Hey, today I'll be taking a look at the 2021 LEGO City 60304 Road Plates set that offers the cheapest way to obtain some new for 2021 Road Plates replacing the Base Plates. This set has 112 pieces and retails for £17.99 / $19.99 giving a price per part of 16p / 17p.

Let's take a look at this new system of plates by starting with the actual plates.

Build

In this set you get 4 large road plates and a smaller crossing plate. Starting with the four large plate, they are 16x16 wide and two plates high in dark grey. The top of the plate is tiled off apart from four 2x4 studs that are resected in for a 2x4 tile plus around the edges there is space for two 1x4 plates on each side which you can use to attach plates to other road plates building your road layouts.

In the 2x4 and 1x4 empty spaces, there are a few tiles to fill them in depending on what you want. Firstly you get a total of 10 2x4 dark grey tiles with a white line printed to separate traffic and make lanes, there are 19 unprinted 2x4 dark grey tiles to connect plates and also fill in any other tiles in the plates where you don't need a white line also they can be used to connect some accessory bits which I'll talk about in a bit to the road plates. Additionally, you also get 8 1x4 dark grey tiles to fill in any remaining studded areas in the road plates.

Finally, there is a smaller road plate which is the same as the other one but just half the size with 8x16 size and space for just one 2x4 tile with 6 places for 1x4 tiles to connect plates together. The main difference to this plate apart from its size is that is has printing for a Zebra Crossing or Junction point depending on what you want to use it for. This plate has options to add four 2x4 pyramid pieces which are 2 plates high that represent some speed bumps approaching the crossing point.

In total your get 5 plates which you can use to make a few layouts with such as a T Junction, Straight and you could also try a Crossroad, but sadly it is quite hard to make a Curved layout as there are not really many realistic options for a Curve plate using the pieces in this set

Other Builds

Alongside the road plates there are some other bits and bobs to decorate your city's road layout with. Let's start with the important bits for road infrastructures.

There are two identical street lamps that have glow in the dark features. The lights are built using a large light grey pole piece with 1x2 studs at one end and a single studs towards the other end. The end with stud is placed at the bottom into a black clip piece which is attacked to a 2x2 plate with two studs on end and a clip on the other on a 4x4 green plate. At the top of the light there are a couple clipped plates to give some pose ability with the angle that the light can be placed with a 1x4 dark blue printed tile printed with a solar panel. At the end of that tile is an awesome 1x2 glow in the dark tile which is activated when light is shone at it for a while and works pretty well in a dark environment.

On thing, I don't like with the lights are that they use clip pieces in colours that stand out for the wrong reasons, the majority of the light is light grey, but the bottom clip is black and the top is dark grey which doesn't look good imo, would have preferred at least the top clip being dark grey as it would have looked much better.

Next there are two identical traffic lights that are built in a style commonly seen in most of Europe than in the US. Build on top of a light grey pole piece with a 2x2 wide base, on the top of this piece is a 1x1 studded area. The actual Traffic Light is built using 3 1x1 bricks with stud on one side in black with a transparent 1x1 round tile in the typical traffic light order, green at the bottom, then yellow and finally red. Topping off the light is a 1x1 tooth plate piece in black. The traffic lights are also on a 4x4 green plate each.

Now, you also get two road signs which imo are quite nice to have as they are not as common as other parts of this set. There are two variants of signs, a Pedestrian Crossing sign and a 50 MPH (though can represent KPH). Each sign is on the same base piece as the traffic lights.

The sign piece for the Crossing Sign is the size of a 2x2 tile, at the back with a clip to attach it to a pole. The printing on the sign is a LEGO-fied version of a common Crossing Sign seen in most parts of Europe with a blue background with a white triangle showing. Inside that triangle there is black printing for a minifigure crossing a crosswalk. This sign piece only comes in this set and the more expensive Shopping Street set from this year. The Crosswalk sign is on a 8x4 green plate and attaches to the crosswalk road piece with a printed 2x4 tile with the white line.

