Context

The 'Nave Nostro Corridor' depicts a diorama from the Alien franchise, consisting of a corridor of the Nostromo (or 'Nave Nostro', as BlueBrixx dubbed it to avoid licensing issues) with some boxes and the alien. It is now sold as Modbrix set #109703, store page here. The set is about 24cm wide, 10cm deep, and 10cm tall. It consists of 670pcs and is sold for 20€ plus shipping, resulting in a fairly cheap per-piece price of ca. 0.03€/brick.

I bought this one back in November 2025 during the Black Friday sale when it was 20% off, i.e. for 16€ or extremely cheap 0.024ct/brick. While I wouldn't call myself the biggest fan of the Alien franchise, I do adore the retrofuturistic style of the original movie (and also the excellent Alien Isolation video game and the otherwise mediocre Romulus movie). This set does do a reasonably good job of capturing that style.

Shipping & Packaging

I bought this one together with the Freshwater Angelfish, so please check that review for more info on the shipping and outer packaging.

The Corridor itself came in a plain cardboard box with a glossy sleeve wrapped around it that depicted the set and some of its details. Inside the box were a bunch of unnumbered baggies with the bricks inside. The brick baggies are the same subpar kind that ModBrix and BlueBrixx-Specials have been using lately, though the ones in this set didn't give me quite as much trouble.

Instruction Manual

The manual is PDF only and can be downloaded from the BlueBrixx website after registration even if you haven't bought the set. The manual has 125 steps on 78 pages, resulting in reasonable 5.4 bricks per step and 1.6 steps per page. As is common, each step features a tooltip with the required bricks. In the main image of each step, the bricks from previous steps are printed in full colour and the new ones are boldly outlined in red.

If there are some easily confusable colours (reddish brown vs. dark brown, flat silver, pearl dark grey) there is an extra tooltip that names the colour. Personally, I'd prefer the usual sparkle on flat silver or pearl dark grey, but I guess whatever software Modbrix uses doesn't allow for that. I also prefer when the part list tooltips give the length of a plate or tile (as has become the norm with most brands nowadays) but, again, I guess their software doesn't do that.

Other than that, the manual is easy to follow and leaves little to be desired.

Brick Quality

Clutch is nice. Injection points are large, similar to XingBao. The bricks have a surprisingly nice and glossy finish that's not too far behind LEGO; I'd say that it's even better than GoBricks. Colour consistency is thoroughly mediocre. There are at least two shades each for black and dark grey (i.e. the two main colours of this set). Also, the black is surprisingly light, same as it was in Modbrix' Chernobyl. It's a nice-looking colour, sure, but, well, black should be as dark as possible. Still fine.

The flat silver parts do have the usual "splotches" that make this colour look like plain steel; just like with other sets in this colour (like the Prometheus or the NX-01) I really do like this effect. The pearl dark grey is also always a welcome addition, even if it's used sparingly for a single detail.

There are no prints nor stickers. While there are spares, there isn't a spare for each 1x1 (but, surprisingly, for most 1x2). I was missing a part (flex hose) which I have now ordered through BlueBrixx' after sales service for free without any issue. It'll probably take a few weeks for that to arrive, though.

Design

The manual begins with building the floor of the set, which is essentially a two-brick-thick studs-on-the-side wall. The floor is surprisingly hefty, which does make the set feel valuable but also takes a lot of parts -- steps 1-45 of 125 are spent just building the floor. The many 'grill' tiles in brown do make the floor look a lot like the maintenance sections of the Nostromo, and there are enough breaks by grey plates or masonry bricks to make the build somewhat interesting.

After that the back wall is built, featuring lots of flat silver grills, brown pipes, and an open octagonal doorway. Thanks to slopes at the floor and at the top (i.e. at the nonexistent ceiling), the diorama does look quite a bit like the octagonal corridors of the Nostromo. Again, quite a bunch of parts are spent on this, taking steps 46-95 of the manual.

The rest of the bricks are spent on a second open doorway (steps 96-110), a brick-built alien (steps 113-119), and some simple decorations like crates and tubing. The alien is nice, but the decorations seem more like an afterthought.

All in all, the set does look remarkably like the maintenance corridors of the Nostromo, but to be honest, those are not the first thing that come to my mind when I think of the Alien aesthetic. I would've preferred a padded white corridor, and also additional sets for the common/dining room, the medbay, and computer mainframe. IMO one of the best design features of the Alien aesthetic lies in their retrofuturistic depiction of technology, which is completely missing in this set.

