Budget Brick Review - Little White Dragon Set 19131-18
Yep, it's that time again.
As has been said about these sets by basically anyone anywhere who has written about these sets before, the boxes for Little White Dragon sets clearly owe a lot to Playmobil boxes and by a lot I mean pretty much everything.
Bizarrely, the import company that brought in this and a few other sets I've bought from the same store decided to put stickers all over the boxes, most of them blank and one on each side covering up the age guide for the set. Why? That's just weird.
At least that sticker has some information on including a no under threes symbol, the same no under threes symbol that you can just about see under one of the blank stickers if you're looking at it in the right light. Are Ackerman insane?
Weird behaviour.
Anyway, the first thing to come out of the box was this little card.
I'm guessing it's some kind of quality control thing or something like that? Either way I can't read the thing, so we'll move on to the instructions.
They were a bit crumpled. Not much else to say about that really.
It looks about right part-wise for the most part.
One thing is definitely wrong though.
What the hell? I was promised a black helmet, not a transparent blue one. The box doesn't even have that damn disclaimer on. Unless some nutter decided to put one of those stickers I can't get off over the top of it, so if I wanted to I could, theoretically, take this back because it doesn't have the right parts in, whereas most of the other brands I've picked up clearly state that you might not get what you pay for and so tough luck to you if it's wrong.
Would it be too cheeky to buy this, review it and take it back because it's wrong when the main reason I bought it was to review it anyway? Yeah, probably. Specially when I didn't take back the pestilence mobile to the other store.
Also, the visor is horrible and keeps falling off. Absolute rubbish!
That tyre isn't very impressive either. The other three are fine, but that one has a tiny bit of excess rubber there. Just a tiny bit.
Let's take a look at the figure instead.
Well, what can I say about this guy then? His head's weird, making him look a bit like the illegitimate offspring of one of my Best-Lock figures and an E.T. toy with that weird looking neck, he's riddled with moulding issues and those legs are just unpleasant looking.
Adding his helmet does not improve matters.
I would have checked to see if his head was compatible with any other figures, but I couldn't get it off his body, only the legs wanted to come away, though mostly they wanted to come away from each other every time I touched them. You can swap them with Oxford legs or other Oxford clones, but to be honest why the hell would you want to? They're terrible.
Just for reference's sake here's one of each of the brands of Oxford style minifigure I have.
The only reason I don't consider him the worst of the lot is that at least I can reattach his limbs when they fall off, unlike a certain other figure in the line-up. That's the nicest thing I have to say about the minifigure, his limbs can be put back on.
Little White Dragon's yellow is a pretty poor match for Lego yellow, but it is a perfect match for Best-Lock's yellow.
The Best-Lock blue plate at the top there is a very good match for the Little White Dragon one below it. Coincidence or not? You decide.
The silver parts all look pretty terrible, though to be fair it's very rare to see anyone pull off that sort of plastic well. On the other hand, these are worse than most I have, so yeah, I'm not heavily impressed right now.
That bit's pretty funky. I wonder who they cloned it from?
The steering wheel is a whole bundle of disaster. Not only is it the wrong colour, but both parts are hideous excess plastic all over them.
What about the final build though?
I'd estimate the thing took me roughly 20 seconds to put together. It was incredibly easy to put together, all of the parts fit comfortable and it holds together very well.
It doesn't stop it from looking a little bit stupid though, does it?
Adding the figure to the weird buggy thing though resulted in his visor and arm falling straight off. If I was responsible for this set I would be incredibly embarrassed about that.
Overall opinion then. Hmm...
There's a kind of weird charm to this set. It's pretty bad overall. Two of the colours are wrong, the head's weird, his arm fell off, his legs can't help but fall off, the silver plastic's rubbish, one of the tyres needs the excess trimming off and the box for my one has been covered in stickers by a lunatic.
I don't think I'd buy this particular set again any time soon or ever in fact.