Then the 50 MPH Road Sign is the size of a round 2x2 tile, like the other sign it has a clip to attach it to a pole. The printing on the sign has a red boarder with black text showing 50. This piece has been seen in a couple other sets but isn't too common. The 50 sign is on a 4x4 green plate.

Accessories

The final bits of accessories are some decorative ones, this set includes a couple botanical pieces to brighten up your road sides. Each bit of botanical bits are on a 8x4 green plate and tbh are basically the same with a minor colour swaps.

Each 8x4 plate has a small green tree piece which uses the plants from plants material. Then each plate has a small flower on a light green leaf. The one flower uses red flowers and the other uses bright orange.

At one edge of each 8x4 plate with the botanical accessories on are a few dark grey tiles to smoothly be added on the roadside connecting to a road plate.

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Overall

Well the big question is, is this new road system better than the old baseplates? Well my opinion is yes, but it does have a couple flaws, the largest being the lack of the ability to create curves in your road layouts without having to use pieces from other sets.

The actual plates are good and can see them being popular and more popular than the old plates even if they don't work perfectly with the Modular Buildings. The added accessories such as road signs, streetlights, traffic lights and botanical accessories are welcome additions, especially the hard to find Crosswalk and 50mph road signs.

Are these worth £17.99 or $19.99?, well for what you get it's not too bad though I'd personally wait for a good price, I managed to score two for half price during a crazy sale at Amazon. It will be perfect for any LEGO City display even those with the old plates.

Pros - Crosswalk, Road Signs, Great Accessories, Fair price for what you're getting

Cons - Lack of curves, streetlights using multiple colours of clips

Hello, today I'll be taking a look at one of the Summer 2021 LEGO Harry Potter sets. I'll be looking at the cheapest of the wave, the 76386 Hogwarts: Polyjuice Potion Mistake that retails for £17.99 / $19.99 and releases June 1st everywhere but North America where it releases August 1st 2021. This set contains 217 pieces giving a price per part of 8p/ 9c.

This is one of six 20th Anniversary sets from the Summer 2021 wave that includes a golden minifigure and the chocolate frog cards. Let's start by talking about these.

Anniversary Bonuses

To celebrate 20 years of LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO have made a few bonus pieces and figures for the 20th Anniversary sets. This set includes 2 Chocolate Frog Cards and a Golden Harry Potter figure

The chocolate frog cards vary set to set, there are 16 to collect. In mine, I got Bertie Bott and Rowena Ravenclaw. These tiles are all printed on purple 2x2 tiles with either silver, gold, bronze or yellow designs around one of the 16 characters who could be on the card. These are randomly inserted in each 20th Anniversary set.

Now the Golden Harry Potter has Harry's usual hair piece but printed in pearl gold, same as his legs and wand. The two fascinating pieces are his face print which is the same as Harry's normal face but printed on a pearl gold head with dark yellow print. His torso has his outfit on front with little specs of sparkle printed on alongside his tie, house emblem and some creases but on the back there is print for a 20 with the following text “20 YEARS LEGO HARRY POTTER”. Finally, Harry is placed on a pearl gold 3x4 minifigure stand.

Minifigures

Now to the main set, there are three standard minifigures for Hermione, Ron and Harry Potter. Let's go in that order.

Before we go into specifics let's get the lower body bits done as all three use the same pieces. For the torso there is print for some Slytherine robes with the green and grey tie and grey jumper popping out from some bits underneath. This print continues to the back with a hood on the robes. They all use unprinted black legs as well.

Hermione uses a commonly used face that she has used previously, the face has a simple smile on one side and a more frightened expression on the other side. She also uses her usual brown hair piece, but you can transform Hermione and all the other figures. So how, well take her hair off and add this new for 2021 Cat Hermione hat piece that from the back looks the same but from the front has some cat ears and yellow eyes with light brown markings underneath and around a concerned mouth expression. This piece goes over Hermione's head piece.

Now Ron Weasley, he has a new for Summer 2021 head piece with a worried panicked face print on one side with a wide open mouth in shock, horror or surprise. We'll get to the other side of this head piece in a bit. He uses the common dark orange hair piece Ron has used since the 2018 relaunch. Now if you turn his head around and add common short hair piece in dark brown you get a minifigure for Vincent Crabble. His head piece is on the other side and a small mouth which also appears surprised but more confused.