Or, long story short, this is a reasonable replication of an Alien diorama, but it's not that the first diorama that would've come to my mind. I'd love to see more, but I guess this is a fairly niche interest. Still, how awesome would it be to have a bunch of set pieces from Alien Isolation with the details on printed pieces? I know, I know, tiny target audience, probably won't ever happen. Still, the movie is big and famous, and BlueBrixx/Modbrix do a lot of niche interests, and even Blade Runner has officially been picked up, so... pretty please?

Oh, right, I'm not sure what the scale is. Minifigs do look oddly small when placed in a doorway, so I guess it's a tad larger than minifig-scale? A bit of an odd choice, but I don't care about minifigures at all, so, sure, let's do it like this.

tl;dr

Competent replica of a Nostromo corridor from the Alien movie. Colour consistency is questionable but otherwise the brick quality is good. Price is fairly cheap for a German set in this size class.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

The 'Black Tower' (store page name) aka 'Black Magic Tower' (manual cover name) aka 'Magic Tower' (manual inset name) aka 'Tower of Darkness' (printed plaque name) aka Barad-dûr (what it actually depicts) is LEIMAO set H1116, consisting of 1405pcs. The set includes said tower build into a mostly lava-coated mountainside, plus a printed plaque with a micro-build of the same tower. The set is constructed almost exclusively of ordinary System parts but does include a battery-powered light brick and said printed plaque.

I bought the set all the way back in October 2025 with a bunch of others from YourWOBB ([store page]). Back then I paid ~14€ for the set plus a fractional shipping cost of ~7€. This results in an absurdly cheap price-per-part of 1.5ct/brick, which is somewhat offset by the thoroughly mediocre brick quality and most parts being 1x1 or similarly sized.

Shipping & Packaging

I ordered the set alongside obiblock's City 17, so please see that review for more info on the shipping and packaging.

The set itself came in three plastic bags with the set ID ("H1116") and the instruction part number ("1", "2", "3/4") printed on them, inside of which the various brick baggies are kept. The baggies were similarly numbered, featuring prints like e.g. "H1116" and "1-2" for the second baggy of part 1 of this set, but there were also additional baggies that were numbered differently, e.g. "H1116.2.2". I'm guessing that the "X-Y" baggies and the "ID.X.Y" baggies come from different brick manufacturers/suppliers, indicating that this may be yet another (likely stolen) MOC instead of an independently produced set. However, I did not find this or a similar version of Barad-dûr on Rebrickable, so I may be wrong about that.

There was an additional resealable bag with the instruction manual, the light brick, and yet another brick baggy. That brick baggy didn't have any numbering and was made of a softer plastic; it held the printed plaque plus some replacement bricks (see below).

Instruction Manual

The print quality of the manual is surprisingly excellent, making it easy to distinguish parts of very similar colours. The pages are roughly A4-sized, which is a welcome change to the typically A5-sized manuals that are common in this price class (which do occasionally strain my eyes, and I'm not even that old). LEIMAO spreads the 1405pcs over 164 steps in 42 pages, resulting in an average of 8.6 bricks per step (quite a lot!) and 3.9 steps per page (quite little). This makes the manual more challenging than entry-level brands like LEGO, which in my opinion is quite nice.

The set is divided into four building parts (numbered bags): (1) the base and part of the mountainside, (2) the rest of the mountainside and the fortifications, (3) the rubble outside the fortifications and the lower part of the tower, and (4) the top half of the tower. However, at the end of part 1 I had a shit ton of parts left that were needed in the later parts, so, ehhh.

While the order of the steps is occasionally flawed, making it unnecessarily difficult to assemble some parts of the tower, the manual is still reasonably easy to follow. There are a few spots with problems, e.g. intangible 1x1x2 slopes in steps #107 & #146, but those were easily fixed by removing a superfluous 1x1 plate underneath the slope or just rotating the slope by 90°. In step #120 you're supposed to place a ring of 26 tank treads around the tower, but 25 are enough (which is a common problem, not one specific for this brand). In step #190 the stud of a 1x2 plate is supposedly intangible as well, which is easily fixed by replacing it with a spare 1x1, but at some point these minor errors do get annoying.

Thanks to these issues with the manual (and also some issues with the brick quality), I definitely cannot recommend this set to beginners. If you already have some experience with the occasional weirdness of alt-brick brands, you'll probably apply the necessary fixes without really thinking about them, but if you've only ever built LEGO before (or are completely new to bricks altogether), this set will certainly prove frustrating.

