Random Medieval Soldier Lego Compatible Minifigures Set from Temu

 

I was browsing through the building blocks category on Temu a couple of weeks ago and I saw this set of 12 medieval themed Lego style minifigures for around $9 CDN.  That works to about 0.75 cents per minifigure.

Here's how the medieval soldiers came in their packages from Temu.  They are unbranded and the packages don't have any set numbers on them.

The minifigures come packaged two per bag and you have to attach the hair, arms, hands and capes yourself.

Of the 12 minifigures, 6 are wearing a gray chainmail outfit and the other 6 are wearing a blue crested tunic.  All 12 of them come with a hard plastic cape in either black or red.  Each minifigure comes with a sword as well.  There are actually two females in this corps of medieval soldiers, which is something unique to this set.  You'll notice that every minifigure has a unique face, no two are alike.

Some bonus items in this set include 3 shields with dragon crests, a black cowl for one of the minifigures, and two dogs.  If you look closely, you can see that the two dogs come from different molds.

Overall the brick quality was excellent and everything fit together well.  The prints on the torsos were great too, except their wasn't any back or arm printing on them.  I especially liked the hard plastic capes instead of the flimsy fabric ones you normally get with these soldier sets.  The only improvement I would like to see on this set is if they all came with shields and extra helmets.

I'll most likely add these minifigures to my Lego compatible medieval buildings to enhance their displays.

Set Review: Leyi LY-76030 Iron Hero MK 26 Steel Armor

 

Intro

If you're a fan of the Hulkbuster suits from the Avengers movies, but you're looking for a more affordable alternative to the official Lego set, you might want to consider the Lego Compatible Hulkbuster Mecha building set from Leyi.  

The set is Leyi LY-76030 Iron Hero MK 26 Steel Armor.  The code name for the Mark 26 Armor is called Gamma and is one of the few Iron Man suits not to have a chest mounted ARC reactor.   Here's a wiki page that describes the Mark 26 Iron Man suit in more detail.

I didn't have any great looking Mechas or Hulkbusters in my brick collection and was looking for an inexpensive yet displayable set.  I got this particular set on Aliexpress for around $30 CDN.  It came with free shipping but no further discounts.

There's a few other similarly priced Hulkbuster models on Aliexpress.

What's in the set

This set includes 768 pieces and is fully compatible with Lego bricks. 

I got my set after about 2 weeks of ordering right after Christmas and was surprised at how small the package was for 768 pieces.  The set came with a thin instruction booklet, a sticker sheet and 2 bags labelled #1 for the lower portion and #2 for the upper portion of the hulkbuster.  As you can see on the instruction booklet, this set is rated age 6 and up.

After opening the bags, there were other bags packaged inside.  Overall there were a total of 9 parts bags with the majority of pieces being small 1x1 and 1x2 bricks.   It makes it quite challenging because of all the small pieces.

The instructions were clear enough for the most part, but I do recommend checking each step to make sure you have all the right pieces.   Check twice, build once!

Here's a closer look at the sticker sheet I didn't use.

 

Building the Hulkbuster lower half

These are the sub-assemblies built from the pieces in bag #1.

The lower torso, hip sub-assembly.

Upper thigh sub-assembly.

Lower leg sub-assembly.

The feet sub-assembly.

Lower body, front side.  Knee joint flaps are adjustable.

Lower body, back side.  Gotta adjust those jets.

A closer look at the Iron Man MK 26 suit.  Here is a battle damaged (ie. defective) piece from the set.

And these are the extra pieces leftover from bag #1.

Building the Hulkbuster upper half

Tony takes a breather, as he moves on to all the pieces from bag #2.

The upper body, shoulder and arm sub-assemblies are ready for attachment.  With a few extra pieces leftover.

Upper body assembled.

The Completed Hulkbuster

The cockpit is extremely spacious.  Would have been nice if there was a control panel inside.

Ready for battle!

The view from behind.

The side view.

The jackhammer hand.

The Pros

Once completed, the Hulkbuster suit stands over 7 inches tall (180mm) and just as wide, making it the largest mecha in my collection.  

Here is the MK 26 Hulkbuster next to my Ant-man and Mr. Freeze mechas.  As the majority of Hulkbuster models are red and gold, I liked the dark green colour scheme of this particular model.

When I was looking for a mecha set, I found that many of the lower priced Hulkbuster models had very thin legs and a small waist.  I wanted an affordable mecha but still wanted it to look substantial and this hulkbuster fits the bill perfectly. 

At approximately $30 CDN, this set was one of the less expensive Hulkbuster sets and thought  this was a good balance of parts vs. price. This set is significantly more affordable than an official Lego Hulkbuster set making it a great choice for budget-conscious builders like me.

The Hulkbuster suit features  movable joints and a cockpit that opens to seat a minifigure.  It features articulation at the ankle, knee, hip, elbow and shoulder joints.  The torso can also rotate at the waist.  The hulkbuster mecha helmet is hinged above the cockpit for easy placement of the included minifigure.

