For a "Hard to Find" set this one is well worth the search. It has wonderful pieces, nearly all exclusive minifigures, great accessories, and quite a bit of playability, especially for someone who's read the book.

Box/Instructions

The scene on the front of the box shows the dwarves running and rolling away from the elves. The box also helps to show where the dwarves are trying to get too. While it's not in the set, the box shows the hole in the floor that leads to the underground river. From here the dwarves will 'sail' to Esgaroth (if you want to know more wait for film 2 or read the book :-) ). Interestingly, the box is actually the exact same size as Attack of the Wargs.

At the beginning of the year there were only going to be two Hobbit films. However, in the summer they switched it to three. That meant that the ending of film one was going to be pushed back, earlier in the story. Before the change, this [Barrel Escape] was going to be at the end of film one. But once they changed it LEGO must have already been too far along in the production process to make drastic changes. So as a result we get these sets with the words Special The Hobbit Trilogy Preview Set! printed in three different languages (English, Spanish, and French) inside a bright red rectangle

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Parts

The parts in this set are very nice. We get mostly tan and brown pieces which are ever so useful for building. Basic tan pieces are so useful yet not as common as I would like. We also get two big brown arches than measure 12 studs long. There is a dark grey winding staircase that is used on the right side of the model which adds a lot to the playability as well as the general look and feel of the model. There are some jail pieces which are nice but the best part are the accessories. We get 6 of the newer bottle pieces as well as two green goblets. I'm not 100% if these are new but they are at least very rare. On an extra weapons rack are held two of the new elvish swords (previously only available with the Elrond polybag) as well as and extra longbow. The 3 barrel pieces are also somewhat rare.

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Minifigures

There aren't really any bad guys but since the elves are the antagonists in this scene I'll start with them.

Mirkwood Elf Chief: He was the elf in charge of looking after the keys to the dwarfs cells. However, during a feast he has a little too much to drink as his double face suggests. Because of this Bilbo is able to take the keys from him and free the dwarves. His printing is nicely done and lines up perfectly with his leg designs. He has a little back printing but nothing too extraordinary. His face, as previously mentioned, is double sided. His hair mold is the same one used for other elves up to this point except that it is in dark brown.

Mirkwood Elf Guard: This guy is a little more simple compared to his chief. He has no printing on his dark brown legs. His printing, front and back, while less complex, is a very nice design. His face is also double sided, one with a "neutral" expression and the other with a "angry/fighting" look. His hair is identical to other elves except that on him it is in a lighter shade of brown.

Bilbo Baggins: This is the only minifigure in the set that is not exclusive. I've already reviewed him before but I will say that his printing is very accurate to the movie. I love the detail they put into his clothing, especially his gold/tan colored scarf.

Oin: Oin was the brother of Gloin (who is also in this set). He would later go with Balin after The Hobbit to retake Moria from the orcs. However, in an attempt to flee out the West Gate the Watcher in the Water took him (the same thing that attacked the Fellowship). His printing is nicely done but you can't see most of it from his large beard which is made from a flexible plastic. There's some back printing but it is covered up by his grey cape. His head is double-sided, but with his beard on the only difference is in the eyebrows. He also comes with a staff. I wish he would've had his hearing horn since that was one of the main things about him from the movie.

Gloin: Gloin was Oin's brother and father of Gimli. For his design in the recent Hobbit movie the conceptual artists gave him a similar color scheme, clothing, hair, and to even having the same weapons to show this connection between father and son. In LEGO form we get to see this connection as well. His torso is very similar to Gimli's. Their heads share similarities and they even have the exact same weapons, one large double-sided axe and one smaller, single edged, axe. Unlike Oin, Gloin's hair is of the typical hard plastic.

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The build

The build goes by in not too much time, you're basically building two small rooms with some additional items such as the weapons rack, table, chairs, etc. The winding staircase is always fun too. There's just the smallest amount of technic used for the two main "play features" (rolling the barrels and popping the back of the cells open).

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The completed model

When completed it looks a lot like the glimpses we've seen from film two. The color scheme is very appealing and the 1x2 tiles on the arches are fantastic and really give a heavier feeling to it. My only problem with this though is that the top tile on each arch swivels around easily. So if you're set on getting it just right it may be a little tricky. The play features work well, putting the dwarves in barrels is quite humorous. Other than the one tile my only other complain is the price, 334 pieces for $40 is a little to high, $30 would have been ideal.