Also, and I can't believe I'm writing this, but the front cover image shows a very different colouration from the final result. In the cover image, the lava is definitely red instead of orange and lots of decorative parts are trans-yellow or gold instead of various shades of orange or black. No idea what happened here, but it's pretty dumb.

Brick Quality

Clutch is almost always sufficient but regularly creaky. Some of the 1x1 bricks with a stud on each face are a bit iffy, which is annoying because those are really the kinds of bricks where you need as much clutch as possible. There is one at the start of part 4 (step #151) which is absolutely essential, so I pretty much just tried out all of these bricks until I found one with good clutch. The micro-build tower also needs two of these 1x1 bricks with good clutch. I put some tiny bits of scotch tape over the studs, which adds enough friction to improve clutch to reasonable levels and is more easily removed than glue.

The 1x1x2 slopes are annoyingly tight, but thankfully there are only, like, a million of those (ugh). The generally good clutch of the majority of parts is unfortunately undermined by odd building techniques, for example when a brick is connected only by the open half-stud at the bottom edge of a wedge plate. Injection points range from barely visible (like GoBricks) to fairly large (like XingBao).

Colour consistency is atrocious, by far the worst outside of MOCs that have been confectioned from different manufacturers. I assume that the colour consistency was so bad that LEIMAO gave us that extra baggy with replacements. Even with those, the colours noticeably differ from each other (as do, for example, the textures of the slopes, some of which are smooth and some of which are rough).

Trans-orange parts are reasonably but not perfectly clear; trans-clear parts are terribly milky. The finish usually isn't the best thanks to lots of microscratches, but I've definitely seen worse. The (monochrome) print on the plaque is reasonably sharp but definitely won't win any prizes either; not sure why it says "Tower of Darkness" with a big bat.

The light brick is a typical 2x3 brick where the switch is a protruding push button on the two-stud side. It needs two AG3 batteries (aka LR41 or LR736; not included) but doesn't tell the polarity, so you have a 50% chance of getting it right on the first try (I didn't). With the batteries installed, the LED is surprisingly bright but did flicker (probably suboptimal connection of the push button).

Unfortunately, the light brick is the wrong type. The design requires a 2x3 brick where the switch is operated by turning an axle receptacle instead of a push button. It's impossible to build the set unless you remove the push button from the light brick (or outright replace the light brick with an ordinary 2x3). At first I tried removing the push button, so I could still operate the light brick by shoving an axle into the designated pin hole. However, constantly pushing with an awkward axle to keep the lights on didn't work for me, so ultimately I ended up removing the batteries from the light brick.

Unfortunately, the light brick cannot be easily removed, which is a pretty dumb design choice. It feels like there was supposed to be a modular design at the back of the mountainside, but as it stands, one has to disassemble a fairly sizeable section to get at the light brick. Furthermore, I don't get why there even is a light brick there; it makes a tiny part of lava glow (instead of, you know, Sauron's big honking eye). I'd highly recommend outright replacing the light brick with a 2x3 brick.

Design Quality

The final set obviously depicts Barad-dûr, so kudos to the designer. There are lots of nice details and the set does look excellent. Completely assembled, the tower is 25cm wide, 17cm deep, and 28cm high. The micro-build is 10cm wide, 5cm deep, and 11cm high.

There are a few weird design choices, like three indentical plates stacked on top of each other instead of using the respective brick (steps #21, #124, #125, #127, #128, #129, and #148/149). I understand that this sometimes happens in MOCs when the respective brick is a rare part, but these ones are all common black parts, so... I don't get it.

There are also two 1x1 bricks next to each other instead of using a 1x2 (step #50), or even two 1x1 next to a 1x2 instead of using a 2x2 (step #54). I think this were supposed to make it possible to remove the light brick, but, uh, no, that definitely doesn't do anything? Feels like that idea was half-scrapped at some point.

There are also a few techniques that seem illegal (like clipping the tip of the angled side of a 2x2 wedge tile into a C-clip). In the end, these techniques all work out quite well, though.

