Set #3937 Olivia's Speedboat: According to LEGO.com this set is Retiring Soon, apparently, what an odd decision. Get it while you can.

This set is pretty impressive, but at the same time decieving. The Friends Instruction sets showing pictures of Olivia's Speedboat have the Mini-Doll interacting with the little crab piece. The set does not come with any of those pieces at all, if a young girl has been wanting this set for a while based on those pictures, we'll it's going to be highly dissapointing. Still, what is here is pretty impressive and fun.

Using a half dozen tan pieces, give or take, you build a small sand castle model for Olivia to interact with while at the beach. Four clear light blue studs simulate water on the edge of the sand, and also you get one of the new bucket pieces in red with golden handle and a shovel accessory to help building. There's also a pink flag as part of the model, it's a pretty fun looking build, simple though.

Next we have Olivia's towel, which is on a white 4x8 plate using smooth tiles and plates to replicate the look of a large beach towel underneath an orange umbrella. Yes, this umbrella is orange, and not a dark Halloween orange, more a lighter tone of orange. The towel looks a bit odd due to the abdunance of colors, the outside is orange, while the inside is both pink and purple, two sloped purple pieces represent a place for Olivia to rest her head. A beach pillow perhaps? There's also a transparent goblet/chalice with red stud to represent some sort of beverage or treat, I'll be honest I have no idea what kind of treat Olivia is enjoying. A hot day at the beach though, it's bound to be a smoothie, or ice cream float of some sort. It is yet another simple fast build for the model, but uses some nice pieces, including the flower pedal on top in dark pink. (The set includes another extra one for spare flower stems from other Friends sets.)

The final model, the titular speedboat is fairly unique, it introduces some new solid pieces for the front half of the boat, a pretty big pair of pieces actually. The top is in white and the bottom is the same dull/light orange as the umbrella. The rear section of the boat uses other pieces to build it, it's fast and simple to build every model in this set. There are no clever steps or intricate parts use, for builders to gush over. There also isn't any steering mechanism for this speedboat, it's very much like a doll's toy vehicle in that respect. You do get more of those pink parts for the Mini-Dolls to sit down securely though, so that's a plus. And I just realised there is also a printed circular plate with a pink life preserver. (I thought it was just a regular printed element, it's actually nice to know it fits the Theme of the set and promotes safety while boating.) There's room for two Mini-Dolls in the boat.

Speaking of which, this version of Olivia is pretty similar to one found in her Invention Workshop, her upper torso is the same with the exact same shirt, hair piece and head, the color of the shirt however is not exactly identical. The one in the Invention Workshop is a slightly darker color of orange used for her top, it's barely noticeable, but they are two different shades of orange. Her lower legs are the same worn by Olivia in the Polybag Desk set, except of course for the color of the skirt. This one is a light pink, and the shoe detail/paint is also different, she's wearing white shoes this time.

Overall this is a fairly mediocre set, however it scores high in my books because it fits a very strong Theme. Every one of the models in this set is simple, fast and easy to build, there aren't as many unique pieces as in the first batch of Friends 13.99$ sets (at CND Retail), but they are all useful for a decent Beach display. This, Water Scooter Fun the Beach Polybag and the Heartlake City Pool would all look great together as a display set piece. The 2013 sets list an Olivia's Beach Buggy for the Summer Wave, I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of that one and seeing if it will compliment this set nicely as well. Strongly reccomend picking this up before it's retired, if you've been on the fence about it, the boat won't float although and again, the pictures in the instructions from this wave of Friends sets are showing you those crab pieces and they are nowhere to be found. Really dissapointing on that point, bad form LEGO.