Review: 40643 Jade Rabbit
Posted by Huw,
The noble and benevolent Jade Rabbit lives on the moon and prepares the elixir of life for immortals, according to Chinese folklore.
This set, 40643 Jade Rabbit, has therefore been produced primarily for the Chinese market but thanks to LEGO's no regional exclusive sets policy it can also be purchased in the west, and is now available at LEGO.com.
Summary
40643 Jade Rabbit, 288 pieces.
£17.99 / $19.99 / €19.99 | 6.2p/6.9c/6.9c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
An attractive display model of the Chinese folklore character
- Elaborately embellished display plinth
- None
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The titular being sits on an elaborate plinth -- a snow skin moon cake -- decorated with an interestingly shaped tree, mountains, rivers and clouds.
Parts-wise, the most interesting pieces in it are five 1x2 curved slopes in transparent light blue, which are appearing in see-thorough colours for the first time this year.
A huge disc that looks like the sun but is actually a bright yellow moon shines over the scene while the rabbit mixes up the elixir in a barrel.
As is often the case with sets designed for the Chinese market you get a sense that no expense has been spared. A lot of pieces and small details have been crammed onto the cake, and it looks very good as a result.
The front quadrants of the base are hinged and opening them reveals a pair of minifig-scale rabbits and what is apparently an egg yolk, not a setting sun as I had originally thought.
LEGO has produced umpteen lagomorphs this year, which is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, and this one is quite cute. As usual, though, the grey ball joint pieces detract from its overall appearance.
This is an attractive set that probably won't mean much to many people in the West, but if you have a collection of Chinese seasonal sets this will make an excellent addition to it.
The 288-piece set is available at LEGO.com priced at $19.99, £17.99, €19.99.
87 likes
31 comments on this article
Those minifigure scale rabbits are a nice surprise. They don't show up in the parts inventory list at all though, weird.
Cute.
What does this stick represent?
There is a recent-ish family-friendly animated movie, "Over the Moon", that I believe is currently out on Netflix that gives an entertaining (if modified) telling of some of the lore behind things like this if folks are interested.
@mafon2 said:
"Cute.
What does this stick represent?"
I assumed it was a stirring stick.
Thanks for adding the lagomorph tag, @Huw ! Will you be applying it to older rabbit sets too, so I know which ones to get?
I picked up the set yesterday, it looks fantastic and will go great with the other rabbit sets from this year.
Thanks Huw, my new band name is "Umpteen Lagomorphs".
Weirdest Duracell advert ever.
@Huw For future reviews... can you have an alternative photo booth background (even gray / darker) for white / bright sets like this? It is really hard to see the model silhouette in the photos here, especially in the browser notification thumbnail. It might be possible to tweak in post processing, e.g. it looks more clear on my phone than my laptop, but still doesn't really stand out.
That being said, I think this is the first and only time I have seen this problem in a review, so it might not be worth the trouble. Even the official white-background-photo from LEGO has this problem... but strangely they did a better (but not great) job with 31133, where the lighting on the set gives it a bit more contrast.
@Mvives , fair point. I've switched to a lighter grey which I prefer overall but I agree that for sets like this a darker one might have been better.
@mafon2 said:
"Cute.
What does this stick represent?"
It could be a straw. Gotta make sure the stuff tastes good before handing it off to the gods.
Was Lagomorph a tag before now and I just never noticed, or was it introduced purely for that joke?
Might I suggest that when Brickset reviewers are not fully aware of the cultural material a set has been designed in reference to, that they consult the LEGO website so as not to embarrass themselves. Multiple mistakes in this review could have been easily avoided had the author ( @Huw ) taken the time to read the product description at lego.com. I'm sorry to say that it comes off at best as lacking the usual rigour shown in other reviews, and at worst as borderline cultural insensitivity.
I really like these small decorative sets. I had no idea it was anything to do with a traditional festival when I bought it, but it does mean that I've inadvertently completed my 'Umpteen Lagomorphs of 2023' collection!
@Rimefang: That's to preserve the surprise.
I must admit that I am not culturally sensitive enough to know about the lore behind this set, but it looks good, seems fair value and in any case makes for a good parts pack.
Also, there can never be too many lagomorph sets...
@WesterBricks said:
"Thanks Huw, my new band name is "Umpteen Lagomorphs"."
That sounds like a '60's or '70s rock band name, akin to Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship, Buffalo Springfield, or Three Dog Night.
Anyway, with a name like Umpteen Lagomorphs, your album sales are going to multiply like... well, you know!
Don't you mean LEGOmorphs?
Seems a bit higher priced to the other vignettes but then looking at the parts and the build, it does have a fair bit more special pieces, so understandable here.
For example 40648 had 6 parts in 16-24x
quantity which obviously makes it easier to produce.
Still, this is a nice build and still a fair parts pack. I do like the decent amount of Dark Orange regular bricks , transparent bits , hinges/turntable, barrel, and plant pieces etc.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @WesterBricks said:
"Thanks Huw, my new band name is "Umpteen Lagomorphs"."
That sounds like a '60's or '70s rock band name, akin to Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship, Buffalo Springfield, or Three Dog Night."
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
@mafon2 said:
"Cute.