Finally, Harry Potter. Harry uses a more angry and unhappy face which too is exclusive to this set because of the reverse piece, which I'll get to in a sec. He uses his common Harry hair piece in black. Now turning his head piece around and replacing his hair for a quiff short hair piece in dark brown you get a minifigure of Gregory Goyle, his reverse head piece has a confused looking expression with raised eyebrows.

Accessories

There's a mixture of small accessory pieces in this set, each figure has a wand piece you get a Black one for Harry, dark brown for Ron and light brown for Hermione. You also get some potions made using some round bricks in neon green colours with a golden 1x1 stud on top. You also get a polyjuice cup, the same used in the CMFs from 2020, but instead of being the orange used in the CMFs it is now a dark neon green in the clear cup. This piece is exclusive in this colour to this set as of now.

Finally, you get a small pot to make potions in, this is made using a simple pearl gun metal grey pot on a black 2x2 round jumper with a pearl silver spoon piece in the pot.

Build

Now the star of the show, these are the toilets of hogwarts. Let's start by looking at the one main play feature for this set, which needs another set to work effectively.

First and tbh the main feature is that you can open the middle sink upwards and there is a 2x4 hole space that when stacked with the largest set of the wave, the 76389, were if stacked you will fall onto a slide that is included in the other set

Now to the builds visual features. Starting with the structure, the walls of this set use mostly tan bricks, plates and large wall pieces. From the back there is a small window using a 1x2x2 window piece in brown with a back lattice window insert included. Above this window there are two sand green cheese slopes with two little 1x1 pyramid pieces in tan on either side of the two cheese slopes. The wall has a few large pieces used to make it including two 1x4x5 panels with a window slit inside with a rounded top. Dotted around in the wall are a couple 1x2 nougat brick bricks which adds some texture to what would have been a boring exterior.

On to the sides of the structure, on the left side (from the front of the build) there are 4 receiving holes for technic pins to connect with other Hogwarts set from this 2021 wave and an archway. Moving to the other side, there is a large archway piece which uses a 1x6x6 archway piece in tan, next to that there are two technic pins to connect to another set in the wave.

Moving inside, the floor uses three 4x6 sand blue plates and a 2x2 sand blue plate, leaving the 2x4 whole to go to the slide in the 76389 as mentioned above, at the front are 7 1x2 grid pieces that represent drainage for any water that might get on the floor from the sinks, or event the toilet.

On the left of the build inside is a small toilet stall which is covered with a brown wall and a stable door to cover the stall when someone is inside, this is in dark brown. Inside the stall is a simple toilet build using an inverted dome for the toilet bowl and connected to the wall with a 1x1 plate with studs on side there are a few white pieces with a lever for the toilet back. The total size of the stall is 3x3 so can comfortably fit a minifigure, sadly none that are included in this set as none of them have legs that can sit. One thing to note is that when the door is opening it very almost hits the pillar, it can hit if the slips holding the door are slightly moved to the left.

The main attraction of the set are the three sinks which have the feature to access the slide in the 76389. The three sinks look the same from the outside using a pearl gold fossett, 1x2 light bluish grey brick with a metallic sticker for a mirror on top of a 1x2 textured brick in white. The two sinks on the side are build identically and have nice decor such as rounded 1x1 bricks, a 1x2 roof piece to nicely top off each back wall. The middle sink that opens outwards is connected to the top of the sink by two 1x2 plates with a clip. On the back of the sink there is a 2x6 tiles in white which holds the opening flap together.

Finally, on the top of the four walls are some sand yellow tiles and 8 studs so that you can connect with other sets from this modular wave of hogwarts sets.

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Overall

Well what a unique set, and all for the right reasons. Rarely do we see a toilet in LEGO that is so detailed as this. The builds for the sinks are smooth and amazing, the toilet is small yet really well done. Then the minifigures and accessories are amazing, and I love the inclusion of the alternative hairs and heads for each figure. The golden Harry and two Chocolate Frog cards are nice bonuses to this set and make this set collectable.

