10196: Grand Carousel/Merry Go Round discussion

[Brickthus]

"Do not want."

Sarcasm aside, I won't be buying this. It has too many "weird" methods of doing things for my liking. Cloth roof? Brick built horses? And let's not forget the hugely obvious motor - an unfortunate by-product of the new Power Functions line.

Not impressed at all. Roll on the new modular building!

Upside-down beards is unusual too! If a set had no new building techniques, I would learn nothing, so I would probably not buy such sets for that reason. Therefore I'm pleased it does something different.

I'd like to know whether the horses move up and down as the carousel rotates. Any carousel worth its salt should do that.

The motor could have been hidden better (i.e. flat on the baseplate) but that would have increased the cost and added more gears. It might not have been as reliable that way either. Any motor in that position would have been obvious. It's not just because it uses Power Functions!

The squashy tyre contacts the non-circular edge of the carousel to rotate it. That saves putting the motor in the middle, with a wire trailing under the rotating parts to get to the battery box on the outside, so I can see why it's built that way. It saves £2 of wire too! It also makes more opportunity to replace the 8:40 gears with 24:24 gears and speed up the carousel by five times!

Mark

[Ralph_S]

The squashy tyre contacts the non-circular edge of the carousel to rotate it. That saves putting the motor in the middle, with a wire trailing under the rotating parts to get to the battery box on the outside, so I can see why it's built that way. It saves £2 of wire too! It also makes more opportunity to replace the 8:40 gears with 24:24 gears and speed up the carousel by five times!

Mark

Typical. You can't look at a technic construction without immediately thinking of ways to 'amp it up'. I like that.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Minifig Lecturer]

OMG this is terribe looking LOL

[Mr Hobbles]

Upside-down beards is unusual too! If a set had no new building techniques, I would learn nothing, so I would probably not buy such sets for that reason. Therefore I'm pleased it does something different.

I'd like to know whether the horses move up and down as the carousel rotates. Any carousel worth its salt should do that.

I'm not against new building techniquest at all. Using Ski Shoes on the Cafe Corner for the decoration was genius, as was using a turntable for the 45 degrees corner. The use of SNOT in many different sets is welcome too.

The problem I have is that the building techniques in this set seem to be slightly pointless, and also against the point of LEGO. I buy LEGO because I want to build things. I don't want a piece of cloth making up the entire top part of the set.

Also, why the brick built horses? There are many LEGO horses already in production, of many different styles and colours. I don't even feel like the horses on this were particularly well done, otherwise I might not have minded.

You also bring up the cost prohibitions of building sets. However this is a carousel. It is meant to go round and round. It is also the main theme of the set. Having one of it's most important parts of it (The mechanism) being so blatantly obvious is inexcusable to me. I would have happilly paid another £5-10 to have the motor and battery box hidden (If the sets other faults didn't put me off..).

More generally, it seems as though this set missed a few iterations of the design process. This feels to me like it was either the prototype or one of the earliest design revisions. It could have used a few more passes. As it stands I just feel that the set is quite ugly.

[Matn]

A video showing it's features I've made today at the BeLUG Brick Mania event in Wetteren can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30479264@N06/3557570614/

Not impressed over here. I thought it would be so much better. The build itself is pretty nice, but that's were it stops. The motor makes to much noise, it's wobbly and I just thought it would be bigger.

[Svelte]

A video showing it's features I've made today at the BeLUG Brick Mania event in Wetteren can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30479264@N06/3557570614/

Not impressed over here. I thought it would be so much better. The build itself is pretty nice, but that's were it stops. The motor makes to much noise, it's wobbly and I just thought it would be bigger.

Thanks for the video, Matn.

Poor little guy - there's one kid on a horse that doesn't move

Shame about the motor noise, but I'm not surprised.

[Lord Admiral]

Poor little guy - there's one kid on a horse that doesn't move

There's always somebody who gets motion sickness or something who'll want to sit on those. Or an adult with a child too small to ride the horses but old enough to enjoy the going round and round motion.

I'm intrigued by this music box from a technical perspective. If it's digital, I wonder if it can be reprogrammed to play anything...

[JimBee]

This just convinced me (more so) to not get it. The motor is too loud, the music is too quiet, blah blah blah.