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Summary

This is fantastic set for people who've read the book, it's one of the most comical and remembered scenes, at least for me that is. I think after film two comes out and people see what happens this set will be in even more demand. If you're considering getting this for someone who hasn't yet read the book it would still be fun, but a lot of the meaning and depth would be lost. So basically for someone who's read the book this would be a great set. For someone else...I would probably look into a different Hobbit set. One that's from the first film or one that's a little easier to understand what's going on just from the set itself (like Attack of the Wargs).

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79004 Barrel Escape is what LEGO call a 'market driven' release which I think means that, other than direct from LEGO, it's only available in a given country when a specific retailer wants it as an exclusive. In the UK it's Toys R Us; I'm not sure about the USA.

Not having seen the movie yet, I can only guess that it's some sort of tavern with a prison cell in or next to it, and going only by the action scene on the box (and the name of the set), it appears that Bilbo releases the dwarves, who presumably are being held captive by the elves, from the cell, and they escape in beer barrels.

The main structure, consisting of a barrel ramp, a bar and the cell, is hinged in two places. The set also contains a weapons rack, table and chairs and a free-standing barrel stand. There are three of those nice gold elven-swords that Elrond brandishes in 5000202, and two spare One Rings. If you have all the LotR sets you'll have quite a collection of spares by now!

The set comes with 5 minifigs, from L to R: Mirkwood Elf Chief, Mirkwood Elf Guard, Bilbo Baggins, Gloin the Dwarf, and Oin the Dwarf.

Bilbo is the same as that in 79000, reviewed last week but the others are unique to this set.

They all have double-sided heads and printed backs. I'm not sure if the Elf chief looks happy or scared!

There isn't a lot of 'action' in the set. The cell doors can be opened and the barrel ramp can be raised so that the barrels, with dwarves inside, roll down thus making their escape. The only other action involves sitting the figs in the bar and drinking which, while fun for many of us, probably isn't too exciting for kids :-)

This is not a terribly exciting set to play with, then, but it's well designed and full of useful pieces. Although I've only built three of the Hobbit sets so far, I suspect this may be the weakest of them. Nevertheless, the Hobbit completest will need to buy it for the 4 unique minifigs.

Set #79004 Barrel Escape: The second 'Preview' set from the first wave of Hobbit sets was a Toy's-R-Us Exclusive, and priced a bit on the higher side because of this considering the piece count. Still if you can find it during a TRU sale you're going to love the price-per-piece ratio. Otherwise you may find it a bit disappointing in that respects.

Let's discuss the set now and we'll conclude my thoughts on the set later.

Box/Instructions

This set's box looks great, the design works. It showcases the set nicely and this time around the special The Hobbit Trilogy Preview Set addition doesn't interfere with the images as much as they did for Escape from Mirkwood Spiders. I much prefer the placement they chose for this box compared to that one. The back shows off all the play features quite nicely and also includes a handy weapons checklist showing some of the weapons you'll find in this set.

The manual is a large thick looking one for the set, here the size helps as it allows the manual to fit inside the box with minor risk to being damaged. Still it would be nice to see larger sets with more empty space in the boxes use the cardboard protectors. I feel as though I've beaten that thought into your heads repeatedly the past few months, with so many sets being purchased I've had more experience than previous years of collecting and I've begun to get royally fed up with the methods of packing for instruction sheets and stickers. (Of which this set thankfully has none.)

Parts

This set offers a lot of tan pieces and dark browns. The stand outs in my mind are the three large brown barrels, the wine goblets and the staircase which is always a welcome set of pieces to recieve. These nice buildable circular stairways really stand out to me as some clever LEGO design and the parts are always useful for enhancing any style of build you plan on MOCing for your Medieval Architecture.

Minifigures

This set features five Mini-Figures, yes I am aware that I probably shouldn't hyphenate that, it's become habit I'm afraid. Er, anyway, the set features two members of the Dwarven Company, our old pal Bilbo Baggins and two Mirkwood Elves.

Bilbo is the same here as he was in Riddles for the Ring so I'll touch upon him briefly. As before he's got a great looking print and works wonderfully as Bilbo, I find him a bit more colourful and less drab than his nephew Frodo in most respects. That's probably due to the rich maroon torso compared to Frodo's more subdued Earthier tones. As always he includes two Stings and multiple One Rings, in case of loss.

