
"It would be good if the title of this article had “DOTS” in it as this article doesn’t come up when searching for DOTS news. "
Thanks, added!
Thanks everyone, I love the limericks!
I’ll pass on all your kind words to Tiggy, she’s turned into a diva now she’s found fame :)
@Alice said:
" @WhiteDove said:
"It would be good if the title of this article had “DOTS” in it as this article doesn’t come up when searching for DOTS news. "
Thanks, added!
Thanks everyone, I love the limericks!
I’ll pass on all your kind words to Tiggy, she’s turned into a diva now she’s found fame :)
"
What cat isn't already a diva??
I saw the cat at a glance and I was like "Wow, that's a hugely detailed brick-built cat MOC", superbly done
@Your_Future_President said:
"Wow that cat is so realistic. To think it was built from lego..."
Tiggy UCS set, no less!
I showed this review to my seven year old daughter because she has five of the bracelets already (loves the unicorn one especially) and Tiggy looks a lot like our Kitty. Not only is she now insisting we get her the Mega Pack but the poor cat seems to have gone into hiding ..... Incidentally, was pleased to find THAT rainbow tile in one of the bracelet packs ....
This is a pretty good set for girls especially...and for pets!