All I can say is that this won't sell well. Only the most hardcore AFOLs will get this, methinks.

[Dr. Brick]

I'm in that video turning the thing around. I also helped building it (together with somebody else).

It is a very repetitive build (a lot of 8x and 16x) but I did learn some new building techniques and it was very rewarding when finished. It took us 4 hours! The bags aren't numbered so there are 3000+ (mostly small) pieces jumbled together.

Having helped building it just pushes me even more to buy this set, it really is great fun.

Dr. Brick

[ILikePi]

Thanks for the video.

This set doesn't seem as good as I thought when I first saw it.

The whole merry go round looks good, but the fact that it's just placed on a plain baseplate with no foliage or anything makes the set pretty bad. There's also barely a place to line up, when most amusement parks have lines that are over 100 feet long.

And Dr. Brick, congratulations on being the one to build the set.

What material is the canvas on top? The usual LEGO cape fabric or some other fabric?

Are there any interesting pieces (chrome, metallic, new, etc.)?

[marvinblue]

All I can say is that this won't sell well. Only the most hardcore AFOLs will get this, methinks.

I agree. The set as it stands is awesome. I really like the way Lego is thinking with this. Unfortunately, its a bit too big for my City. This is one thing I don't like about Lego at the moment. They issue awesome sets like 7630, 7631 and this one that look fantastic, have great designs, but are just that bit too big. As a result Lego have missed out on sales, which is a bit of a shame.

[Tinn-man]

The Grand Carousel is AVAILABLE NOW!!! LINK

And it is expensive .

[The Green Brick Giant]

We already knew it was going to be that much, which isn't really that expensive considering.

[Tom Bricks]

Thanks for that. I'm surprised it wasn't on the front page when I checked. I'm not sold yet on this one. The price might be too much for me.

[YG-49]

I just noticed that each Jester head is different. I didn't know that the top was made of canvas either.

[WhiteFang]

The Grand Carousel is AVAILABLE NOW!!! LINK

And it is expensive .

Thanks for sharing this info with us!

Below are some new images from Shop@Home, first post has been updated.

[Shakar]

I'll be honest, this set does not interest me. However there's one sweet thing in the tent decorations that I noticed..

TAN BEARDS! This will be useful for Vikings and Dwarfs.....

Shakar

Edited June 27, 2009 by Shakar

[Freddie]

I'm not interested either, but that's maybe because I can't escape the thought that it's a giant parts-pack. That, and the "WOW!"-factor is absent.

Or it could be a defensive mechanism in my head that triggers whenever I'm a bit low on funds. I'm not sure.

[Skipper 24]

This is great news Whitefang. I hope other countries are soon to follow.

[Legoking]

This set looks ok, but its price is a bit too high. One thing that I do like about this set is that it contains quite a few minifigs and has some interesting pieces.

LegoKing

[Wout]

The minifig almost on the right is really classic.

[Brickthus]

Thanks for sharing this info with us!

Below are some new images from Shop@Home, first post has been updated.

The blue Technic bits at the top of photos 1&2 are the cranks that move the horses etc... up and down.

Lots of 1x2x3 underneath dark red slope bricks, to go with the right-way-up ones from the Cafe Corner!

Is the music device one of those trans-clear 2x4x3 bricks with a button, like the motorbike and dinosaur roar ones? I guess one of those pressed periodically could provide the function of a few seconds' repeated tune.

Mark

[-Phaze-]

I Really like this thing, and, although a little sad about the high price, I feel it is justified for the piece count. Definitely looking forward to buying this.

[Clone OPatra]

I really have to laugh every time I look at the girl second from the left in the minifigures picture. I mean, it's nice that LEGO branched out with the faces they use for girls for this one minifig, but why did it have to be that face? It looks to me like an angry short man with a pony tail! Oh well.

I hope those tan beards don't go for too much on Bricklink.

[Tinn-man]

It looks to me like an angry short man with a pony tail!

Maybe it is

Anyway, I'm planning to go to a lego store next week, and I'm really considering buying this set. I really like it, especially after learning that it played music. You might see a review popping up in the next week or two, that is if nobody buys the set before me .