Some complaints, there is one major thing lacking from the stall, NO TOILET PAPER!!, how could they forget. Also, the toilet door does come too close to hitting the pillar, I think they should have made a brick built door that gives a bit more clearance when opening. Apart from that no other complaints.

I highly recommend this set to anyone wanting a cheap and cheerful set to gift, also if you're getting the large 76389 this is a must-have to go with the slide and to make the most of the opening sink feature. This is also a must-have if you're wanting the Golden figures as it includes the most important figure, Harry.

Pros - Amazing minifigures, Golden Harry looks amazing, Well compact build, options to change minifigures, Cat Hermione's head piece, great value and pieces.

Cons - The fact you must have the largest and most expensive set of the wave to make the most of the play feature.

Hello, today I'll be taking a look at one of the 12 LEGO Minifigures from the new 71030 Looney Toons series releasing April 26th 2021. Retailing at £3.49 / £4.99 a pack with varying numbers of pieces.

In this review I'll be looking at Speedy Gonzales who has 8 pieces including the stand giving him a price per piece of 43p/62c. He also contains some extra pieces.

Let's take a detailed look then.

Minifigure

Speedy Gonzales is like almost every other figure in this series that contains a new exclusive moulded head piece. Gonzales head piece most eye-catching feature is his large yellowish orange sombrero that is daulmoulded onto his head. Gonzales' mouse head is a dark nougat with a black printing for his nose, whiskers and hair. His ears have a tan printing in the middle. Finally, for his head the large cartoonish eyes are printed with a white base and black for his pupils and some printing above each one.

The iconic white outfit that Gonzales wears is replicated almost perfectly in this figure, which his white torso having the print for his red handkerchief around his neck, with his hands being the dark nougat used for his head. Sadly there is no back printing of any sorts. His mini legs are daulmoulded with white on the top half and dark nougat on the bottom, with two small lines to show his toes.

Between Gonzales legs and torso is a dark nougat tailpiece which I believe is new for this figure, with it curving to a smooth tip, this piece is rubber and attaches at the hip. My only complaint is that the front of the tail can be seen between his white clothing. This should have been printed as it was for Scrooge Duck in the Disney Series 2 cmfs from 2019.

Accessories

Speedy Gonzales has three identical accessories, a 1x1 cheese slope piece in yellow printed ironically with slopes of cheese. These are all the same containing 5 holes of varying sizes representing a Swiss cheese. Each figure including Gonzales also include the standard 3x4 black minifigure stand that has been in the CMFs since they were released back in 2010.

Spare pieces

This figure only contains one extra piece, an additional 1x1 cheese slope printed with the cheese giving a total of 4 in each bag.

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Overall

To conclude, this figure is amazing and well detailed and put together, with the three cheese slope prints adding a lot to this figure. My biggest complaint is that the front of the tail shows through from the front and sides, something they could have prevented by printing or daulmoulding the piece.

The value for this figure despite being slightly expensive you are getting your moneys worth in this series with each and every figure including Gonzales. I highly recommend picking up some or all of the figures from this series.

Pros - Moulding and printing, Cheese slope pieces

Cons - Tail not being printed at the front to match with rest of figure

These go on sale April 26th at LEGO Shop but can be found earlier at supermarkets and local toy stores. Got mine early from WHSmith in the UK.

Hello, today I'll be taking a look at on of the LEGO Art sets, this is the LEGO Art 31202 Disney's Mickey Mouse set that was released January 2021. Retailing at £114.99/$119.99 this set contains 2658 pieces giving a price per part of 4p/4c.

There are two possible designs to make Mickey or Minnie. I've built Mickey so will be mostly talking about Mickey but will try to go into some detail on Minnie as well. You can only make one design per set.

Parts & Unboxing

The packaging for this set is not your normal LEGO unboxing experience. There are a few compartments for pieces. The box is a IDEAS style box, when opened your greeted by a large box at the bottom this contains the 9 16x16 bricks that are the main structure of the set.