Next up is Oin the Dwarf, Oin is brother to Gloin and the dwarf with the ear trumpet so he's going a bit deaf in his old age. His print is very impressive and like most of the dwarves he's got a unique hair piece with beard. His weapon is a large staff which is built out of four or five pieces and he's got a short grey cape. He also has a double-sided face print, a serious expression and a gritting teeth ready-for-battle expression. The best part about this mini-fig is the double-coloured hair, he's got a grey hair piece, but the beard and mustache have been painted white. Awesome attention to detail there.

Gloin is Gimili's father which means he gets to have the exact same axe accessories as his son from Lord of the Rings sets. His double-sided torso print is just as impressive as Oin's and he has a double-sided facial print also with a serious expression and a battle-ready expression. His red hair piece is a nice unique looking piece that looks pretty accurate to his onscreen counterpart. He does not include a cape, just in case you were wondering.

The Mirkwood Elf Guard is the only version without a hood, here he's using the long hair piece common to Middle-Earth Elves. He's also wearing a nice looking tunic which is double-sided and his face has a neutral expression and an angry one. He's carrying the spear from the CMF line which works.

Called the Mirkwood Elf Chief this is not the ruler of the Mirkwood Elves as his name might imply, however he is Chief guard of the dungeons I suspect. Not only does he come with the elven hair piece in dark brown, he also has a double-sided torso, some leg printing and a double-sided face. This one has an ordinary expression and then a goofy looking grin, perhaps he's had too much wine. You can give him a gold key piece or one of the fancy elven swords that Elrond came with in his polybag.

Overall a great set of Mini-Figures from this set.

The build

This set has 2 numbered bags and the build for the model is split up between the two (naturally), I found it to be a bit irritating as I was building it to be honest mostly because some of the pieces aren't as stable as they could be when you're not building on a hard surface. So some of it did like popping apart while I was building.

I still think it works though as a great looking model, as you're working on the two halves of the structure you get to incorporate a lot of detail work. And the large wine barrels are pretty awesome looking. (I'd recommend not putting them on the gimmicked play feature until you've finished the build, they like to roll away.)

The completed model

This incorporates two areas of the Mirkwood Elf Home. You've got the dungeon where the dwarves were kept and the wine cellar where the barrels are used to escape from the prison. It's a fairly large open area structure with no roofs or anything of that sort. It also uses hinged bricks in order to make it assume any shape you feel like while playing with it.

I like certain elements of this build, it works for what it is and the model has some interesting aspects. (I really dig the hanging lantern over the dungeon doors and the little tables and weapons rack are excellent.) I do unfortunately find it to be a bit too loaded down, I mean the two sections could stand to have something further seperating them making the set a bit wider and less compact. That isn't to say it's a bad structure, I just find it a bit too awkward looking and truncated, as if it's missing something. (And after seeing Desolation of Smaug it doesn't match up as well as what we saw on screen.)

I think the model would work out much better if it had been built one on top of the other with wider baseplates, more floor space and more dungeon space to fit more dwarves inside. It's something you might want to consider buying doubles of the set to see if you can MOC something like that into it.

The play features work excellently, you have a technic pin in behind the jail which pops the rear wall open... Now this is completely inaccurate to what happened in the film, but it works as a great feature for younger fans to play with. The rolling floor that moves the barrels works great, in fact you'd better be careful or you're liable to have the barrels rolling all over the place and getting lost.

One final thing to mention, I love that you get six bottles and two goblets in this set. They are a nice addition and great for fans of these pieces.

Summary

Overall despite certain issues with this set that are purely up to opinion I find it a really solid purchase. It helps that you need to buy it just to finish off the Dwarven Company. I will admit though I had high hopes that you could incorporate a combined build between this set and the Mirkwood Elf Army set of this year. Sad to say this is not the case, while it might be possible to MOC some sort of connecting feature, the two sets together do not include enough pieces to actually build and attach the pair.

This makes a bit of sense though as the two areas are not connected completely in the film, for playability wise though it would have been a nice addition. Still that doesn't stop me from recommending this set, you get a lot of nice accessories, some great pieces and the Mini-Figures are almost all unique and worth picking the set up for. While Bilbo is available in two sets it's still nice to see him included as he does play a big part in helping the dwarves escape their predicament. Highly recommended.