Even More Lego & Disney

What's this? Even more Lego & Disney/ Yes, indeed. For those of you wondering what brought this on. Well I just attended my first convention on Sunday, August 7th.  If the heading picture didn't give it away, this convention was BRICKFAIR.  This convention is held in Dulles, VA each year put on Adult Fans of Lego  or AFOL's for short.  Man, I thought Bronies was a silly fan name. Anyways, for those of you wondering what this convention has to do with Disney, well there was some great Disney stuff there. Such as you could buy any of the Toy Story Lego sets save for the one,  that I still want...

Why can't I find you?

Never the less, I did fund something just as cool if not cooler.  One of the nice things about this convention is that you could buy fan Lego stuff such as an exclusive minifigure or unofficial Lego set that was put together using Lego pieces but based something completely unique and that Lego does not have  such as this Herbie The Love Bug set I picked up.

Lego Herbie

Now as I said this is not put out by Lego but rather a group that calls themselves ME Models.  To get a better understanding of what they are, here is a description from the box.

This is not a Lego Product. ME Models uses Lego brand elements as a medium to produce our art. Lego is a trademark of the Lego Group, which does not sponsor or endorse this product.

Simple as that.  Now I used to be what is called a Lego Purist.  A fan who thinks you shouldn't mess with Lego and let it be but that was until I saw this Herbie set and once again that pesky 10 year old came out. But what do you expect when you are in a room full of Lego.  Naturally, when I got home I had to put this thing together.   Maybe it is just me but I always seem to get an odd rush of excitement when putting together a Lego set.  I think that was kicked up a notch knowing that this was based on a beloved Disney character.

Anyways, to kick off this article I'm going to do a mini-review on the Herbie toy.  Let's begin.


Now the first thing I brought want to bring up pertains to the minifigure that came with this set.  Y'know I don't want to call him minifigure throughout this entire article, so instead we call him Jim Douglas.  The driver from the first Herbie film played by Dean Jones.

Lego Jim Douglas

Now the only real complaint I have with this set is directed towards Jim.  When I opened the box, he was already put together.  Now this isn't something unique to just this set as other official Lego sets I have put together have already had the minifigure put together.  Now, it's probably seems like I'm nitpicking and I am but I don't know I guess I just miss having to put together the minifigure along with building the Lego set. In a way, putting together the minifigure was like an appetizer while building the main set was the main course and without appetizer something is lost. Other than that, Jim is a great minifigure and I actually like that this set gave you stickers to put on him as not many sets use stickers for the minifigures these days.   

Now one plus this set had over the regular Lego sets is that the bag was easier to open. Again, I know silly point but with this set just using a Ziploc bag, it was quite easy to open.  

The bag of pieces

Mistakes included, it took me about 88 minutes to put Herbie together. Again I said mistakes included and this is on my part. It is nothing against the set but as much as I love Lego, I have always had a bit of a problem reading their instructions. I'm okay with visual instructions for the most part but sometimes I just get confused when reading these instructions. Never the less, I enjoyed myself for all of those 88 minutes that I was putting together Herbie.  Here is the end result.

Herbie's Back

Herbie's Side

Here again, they provided sticker and I don't know if it can be seen in either of these pictures but I had troubles placing them on but again this is a problem I  have always due in part to my hand eye coordination not being the best but I'd say Herbie just won the race and it's showing.  In the end, I actually like this and I  have a feeling that Lego will never make a Herbie set because Herbie is a dead property, sad to say. He doesn't bring money anymore. No matter, there still is the Cars Lego sets that are pretty awesome.  

Now I the next thing I want to show you is something that was on display at the convention that made my jaw drop.

Lego Sorcerer Mickey

This right here was built by a group from Georgia that came to my state just for this event.  When I saw this, my eyes lit up and I was mesmerized by what I was looking at.  Now some of you may be able to catch on to this but they actually recreated a scene from The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment.  Should be pretty obvious, which one it is.  Now you probably can't make out in this picture but those buckets are actually filled with clear Lego bricks to emulate the buckets of water.  I think you guys can figure that this was the highlight of my day.  Well that and buying Herbie.

So concludes another Lego & Disney article.  This was my first time at the BRICKFAIR and I had a blast.  I'm hoping to go back next year and just maybe I'll find that elusive Toy Story set that I have been wanting.   Now I wouldn't feel right not bringing this up since I know there are a lot of Dr. Who fans on the site but I did see a Lego TARDIS and a Lego Dalek.  I think that's you spell that. Wouldn't know, never seen the show.  Though there two non-Disney models that I loved that I want to share with you to end this article.

Look's better then the movie!

Who You Gonna Call?

I hope you have enjoyed this third entry in my look at Lego & Disney.  We aren't done with this subject. I have a feeling that this subject will crop up again sometime in the distant future.  As for now I leave you with these wonderful models to look at and I guess you could say the Lego Herbie review counts as an Automobile Month Bonus.