Customer Reviews

Wild Collection Designer Set from LEGO

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When my son was four he was such a fan for bugs and animals that I decided to buy the Lego Wild Collection for his fifth birthday. I knew he would be a year younger than the recommended age of 6+, but I figured I could help him. When he received the toy he was thrilled and immediately engaged me to build the Crab. It was very hard because there were about 500 pieces, most of them very small pieces, but after an hour of "needle-in-the-hay-stack" hunt I succeeded in locating all the necessary bits. My boy was able to put most of the pieces in by consulting the book's step by step instructions, but about 10% of the time he couldn't understand it and I would have to show him how. Although he isn't a patient boy he was engrossed with the project and never lost focus, and in the end he was proud of the Crab and admired it for hours.

After I complained to my husband, a plumber, about the difficulty in locating the tiny pieces, he suggested that I go to the hardware store and buy a utility box that contained different compartments for the various parts. I found one such box with a lid and 12 compartments and sorted all the chunks out by size and color. Everything was a breeze to find after that - I wonder why Lego doesn't provide such a box.

Since then my son and I have dedicated about 12 hours building various creatures such as snakes, snails, spiders, scorpions, birds, fish, jelly fish, mosquitoes, daddy-long-legs, and we are not even half way done with all the possible 63 creatures yet. It was fun even for me because back when I was a kid Legos weren't half this fancy. The Lego website shows many extra pictures of various things one can build with the Wild Collection. We did have one missing piece - the Ant's belly - but Lego is sending it for free after I ordered it from their website. Today my son succeeded in building the Ant by substituting the missing piece with a different piece. He worked on it for 4 hours, mostly by himself because I couldn't find the time to do it with him, and he succeeded, to my total amazement, since the Ant is one of the hard ones to build. (There are 3 levels: easy, medium and hard.) It is amazing to see how fast he is learning to put the pieces together.

I would like to yell "Bravo!" to the Lego designers for coming up with such a wonderful toy. It isn't cheap, but in comparison to the amount of time a child spends with the toy, I think it is more than worth it. One can, of course, get a small, cheap Lego thing that can build only one thing, but after the child builds the same thing a couple of times he gets sick of it. This way, because there are so many pieces, there is a huge variety of things one can build, so you pay four times the money but you build a hundred times more critters too because you can reuse the parts. I just think it makes much more sense this way, and I highly recommend this toy to anyone.

Tip: There is a grey piece shaped like a handle. It is for taking the built legos apart. It doesn't say that in the instruction booklet, but that's what I figured it must be after I spent a few days prying stuff with the butter knife!

The part of the review is added 2 months later:
My son is done with the wild life lego set. I would say that he's spent more than 200 hours on it. On some days he worked on it day and night, and he can build every single critter in their without any help from me. Familiarity definitely breeds understanding in this case. Now he is moving on to the other Lego designer sets.

What a great set! You can build so many different creatures plus the great thing is that are enough pieces to build several creatures at the same time without dismantling other ones. I highly recommend this toy. My son has been playing with these constantly.

My seven year old loves LEGO's, and is thinking of them in a whole new direction with this kit. Before he would only make cars, buildings and etc. (I'm not complaining!). He loved building the creatures in the book, and has started using them to invent his own animals. The creatures in the book are at different difficulty levels, but you can build even the biggest ones and still have enough left over to build more. My son has at least three of the biggest put together now, at the same time.

I bought this for my ten year old and he loved this. There is lots of different instructions for many different creatures to create. My teenagers enjoy this also.

My friends son just turned six. He loves legos! He absolutly loved this one. He has so many, but this was different for him. Very easy to assemble, which he did by himself. The bugs are really cool looking. Once put together, they stayed together.
Great toy!

When I was a small gangly nerdish boy, I loved LEGO blocks more than anything. As time progressed, other pursuits filled my life--y'know, things like computers and then girls and cars. Now that I'm a large gangly nerdish (but strikingly handsome) boy, I decided to pick up this LEGO set on a lark. I'm quite impressed by the things LEGO has come up with in recent years (lots of great new colors, curved blocks, hinges, and a whole slew of weird looking interlocking bits).

As a kid, I used LEGO blocks to build space ships, buildings, cars and trains--all rather squarish numbers as was befitting of the blocky shaped blocks. But LEGO has entered an all new realm by adding dozens of hinged, sloping, curvy weird and wonderful parts--and this set is an excellent source of said things. It's perfect for building insects and in-laws, monsters, bugs and bunnies or any type of critter you can imagine. Make plants too! The pieces included in this set are incredible for creating more organic forms than tradional brick-y things--you can add bendable, twistable legs and articulated joints or whatever you can think up.

This set is a wonderful source of noodling entertainment--keep yours on the coffee table in a large bowl, and be amazed by how many people pick these things up and start making wonderful creations. Don't put them on your desk or you'll never get any work done!

Oh yeah, and I hear kids get a kick out of these things too.

I recently purchased this for my four year old son and we have a great time building the creatures in the booklet. So far, we've built the spider, lizard, and crab. He loves it! The many intricate details do challenge him but we work together and have great fun. I did purchase a container to store and separate the colors and various bricks so we can find the pieces efficiently. I am amazed by all the various pieces and how much lego bricks have evolved over the years. This set definitely provides hours of fun and creativity. We would purchase other Make & Create sets in the near future.

My son got this for his 5-year birthday and really likes it. His favorite legos are with wheels, but he liked the idea of making bugs and other creatures. He can make some of the creatures following their easy directions. For the ones that are too hard, my husband or I are enlisted to make them for him. But he mostly creates his own bugs. He also spends a lot of time playing with them once they are made. It's got some great pieces that we don't have in our other sets. It's a good set to foster any child's imagination.

Thiss toy is so much fun you can build different kinds of animals. A magazine comes in it and shows you how to make different animals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!