I love Minifigures. So, when I heard that LEGO was releasing a City Minifigure pack, I was pretty excited. Sadly, Fun in the Park – City People Pack did not really live up to my expectations. Many of the Minifigs are nice, but the set is not a very good value.
Summary of Set
Name: Fun in the Park – City People Pack
Set #: 60134
Cost: $49.99 CDN
Brick Count: 157
Minifigure Count: 14
Other Figs: 1 baby & 1 dog
Manuals: 3 (65 pages total)
Release Date: May 22, 2016
Summary Review: 69%
Value: 20% ($0.32 per brick, well above the average of $0.11 per brick)
Build: 80% (not much to build, but lots of interchangeability with Minifigs)
Minifigs: 96% (1 minifigure for every 13 bricks, lots of new and useful designs)
Enjoyment: 80% (I will keep this set mostly as is for use in my LEGO city)
Review:
Value: 20%
This is where the set really loses a lot of points in terms of the review and my personal feelings towards the set. There is a low piece count (157), and a high price tag ($49.99 in Canada), meaning that each bricks costs you $0.32. The average cost per brick in terms of all LEGO is around $0.11. So, this is comparatively a really expensive set.
I am sure that people will argue that you are buying this for the Minifigures, and those come at a higher cost. This is a valid argument. If you compare the price point with the individual packets from the Minifigures series, the cost is okay (not great). Buying 14 Minifigures at $3.99 each will cost you $55.86. This means you are getting one free Minifigure, and one half priced Minifigure in this box. So, this set is a little less expensive when compared with buying individual Minifigs. But, there are four Minifigs with stumpy legs in this box, and I almost always feel ripped off when those are counted as full Minifigures. One or two ape-children would have been more than enough for me, and that is what you tend to see in the Minifigures series if the stumpy legs are included at all. Fun in the Park gets 1 on 5 for value.
Build: 80%
There is not much to build. It is a people pack, so that is to be expected. I like the park bench, it goes well with the fountain freebie from June 2016. The pick-nick table is ok, as is the little merry-go-round. The soccer net doesn’t do anything for me, and the lawnmower is nothing new. The most enjoyable little build was the hotdog vendor’s cart. It has a nice open/close feature to store the sausages, and you get a hotdog bun. Both of these are improvements over the hotdog cart in City Square. I will also give this set points in terms of build for the interchangeable Minifig parts. None of the Minifigures are identical with respect to any of their parts, with the exception that the wheelchair guy and business woman have the same colour pants. If you consider that each Minifigure is made of four main pieces (hair/hat, head, torso, and legs), and you have 14 characters in the set, you can make about a thousand different combinations. Since not all of the little builds resonate with me, I give this set 4 on 5 for build.
Minifigures: 96%
As this is a Minifigure set, there is a high Minifigure to brick ratio. You get about 1 Minifigure for every 13 bricks in this box. So, it get a full 5/5 for Minifigure value, even if there are four ape-children. I don’t like to count the ape-kids as full Minifigures, but if you did, it would be one Minifigure for every 11 bricks.
These Minifigures look like average, everyday people, just as they were meant to (which is great for building a city). None of the Minifigs have any leg detailing though, and that would have been appreciated at such a high price point. They all have nice front torso designs, and some form of back painting (with the exception of the old man who has no back pattern). Only three of them have double sided faces. The little blond boy has a sad alternate face, the mother can sport sunglasses or not, and the painter has an “oh crap, I made a mistake” face. I might be wrong, but I think that the only Minifigure here with nothing new added was lawn-care woman. I have seen this torso print and leg combination many times before. In terms of my overall opinion, this set loses some marks for the stumpy legs, the fact that grandpa has no back print, and the lawn-caretaker is not unique. But, overall, it is a strong collection and it gets 91% for Minifigure design.
Of special note in this set is the wheelchair guy. A huge deal has been made about this Minifigure online for the last few weeks given that he is the first disabled LEGO character. I like diversity in my Minifigures, and I am glad LEGO made this one. But, I am also of the opinion that too big a deal has been made about this character. The magic of LEGO is that where imagination exists, possibilities are endless. If someone wanted a paraplegic Minifigure, all they had to do was build a wheelchair. People complain that LEGO has not been the same since the advent of themed licences and movie based builds. It has been said that takes away from imagination. Well, isn’t making a wheelchair piece to appease people the same thing? What about a blind Minifigure? I can make a cane out of a LEGO flagstick, use a Minifigure with sunglasses on, and imagine that he is blind. I don’t need LEGO to tell me “this minifigure is blind”. With all that said, the wheelchair piece and the Minifigure are both really nice additions to any collection. I would not say that they make this set worth buying on their own though.
Finally, though not an actual Minifigure per se, the first LEGO baby also made its appearance in this set. While Tribal Woman (from Minifigures Series 15) did come with a bundled baby, Fun in the Park has a baby with little feet and arms. The head is also removable in actual Minifigure style, and can, therefore, also turn. Rumor has it that we will be seeing another such baby in Minifigures Series 16.
Taking the average of the score for Minifigure value and design, I give this set 96% for overall Minifigures.
Enjoyment: 80%
I like these minifigures for the most part. I am never a fan of the ape-children, but all of the others will find a place in my LEGO city. I will keep the merry-go-round, the park bench, pick-nick table, hotdog cart, and bus sign as is. I will not bother finding a place for the soccer net, and I have enough lawnmowers already. This set gets 4/5 for enjoyment in my eyes.
Overall: 69%
I really do like most of the Minifigures in this set, and the wheelchair and baby are super nice new pieces. But, at $49.99 with four ape-child Minifigs, it really is too high a price point in my opinion. The builds in this set are alright, and useful in a city, but something more unique, like perhaps a swing set, would have been better than that lack-luster soccer net.
Until next time,
-T.N.B.
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