LEGO City 3221: Big Truck

The Lego City Truck is great value for money and easy to construct. It sometimes comes apart in places (as with all lego models) but overall it's great. My 7 year old bought this and put it together with minimal help. He loves it!

I'd been dithering about buying this set for most of last year. These cute Lego delivery trucks have popped up every now and again. Although a product that seems a bit of an in-joke (its delivering Lego! In Lego City! Do you see?!)this one does have some fantastically cute stock to deliver - little blocks with representations of actual sets on them. Sold to the man who's far too old for toys!

So, what do you get for your money? Well, plenty of bricks, two mini figures and a sack trolley (clearly modelled on the awful US stock transportation model where you have to handball stock off the back of a 40ft container) which result in a suprisingly large truck - as it states on the box, its 39cm in length!

The tractor cab is the business end of the set. Its nicely detailed, with a grill, headlamps, curved roof wind resisting thingy, wing mirrors and opening doors, plus steps up to the cab. Inside is a dashboard and mug, plus a bed and flat screen telly - just like a real lorry! So far so good. The design isn't really my cup of tea, if I'm honest. The sloping bonnet, grill and headlamps give it a slightly slug like appearance and a bit of areodynamics that, really, you wouldn't expect a tractor cab to have. Back in 2009, Lego put out a rescue set that was an articulated lorry with helicopter. That earlier model did the tractor cab thing with a bit more welly than we've got here. Putting the two side by side, it's difficult not to notice how that earlier set was just that little bit better, with its opening bonnet and more sensible, blocky front end.

The trailer is pretty unremarkable, just being a long fairly plain hollow thing, but its difficult to know how you'd really go about making that a jazzy thing. There's opening doors on both sides and the rear and the stock fits nicely inside. Structurally, its quite weak.Placing the stock inside the trailer has to be done gently - too much force and you end up with the bottom panels falling out. A simple fix would have been to have put a couple of long flat beams underneath. Indeed, such things like doing a bit more to dress up the chasis of the trailer would have made it look that bit more realistic too.Unhitching the trailer is also annoying - it frequently pulls out the circular piece on the back of the cab to which it connects.

As I've collected Lego over the last couple of years, it's become noticeable that its not the actual bricks and wheels that drive up the cost of the set, but the inclusion of two or more mini-figures with any one set. I'd have happily foregone the additional figure with this set at the expense of a more sturdy trailer with a better coupling mechanism, in all honesty. The set is impressive, and good fun, but just a tad too fragile as it stands, which is suprising given how durable Lego's City vehicles generally are.

A variant Toys R Us version of this set exists in blue and white and comes with a (very) small toy shop. It bumps the rrp up by an extra £10 - £20, depending on where you buy it from, which offers a bit of extra play value at the cost of offering value for money.

Bought for my 5 year old grand-daughter who is seriously into Leggo. I only had to help once otherwise it kept her occupied on and off over 3 days. Pictures really explicit on how to build. Didn't have a lot of time to play with it as she returned to mum and dad after the short break.