My Top 5 Sets...

The other day I was asked what my top five favorite sets in my collection were.  The following were my choices. 

6769 Fort Legoredo – 1996

When this set came out the internet was still in its infancy and I don’t think Lego even had a website yet.  Back then you found out about new sets and themes when the Lego catalogue came at the beginning of the year or in the little fold outs that used to come with sets.  I remember, vividly, the first time I saw a picture of this set in a copy of the Lego Club Magazine (called Mania Magazine back then).  My little heart just about stopped.  I wanted it bad.  The problem was so did every other 8-12 year old boy that year.  Come Christmas 1996 you could not find this set on any store shelf to save your life.  God bless my mother, she searched high and low to make my Christmas dream come true eventually driving over 100 miles to a Wal-Mart that agreed to hold it for her.  Her efforts were not in vain.  This set saw more use by me and my siblings than any other bar none.  To this day I do not think that any set in any theme has equaled its excellence.  It is huge, has incredible pieces, and above all endless playability.  It saw years of use and never got old.  As far as I am concerned Fort Legoredo is as close to a perfect set as Lego has ever gotten. 

6285 Black Seas Barracuda – 1989

Although Fort Legoredo is my favorite set that I own my favorite genre is the large Lego sailing ships.  Lego is a fantastic medium for scaling down vehicles and buildings into toys but I feel it is especially well suited for ships.   I now have 5 ships in my collection (and will make it 6 when the Black Pearl comes out later this year) but of those the Black Seas Barracuda edges out the rest to claim the top spot, mostly because of nostalgia.  Back in 1989 when this set was released I was only 5 years old and my parents could not justify spending the amount of money it cost, especially on someone as young as me.  I might after all lose interest in Legos the next year or something (I feel we have put that question to rest; over 25 years and counting…).  But oh how I wanted it!  When it was released as a Lego legend in 2001 my mom sent it to me as a birthday present and it proudly sat on a corner of my desk through 4 years of school.  Since that time it has been joined by both the Imperial Flagship and Queen Anne’s Revenge (which I modified to what I feel is near perfection, see this earlier post) but the Barracuda remains my favorite due to our long history together.  It did after all see me through 8 semesters of engineering studies!  

6195 Neptune Discovery Lab (Aquanaut Station) – 1995

This set is second only to Fort Legoredo in terms of hours played with.  It entered the collection at the height of my years of playing with Legos (as opposed to later years when I switched to modeling and collecting) and was the crown jewel of my Aquazone collection.  My most distinctive memory pertaining to this set was the disappointment I felt waking up Christmas morning and seeing no box under the tree that was large enough to contain it.  My spirits were restored though when a small package produced a treasure map leading me to its hiding place elsewhere in the house.  I loved the Aquazone theme and spent many happy hours defending this base from Aquashark attacks.  It is also the only underwater base that Lego has made any effort to enclose.  The large specialty door pieces on the front are balanced by two large windows on the back which you cannot see very easily in the picture.  With two baseplates, the working conveyor belt and the large crane this set is truly an undersea treasure (bad pun completely intended).     

5988 Pharaoh’s Forbidden Ruins/Temple of Anubis – 1998

The story of this set starts a lot like Fort Legoredo’s.  We were returning from a Christmas with out of town relatives and ended up stopping at a mall for dinner (food courts in malls were my dad’s solution to all of us wanting different things to eat when traveling, kudos for the good idea dad).  As it was the time of year when the new sets hit shelves I swung through a toy store, was confronted with this set and immediately knew I had to have it.  Acquiring it turned out to be easier and faster than I thought it would be because days later we were informed that my little brother was one of 10 worldwide winners in Lego’s Christmas contest that year and his prize was a $1000 gift certificate to Lego shop at home.  My parents allotted a portion of that prize to both me and my sister and this was the second set I got (after the monorail which I had wanted for years but ended up not liking all that much unfortunately).  It did not disappoint.  Many hours of happy Indiana Jones style play were had with this set at the sunset of my “playing with Lego” years.  Very glad this one made it into the collection.   

