LEGO Bricks & More 626: Large Green Baseplate

Without a doubt, these are the best priced Lego 'Plates' on the net. After selling a huge amount of Lego many years ago, I've needed quite a few baseplates to keep my old Minifigures on (Lets face it, it's not the easiest task to keep them together!) and so its good to see that these are still being sold separately. Many high-street toy shops sell this product in a variety of colours, and of course Lego themselves do through their Online and retail stores, but their was no way on Earth I could pay their prices. Trust Amazon then to undercut them all by almost 50%, which means I can order twice as many baseplates and get them for basically half the price.

In return, Amazon's pricing is a completely fair reflection of, what is surely, one of the most basic and essential Lego products on the market, and will continue to be so.

This baseplate itself is the classic green colour, and its design hasn't changed for almost 20 years. One of the best attributes of these Plates is that if they get dirty/dusty, you can wash them no problem at all. Just pop them in a tub of warm water (with a gentle solution, if you prefer), remove and wipe thoroughly with a tea-towel, then you're good to go again!

I read reviews of other baseplates (including the Extra Large version) and noted many suggesting that the plates seemed 'flimsier' now than many years ago. Just to reform this argument, the current design baseplate was only introduced in the early 1990's, and in comparing my new green one to an old 'sandy' coloured one that I got with a Pirate's set around 1991, they are both just as stiff. I would therefore suggest that the flimsiness depends entirely on the baseplates size. 'Plates before the 1990's were indeed thicker, but they were also a different design.

Only improvement I would suggest for retailing is that, in addition to selling them on their own, Lego should sell these baseplates in 'packs' of 4 - thus saving shelve space and money. It would be lovely to see them either with packs of the same colour, or one with Red, Blue, Green and Grey included.

It does exactly what you expect and makes construction of larger models and scenes much easier. As it is not rigid and flexes a bit on carpet it is easiest to use on a table or on a hard floor. My only real gripe is with the price and at £4.99 when I bought mine from Amazon this was about the cheapest you can find. Lego need to offer multi-packs of these; two for £6 would seem reasonable.

This is an extremely useful addition to any Lego collection.

Not only does it hold bits of Lego still making them easier to be added to, it encourages 3-D building for children who have a tendency to build 2-D 'towers'.

Can be linked together with other plates of the same or different colours to create towns, beaches etc. and stretch young imaginations.

Also very useful when you are putting Lego away. Just stick all the blocks onto the board and you have a solid lump of Lego, reducing the loss of small parts.