The model seems sturdy enough and doesn't lose balance so I can display the Hulkbuster in a variety of poses.  I'll probably take a picture of the Hulkbuster with all of my Iron Man minifigures in the near future.  I think it will make an awesome display.

The Cons

 The Aliexpress illustrations show a slightly metallic sheen to on all the green pieces, but the actual dark green pieces were rather flat.  For example, look at the upper arm just above the silver dot, it looks shiny to me. 

I'm not a huge fan of stickers, so I didn't use the provided sticker sheet.  I was hoping that there would be many printed brick pieces but this wasn't the case for this set.

I got about 20 extra parts with the set, but there was one deformed piece (right side) which I had to replace with one of my own pieces (left side) from my own stash of parts.

In terms of design, the arms reflect the Iron Man's Mark 26 Armor which has jackhammers instead of hands at the end of the arms. So this Hulkbuster can't really hold anything.

After posing the Hulkbuster a few times for my pictures, I found the shoulder ball joints to be a bit loose. I don't know if the other ball joints will loosen over time or not.  At the moment it still displays well and I can make a few poses with the set.

Summary and Rating

Here's the quick recap of the building set:

Brand:  Leyi 

Set Number and Name:  76030 Iron Hero MK 26 Steel Armor

Piece Count:  768 pieces 

Minifigures included: Yes, 1

Stickers or Printed parts:  Stickers

Size: approximately 7 inches in height and width

Cost: around $30 CDN with free shipping

My rating for this set is 3.75 out of 5.  

The Hulkbuster is an affordable and displayable set, but I think it's tad too small and I worry that the ball joints will loosen over time with use.  I would have liked to have seen a more metallic sheen on the pieces as illustrated with printed parts instead of stickers.  

My first reaction to seeing the set for the first time was that it had a lot of really small parts, I expected larger parts for the set.  The included Iron Man minifigure is a nice touch though.  At the price of around $30 CDN, I would still recommend this set, but wouldn't want to pay any more for it.  

Thanks for visiting and let me know what you think of this set in the comment box below.

Star Wars MOC Tatooine Radar Base Building Review

 

Hey brick fans, welcome back to Bricks and Figs, my blog about interesting MOCs, minifigures and other building block sets.  Back in the summer, I saw this set on Aliexpress, maybe it's been there for awhile but I've never noticed it until now. It's a MOC building that you would find in a Star Wars Mos Eisley layout.  It would look right at home next to the Cantina set.

There are quite a few MOC Tatooine sets on Aliexpress that have been copied from Rebrickable, from designers The_Minikit_Guy, gabizon, and Legat_of_Legion, and others to name a few.  

This particular MOC set is listed on Aliexpress as the >Desert Radar Base , and I found it intriguing because I couldn't find where this set originated from.  I searched for Tatooine and Mos Eisley on Rebrickable, and while there were nearly 300 MOC entries, this set wasn't one of them.  I also did a google image search but the only matches I found, came from Aliexpress.

Anyways, I ordered the set to review it and it came in about a month or so.  Mine cost a smidgen over $40 CAD ($30 USD), so it's not like really cheap for the 453 pieces.  I would have preferred if this set was in the $20 price range.

You get a bag of parts and a 16x32 baseplate.  The instructions for the set are obtained by scanning the QR code on the bag and downloading it to your phone.

There are 453 brick pieces, comprised of mostly tan bricks with a few brown and gray bricks.  No stickers or minifigures come with this set.

The set isn't that difficult to build, I would estimate you should be able to finish it in about 30 mins to 1 hour.  Brick quality and clutch was generally fine.  In my picture above, I've added my own parts, namely the black girder on the roof and the brown bin.  I also added a stormtrooper minifigure so you can see the scale of the building. I replaced the original 16x32 stud baseplate with my own 32x32 stud baseplate because I wanted a display area in front of the buildings.

There were a few extra pieces leftover from the build.

This radar building set is composed of two buildings joined by an archway.  The smaller building has a doorway that is blocked by chain links.  There are a couple of radar dishes on the roof.  The larger building has a large archway with a brown door and a small tower on the roof.  There's also 3 more smaller communication antennas on the roof.

There's not much going on in the rear of the buildings.  The roofs haven't been designed to come off because there's no interior in either building.

There's some pipes on the front and either side of the buildings, the red flowers are supposed to be shut-off valves, I think.

Not sure if this is a window or door.  Here's a few more pics.

Fortunately, there are some pipes on the sides of the buildings for visual interest, otherwise this would be a pretty bland build.

If you are interested in getting this building or similar ones for your Star Wars Mos Eisley/Tatooine diorama, you can find it by searching for "Tatooine house" on Aliexpress.

In summary, while I think this building is nice enough to make a display out of it, there's not much in the way of play value. I think it definitely needs to be changed so that the roofs can be removed and furnished with some kind of interior,  like some computer terminals or monitoring stations inside the radar base.  I would also replace the pipe valves with some flat circular tiles, maybe in light gray colour.  Oh and maybe add some lighting for a nice effect.

Anyways, that's it for this post.  Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for checking it out, bye for now!