7094 King’s Castle Siege – 2007

The inclusion of this set is more for the idea that it represents as I have never actually played with it having only added it to the collection a year ago.  Growing up I faced a dual dilemma: Christmas coming around only once a year and my allowance being of such a miniscule amount so as to actually teach me about responsible budgeting.  As the tradition of Christmas was established several millennia before I was born and my parents maintained their crusade to teach me responsible spending throughout my childhood I was unable to alter my circumstances and therefore did not acquire all the Legos I wanted from year to year.  The Castle theme, more than any other, never quite made the cutoff and as a result almost all of the sets from that genre that I possessed up until a few years ago were inherited and that satisfied me for the most part.  However, there was one I regretted missing for years: Royal Knight’s Castle from 1995.  As the years went by Lego released many more castles and then for a time replaced the whole theme with Harry Potter but none of the offerings ever, in my mind, lived up to bar which had been set by that stately set.  Then came the King’s Castle Siege and for the first time I saw a fortress that was on par with that 1995 benchmark.  Not wanting to miss another opportunity (and potentially have to wait an additional 12 years!) I added this set to fill the hole which had for so long been empty for lack of a truly great castle.  I was not disappointed.     

HONORABLE MENTIONS

A few of my other favorites in no particular order: 

10184 Town Plan – 2008

I was thrilled with this set because it brought an incredibly rich level of detail to my town.  To date this is the only cinema and town hall ever produced by Lego and the retro gas station is fantastic.  It adds a sense of completeness to my town layout that is very satisfying. 

All My Sailing Ships – Various Years

Currently the fleet stands at 5.  Sailing with the Barracuda is the Armada Flagship, Brickbeard’s Bounty, Imperial Flagship and Queen Anne’s Revenge.

6975 Alien Avenger – 1997

I loved this ship as kid.  Heavily armed, swooshable and just all around menacing in appearance this was my favorite capital ship.

6396 International Jetport – 1990

Hailing from the days when Lego airports included runway baseplates this set was the centerpiece of my Lego city as a kid. 

6766 Rapid River Village – 1997

The largest of the Indian sets which followed the initial wave of Wild West offerings.  My brother and I combined it with his copy of Boulder Cliff Canyon for the ultimate Indian village.  

6380 Emergency Treatment Center – 1987

Lego has produced only two hospital sets to date and I was fortunate enough to have one of them.  This was one of my first sets and saw a lot of use treating casualties from my numerous daring adventure stories.

What Makes a Great Lego Set?

I am asked this question on a regular basis.  Part of the answer is subjective, what appeals to one person does not necessarily appeal to someone else; the old adage of one man's trash is another man's treasure holds true here.  There are, however, some common characteristics that most of the sets considered great by Lego enthusiasts share.  These are the same characteristics that I try to use in my reviews to evaluate a set's merits and demerits.  They are as follows:

PLAYABILITY

As I have said in many reviews, playability out trumps all.  A set may have horrid pieces, be too expensive and be ugly as can be, but if it has great playability I will forgive it almost anything else.  The reason for this is that ultimately Legos are meant to be played with and if they meet that requirement then they have fulfilled their mission.  Playability is defined as how simple it is for a set to spawn original play.  A set with good playability will require almost no imagination to use and keep using.  A set with poor playability will be difficult to play with after a month or so because all of the options for stories that are easy to imagine it being a part of will have been exhausted.  A set that still spawns original play a year after it's purchase has good playability. 

One of sets with the greatest playability of all time (in my opinion) is 1996’s Fort Legoredo.  Its size, detail and setting make it a natural for hours and hours of play.  I quite literally played with this set for hours a week for several years. 