Then above that in the top right corner are your tiles, all colours in separate bags from other colours, making the building easy. Finally, there is a cardboard flap that has the instructions on, underneath this flap are all the pieces for the frame and some other pieces. There is a bag 1 that is the only numbered bag which contains a few pieces which I'll talk about in a bit.

Most of the 2658 pieces included are 1x1 round tiles, but 205 pieces are not studs here are most of the interesting pieces you get. I'm going to focus on exclusive or hard to find pieces

- 9x 16x16 bricks with technic holes - Black - only in LEGO art sets

- 1x Large Brick Separator - Black - only in LEGO art sets

- 1x 2x4 tiles printed with Disney Logo - Black - exclusive

- 2x Technic panels with place for a screw - Black - only in 7 sets, all over £100

- 1x Crowbar - Pearl Gold - only in 14 sets

Building Tools

As I said above there is one numbered bag, bag 1, this contains the large Brick Separator, Crowbar and a 1x12 plate with 2 of each colour tiles, this is made to be a colour chart to use if building with someone else.

Each tile colour has a number in the instructions these are

1 - Black

2 - Dark Grey

3 - Light Grey

4 - Dark Blue

5 - White

6 - Tan

7 - Red

8 - Dark Red

9 - Dark Brown

Now the Brick Separator which is new for the Art theme is another interesting piece. This is much larger than the typical 2 wide one. It is smaller at the top where is had 4 anti-studs to remove 4 studs at a time, then there is the flat side which you use to pop off tiles, this is 8 wide so you can pop 8 tiles off at a time, this could also be used for studs as well. This tool is handy when wanting to build a new model from the Art theme.

There is also the Gold Crowbar which seems a weird inclusion but its actually quite handy, this is used to pop off one stud or tile that might be in the wrong place, this is really useful when it is in a built-up area as this piece can go between tiles saving you a lot of time.

Building Experience

I don't usually describe my experience building but this set had a unique feel when building. As the instructions are your conventional instructions they don't have a step-by-step guide instead 9 steps for the actual art piece that just show the completed tile with numbers for each tile that represent the colour - obviously in colour.

The build was very calming and wasn't hard at all, took me and my sister 3 and half hours to build in one sitting. This build did require a bit of space to do and I recommend a storage compartment to pour to tiles in, I used an Advent Calendar insert when building mine.

Mickey Mouse

Now to the main show, the Mickey piece. As I said this is 2 in 1 so Minnie can be built if you prefer her. I chose Mickey but I plan to buy another one for Minnie in the future.

There are 2453 1x1 round tiles in this set, and being a 48x48 space for the design you use most of them, leaving only 149 spare, the lowest spare count of any Art set which I personally see as a good thing.

There are 9 colours as shown above but there are a lot of most of them, here are the quantities

- Black - x662

- Dark Grey - x79

- Light Grey - x59

- Dark Blue - x409

- White - x835

- Tan - x32

- Red - x213

- Dark Red - x96

- Dark Brown - x76

The picture is built in 9 sections, each section being on the 16x16 bricks. You build from top to bottom, left to right. The first section is Mickey's ear which uses a few white, black and dark blues. Then you carry on Mickey's right ear in the next section with a bit of his head. Then finally the last section for the top row pretty much is just dark blue with a little white.

Next row, the far left completes Mickey's left ear, then the middle one starts his face with bits of his mouth starting to be built, this uses a bit of red and dark red. Last for the middle row builds Mickey's nose and eyes.

Finally, the bottom row. The far left tile is pretty unexciting just carrying on the background, but you also place the 2x4 Disney tile here if you want, if you don't you can add 8 tiles instead. The next tile starts Mickey's body with his arm this starts to use a lot of reds. The last tile completes the image with most of it building Mickey's red pants.

Going a bit in depth on the picture, the background is Dark Blue with half of the iconic Mickey ears in white, if you get two of these sets and build Minnie you can combine them and the white background makes a pair of Mickey ears.