What does this stick represent?"
Even rabbits need to smoke sometime.
@Pekingduckman said:
" @mafon2 said:
"Cute.
What does this stick represent?"
Even rabbits need to smoke sometime."
It's obviously a joss stick!
@mafon2 said:
"Cute.
What does this stick represent?"
I thought it was making mochi, tho that is I believe a Japanese thing. In Japanese its Rabbits pounding Mochi on the moon, not a man in the moon face.
Isn't the stick a pestle and the barrel his mortar.
"When the moon burps, Jupiter looks on, disgusted."
@SpaceCadet01 - Please spare us that "cultural insensitivity" nonsense. Remember, that's NOT about "protecting" or "respecting" cultures, but rather appears to be part of a neo-modernist agenda to make everything related to culture, ethnicity and history so incredibly sensitive that no-one dares touch it with a ten-foot pole, thereby making it a taboo and eventually erasing it from our collective memories.
You may of course say that one should do proper research when writing a review, OTOH I don't think you could expect the average customer to do this. Has Lego done any effort to include any information about these Chinese traditions in the instructions, as you'd expect in other sets based on real-life subjects like Architecture and Speed Champions? If not, maybe the blame should be placed there rather than at a reviewer who didn't jump through ALL the required "PC" hoops.
Cuter set than I had thought. Never a bad thing to have another inexpensive set on my want list in case I have to squeak past a minimum purchase limit!
Lego only started out with two Lagomorphs but they were left alone together in a room and... well, you know the rest.
@omnius said:
"Lego only started out with two Lagomorphs but they were left alone together in a room and... well, you know the rest."
HaHa
@axeleng said:
" @SpaceCadet01 - Please spare us that "cultural insensitivity" nonsense. ..."
While I do not wholly agree with the first part of your response, this comments thread is hardly an appropriate arena for such a discussion so will not engage further with that line of debate.
I do find some concord, however, with the comments regarding LEGO's general failure to include accompanying information regarding the real-life context of many of its sets. Still, when reading such reviews as this, it is reasonable to expect that the reviewer has done some research into the product, even if that is just reading the product description page on lego.com. Assuming that all the aspects of a set are self-explanatory would certainly not satisfy many of the readers of this website, and is not an approach apparent in many of @Huw 's other reviews (e.g., https://brickset.com/article/95668/review-42157-john-deere-948l-ii-skidder ).
Readers expect that the more prolific Brickset reviewers ( @Huw , @CapnRex101 , amongst others) are reliably informed of the subject matter of the sets they review, and it is because this set has a specific cultural theme that is all the more necessary. It is not unreasonable to expect that the reviewer is at least aware of some of the details of the set, just as for example a reviewer of Star Wars products would be expected to know a little about the characters included.
@Huw as a final note, I find the way in which this review was later edited to be slightly underhand. There should be a brief comment towards the start of this review which acknowledges that the review in its present form is an edited version of the original.
@SpaceCadet01 said:
" @axeleng said:
" @SpaceCadet01 - Please spare us that "cultural insensitivity" nonsense. ..."
While I do not wholly agree with the first part of your response, this comments thread is hardly an appropriate arena for such a discussion so will not engage further with that line of debate.
I do find some concord, however, with the comments regarding LEGO's general failure to include accompanying information regarding the real-life context of many of its sets. Still, when reading such reviews as this, it is reasonable to expect that the reviewer has done some research into the product, even if that is just reading the product description page on lego.com. Assuming that all the aspects of a set are self-explanatory would certainly not satisfy many of the readers of this website, and is not an approach apparent in many of @Huw 's other reviews (e.g., https://brickset.com/article/95668/review-42157-john-deere-948l-ii-skidder ).
Readers expect that the more prolific Brickset reviewers ( @Huw , @CapnRex101 , amongst others) are reliably informed of the subject matter of the sets they review, and it is because this set has a specific cultural theme that is all the more necessary. It is not unreasonable to expect that the reviewer is at least aware of some of the details of the set, just as for example a reviewer of Star Wars products would be expected to know a little about the characters included.
@Huw as a final note, I find the way in which this review was later edited to be slightly underhand. There should be a brief comment towards the start of this review which acknowledges that the review in its present form is an edited version of the original."
I appreciate you so much. You make me seem like pleasant company.
@SpaceCadet01 said:
" Readers expect that the more prolific Brickset reviewers ( @Huw , @CapnRex101 , amongst others) are reliably informed of the subject matter of the sets they review, and it is because this set has a specific cultural theme that is all the more necessary. It is not unreasonable to expect that the reviewer is at least aware of some of the details of the set, just as for example a reviewer of Star Wars products would be expected to know a little about the characters included.
@Huw as a final note, I find the way in which this review was later edited to be slightly underhand. There should be a brief comment towards the start of this review which acknowledges that the review in its present form is an edited version of the original."
You make some fair points. I initially intrepeted the set as I saw it and did not think that I needed to research it much given the subject matter. I did not consider that the sun-like disc in the sky was actually the moon given the rabbit lives on it, for example!
It's difficult to know how and whether to point out changes to reviews following additional information: it does not really benefit those reading it for the first time, who were never aware it was ever different.
Anyway, thank you for your input.