A recent set that serves as an example of poor playability is 8092 Landspeeder from 2010.  After you re-create the famous “These are not the droids your are looking for scene” exactly what are you going to do with this unarmed, non-flying, people mover? 

Great as a collector’s item but in terms of a set to play with, not so much.

PIECES

After playability comes the pieces.  In much the same way that a set with bad parts can be excused if it has great playability so a set with mediocre playability can be forgiven if it has great parts.  Inevitably sets get disassembled (some kids never put the sets together at all!) and when they do you want the part selection to be good so that original creations can be made with ease.  Good sets have pieces that are small to medium in size (modular pieces such as specialized roofs are bad because they can only be used for their intended purpose and not for anything else) in primarily basic colors (black, white, gray, yellow, blue, brown, tan, green or red).  Sets with primarily modular pieces or funky colors (orange, purple, lime green, or beige) should be avoided because they will be very limiting when they are incorporated into original creations.

An example from this year of a set with great pieces is 7066 Earth Defense HQ.  All the pieces on this set are small (no modular pieces), in excellent basic colors and are all very useful.

A set with an example of horrible pieces is 2006’s Piraka Stronghold.  This set is from the short lived (thankfully!) Bionicle playsets theme. 

Exactly what are you going to do with all those specialized pieces once you get bored with this set?  Sure that big mask piece is cool but what would you use it for? 

CROSSOVER

Crossover is an often overlooked characteristic that can be very important.  Crossover refers to a sets ability to appear in stories set in different themes.  My most often used example of a set with good crossover is a medieval blacksmith's shop.  That set can be used in its intended setting (castle) but will also look right at home in a dock town being raided by pirates or as part of a historical district in a modern city.  This ability to easily jump from theme to theme will add substantial play hours to a set thereby increasing it's value.

One of the sets with the most incredible crossover that I have seen is 10193 Medieval Market Village. 

This set would fit in almost any of Lego’s themes.  It could be a harbor town for pirates to raid, a historical district in a city, it could even be a technologically backward settlement in a space setting. 

PIECE COUNT

I put less emphasis on this than other collectors for the following reason, some pieces take more plastic to produce and they are worth it (boat hulls and castle walls are good examples).  Likewise, Lego will sometimes try to hide the fact that a set is not that good by inundating it with small pieces to boost the piece count.  A recent example of this is 4645 Harbor which is significantly smaller and less complete than any previous harbor offering.  This seems counterintuitive since the price and piece count are roughly similar until you see what Lego did which was boost the piece count by making the harbor a grain harbor and including a bunch of small cylinders to represent grain. 

Each of those pieces boosts the count while adding nothing of substance to the set.  In the reverse some sets have smaller piece counts but they are really good pieces which make up for it.  So I would recommend that you be conscious of the piece count (the rule of thumb is that a set with 10 pieces for every dollar is a good value) but don't rely on it. 

PRICE

Last but certainly not least is price.  This one is pretty self explanatory, some sets are just not good value.  More than any of the other characteristics this one is a judgement call because certain sets are worth more to one person than another.  If you want the set and are willing to pay what Lego is asking then go for it.  Trust your gut, I have bought several sets that I didn't have a good feeling about as it related to the value I thought I would get for how much I was paying, and that gut feeling has never been wrong; I have always been disappointed.  The biggest example of this for me was 6991 Monorail Transport Base from 1994. 

This set is captivating due to its size and uniqueness, but it is actually cumbersome to play with and does not come with enough track to really make anything cool with it.  Conversely I have bought sets that have been critically hated by other enthusiasts that I had a good feeling about and have never been disappointed.  One of the main examples of this was 6975 Alien Avenger from 1997. 

This set breaks a lot of the rules (big pieces, low piece count, not the greatest colors) but it was a blast to play with. 

There are exceptions to all of these but as general rules of thumb these characteristics can serve as excellent guides as you navigate the numerous offerings Lego has out there. 

Happy Building

The Lego Chronicler