In the Mickey image along with the Whites, Blacks and Reds there are the greys and browns mixed in for some texture and shading. The Dark Reds are used for shading on his suit and for his mouth as well. With the shading this helps give the picture more life. The shading is also used on Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse

Now as I haven't built Minnie I can't too much but just describing what I have seen here is a little summary of Minnie.

Minnie has her iconic white dotted red skirt and hat combo. The Disney 2x4 tile can be placed on the bottom far right plate, opposite to Mickey.

The Mickey & Minnie images can be merged together which is very easy just requires a little deconstruction of the frame which we'll talk about next.

The Frame

Finally, for this set the frame for the art work. This is quite a simple build that involves a few large black bricks and a few 1x2 bricks with technic pin, 24 to be precise. The frame keeps the model together quite smoothly. Built using a mixture of 1x4, 1x8 and 1x16 black bricks. These are tiled off at the top to give the frame a smooth feel and look to go with the rest of the set. At the back of two of the 16x16 plates you also add the two screw rest where the image can be hung. You could easily hang a single image up with just one screw. If combining two sets together I'd suggest using at least three.

When combining the two design, Mickey and Minnie, the frame is quite easy to rebuild just requires taking a side of each design and then connecting the top and bottom of each set together to get a smooth large Mickey and Minnie image.

With the frame the whole set is 50x50 studs wide, the combined one is 98x50 studs wide.

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Overall

Well, what to say now. This set is an amazing LEGO display piece that I highly recommend. Although the £115 RRP seems high considering what you get the price is actually not too bad. I also appreciate that you have a bit of choice to what to build. I personally am excited to get another one to make Minnie and join both images together.

I also like the experience with the tools included like the big brick separator and the crowbar, pieces I used a couple of times when building.

I recommend this to any Disney fan looking for something to stand out in their collections, I'd also recommend this to AFOLs and TFOLs. I wouldn't recommend this to a child though as it doesn't have any play value. Personally i think this set could easily be a 16+ set.

Pros - Amazing display piece, a relaxing build, brick separator and crowbar, great selection of pieces, not too many spare elements from each build, good value for what you're getting

Cons - Maybe could be a bit cheaper, but the price as it stands is reasonable

Hello, today I'll be taking a look at one of the twelve LEGO Minifigures 71029 Series 21 figures released in January 2021. Retailing at £3.49/$4.99 a pack and containing an average of 8 pieces. The figure I'll be looking at is the Airplane Girl which contains 9 pieces, giving her a price per piece of 38p/55c.

Lets take a look

Minifigure

Starting with the Airplane Girl herself, she is quite basic compared to others in the series. She has a pair of unprinted dark blue mini-legs, then her dark blue torso is printed with a jacket that has some aviation pins on the front and at the back is a print for a logo that has some propellers in a gold and brown print.

She has an exclusive double-sided face, both sides have a small bit of dirt or maybe a little scar to her face on her right cheek which I'm not quite sure why there is. The first side has hair smiling and the other side has her quite chipper. Finally, for the minifigure she has a nougat ponytail hair piece which is a fairly common piece now.

Accessories

Airplane girl has two accessories, the aeroplane piece and an aviators hat. The aviators hat is made using a dark brown hat piece that has been seen before with a pair of dark tan goggles added onto the pieces, you get an extra of the goggle piece in the pack as well.

Now the main event imo, the aeroplane piece is a new large mould for 2021 that is quite big, the red piece has a space to connect the piece to the hip of a Minifigure, there are three studs on on the piece, on at the front and one on each wing. The bottom of the piece is hollow with no anti-studs. At the front of the plane is a mini-doll accessory sized pin where you place a small propeller piece in black, you get an extra of this propeller piece. This aeroplane piece is close in design and scale to the car that the Race Driver had in Series 18.

This figure like all the other figures has a 3x4 black minifigure stand base plate as well.

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Overall

Out of the 12 minifigures in this series this figure is on of the best ones. The areoplane piece is amazing and one I would love to see in more colours in the future. The figure herself is imo a bit on the bland side but does have all useful pieces so can't complain there.

Pros - Aeroplane piece, printed torso, helmet

Cons - Would have liked some print on the legs