Lego had some really cool new stuff at their NYC Toy Fair booth. Of course, I jumped straight away to all the Lord of the Rings sets, which I was able to record quickly for your nerdgasmic pleasure.
Here are all the details and my quick hands on review:
9489 Gandalf Arrives
The simplest of all the new Lord of the Rings sets, it has 83 pieces and has Gandalf the Grey and Frodo Baggins. It’s a very nice simple set, with lots of detailed fireworks in Gandalf’s carriage. It will cost you $US13.
9470 Shelob Attacks
My favourite of the small sets — and perhaps my favourite of them all, even while I hate spiders. Shelob is perfectly done, with great technique and detail. It’s an impressive set, even while it only has 227 pieces. And it includes, Gollum and a fish, apart from Frodo and Samwise. The Gollum minifig is superbly done, really cute.
The price is $US20, which I’m going to spend gladly, thank you very much.
9471 Uruk-hai Army
The biggest of the small sets is quite good too, and it complements the Battle of Helm’s Deep. In fact, I would recommend spending $US30 in these 257 pieces, plus four Uruk-hai, Éomer and his horse and a Rohan soldier. The tower and the armoured hook shooter alone, which is really well done, are worth the price.
9472 Attack on Weathertop
This is the only set that includes the Ringwraiths, two of them and their horses. The horses are very special: it’s the first time that Lego has made horses that actually move, rather than being the static horses in their previous castle-oriented sets. They are very well done, and allow for complete integration with the minifigs.
The set itself is the most coherent of all the large sets. The rock texturing stairs that go to the Weathertop are particularly well done. It will introduce many Lego aficionados into more complex structuring techniques. $US60 gets you 430 pieces and Aragorn, Frodo, Merry and the two Ringwraiths with horses.
9473 The Mines of Moria
My favourite of the big sets, and not only because it includes the giant cave troll along with Pippin, Boromir, Gimli, Legolas, two Moria orcs and two skeletons. Perhaps it’s because it’s one of my favourite scenes in the movie, which the set captures well except for the scale. All these sets seem a bit too small because of the scale of the sets in the movie. It seems like the most fun. 776 pieces for 80 bucks.
I’ve the feeling that, if these sell well, Lego may surprise us with a giant Balrog and the Bridge of Khazad Dum.
9474 The Battle of Helm’s Deep
This is the larges of the complex sets, with 1,368 pieces. It comes with eight minifigures, which include Aragorn, Gimli, haldir, King Théoden, Berserker Uruk-hai and three Uruk-hai. It includes one of the new horses too.
The castle is good, with good texture details and plenty of little objects. It’s not as big as I wanted, but it has a nice size. I bet someone will use this as the base to create the entire setting at minifig scale. It goes for $US130.
There’s a lot more awesome stuff, which I will be publishing today in our Lego 2012 page. Check it out often!