Looking over the shelves in my local charity shop, I came across two Minecraft Lego sets. There is the risk of missing parts, but £8 for the boxed one, and £5 for the bagged Fox Lodge, I thought it was worth the punt. I have a few Minecraft sets, all of which are used items, bought from charity outlets. At £5, it was quite a good find compared to the average price for it unboxed. New, it will set you back £17.99.
This Minecraft set was the first for me to build, so I was interested in trying it out. My first thoughts were about the choice of orange, that of which is found on the Arctic Explorer sets. It’s bright and fits well with it being a fox. I thought it was interesting that they included a snow fox as part of the set, too. So…were there missing parts? YES!
I realised that, like prior purchases, it was a bonus to buy both of the sets off of the shelf. Looking through set 21179, I found most of the parts I needed. They had clearly been mixed up before being donated, but as the one was still in it’s box, you couldn’t see that the used slide-bags were the same. As I built it, I looked for a couple of parts that were not present, needing to pull them from my brick population. The other issue of buying used sets is the dust and part-builds. I am often presented with small sections being built-up and a lot of dusty bits over the bricks. For this, I used a small brush as I went along, pushing the loose dust off. After doing this, it’s turned out to be a tidy set.
The overall build is quite simple and leans heavily on the Minecraft license. The bright colours are nice, but the overall complexity of the set is much like those of an 80s ideal, simple brick on brick construction at its core. As a play set, it might be fun for the young, bringing Minecraft into their own environment. As a build, it’s mediocre, at best.
First Impressions – I like its look and colour scheme, the build is very basic.
Price-Point – Above Average
Time to Build – 30-50 Minutes
Score: 6/10
(All details were correct at the time of writing, 12th April ‘2024)