All in all, I think that the set does look fantastic, and it was also extremely fun to build until part 4. The final part, i.e. the top half of the tower, was rather annoying thanks to the subpart clutch of the 1x1 bricks with studs on each face and the suboptimal order of the steps in the instructions.

tl;dr

The set looks great and the build is surprisingly fun. It is, however, definitely a low-budget affair. LEIMAO clearly did do some quality assurance and gave us a bunch of replacements for bricks whose colours were completely off, but they didn't catch some minor issues with the manual or the wrong type of light brick. The design certainly is well done if occasionally MOC-like; if this actually is an original LEIMAO design, they sure did good job for this budget. At a price of ~20€ for ~1400pcs, this set is an excellent deal, but you should bring some experience with alt-bricks or prepare to be frustrated at times.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

The 'OCP Police Cruiser' is BlueBrixx-Pro set #106895, featuring the eponymous car from the 1987 Verhoeven movie 'RoboCop'. Like the other sets of the IP, it came out in 2024 and exited the market in June 2026. The set consists of 376pcs, including seven prints, two of which are spread over three parts each. The original store page is this one, though right now it's giving me a 404 error.

Originally, the set was sold at 20.54€ (ca. 5.5ct/brick), which is fairly expensive. I got it at -70% off when BlueBrixx needed to quickly get rid of a sizeable part of their inventory for (IMO unreasonably stupid) legal reasons. At the resulting price of 6.16€ (ca. 1.6ct/brick), the set was ridiculously cheap. (I'm not counting the 6€ shipping in here because I bought a handful of other sets with it.)

The RoboCop movies are before my time, so personally I don't care about the IP at all. For me, this is a generic police car, and the very solidly built set certainly fits that role. I can't say whether RoboCop fans would be happy with this one, but BlueBrixx did also have a larger (and thus more faithfully detailed) reproduction of the same car, so maybe this small-ish version is more of a play set? It certainly is sturdily built and suitable for even small children to play with. There aren't all that many play features, though, and I think the build might be difficult for small kids because ~everything is black.

Shipping & Packaging

I ordered the set on 16 June 2026 during what essentially was a fire sale. BlueBrixx needed to get rid of a whole bunch of sets by the end of the month; by the time I'd checked the store, a lot of the interesting inventory had already sold out. Due to the high demand, the set wasn't shipped until the next week, on 24 June 2026. It arrived the next day with DHL because apparently we're absurdly fast now. Nice!

The sets I bought came together in an unreasonably large cardboard box that was two thirds filled with those big air cushions. I guess BlueBrixx only use a handful of box sizes, so, sure, why not. Still, lots of wasted volume; not sure if the mailmen are happy about absurdly large boxes.

The set itself came in a nicely printed box that IMO also was a tad too big. I know, bigger boxes sell better (because us customers think that we're getting a better value), but I legitimately prefer that filled-to-the-brim boxes from Chinese resellers (and also used for BlueBrixx Specials). Inside that printed box was a cardboard inlay, which I guess gives the box some additional stability and makes everything feel a bit more valuable, but, ehh, I don't really get the point of those either.

Inside the cardboard inlay were the printed manual and the brick baggies. The typical plastic baggies were printed with a big "1" for the usual separation into different parts of the build (though the Police Cruiser is small enough that there's only that single part, so, ehhh), and a smaller continuous ID, e.g. "106895-7" for the seventh baggy of the set. Some of the prints like the multi-part prints and the printed plaque came in their own resealable baggies to avoid scratches.

Instruction Manual

The printed manual is a bit smaller than A5 size and stapled. The print quality is (as always) excellent with clear and accurate colours. Each step features the usual tooltip that lists which new bricks are needed. In the main images, the bricks from previous steps are slightly desaturated whereas the new ones are printed in full colour, which IMO is the best way of doing manuals. There are 84 steps total on 34 pages, so ca. 2.5 steps per page and ca. 4.5 bricks per step, both of which make the manual easy enough to follow without dumbing things down too much (like certain mainstream brands like to do).

Brick Quality

The brick quality is, as always for BlueBrixx-Pro sets, good but not fantastic. Clutch is lovely throughout. Colours are consistent (though there's pretty much just black here). Clear parts are a little milky. The finish is not quite as glossy as other brands but I also didn't notice any bad scratches.

The biggest quality advantage are, as always, the flawless prints. The biggest disadvantage are, also as always, the fairly large injection points (though these aren't really visible in the final result thanks to the mostly studless design). I don't think there is any reason to complain about the brick quality of BlueBrixx-Pro (manufactured by XingBao): A handful of years ago we would've raved about how fantastic it is, but nowadays we're spoilt by the excellence of GoBricks/Pantasy and other top tier brands.

I had no missing or incorrect bricks but a bunch of spares. Thanks to the screwdriver used as an antenna, we get a whole 'tool wheel' that's mostly not used. Also, the multi-part prints come on a few carrier plates, so those are extra as well.

Design

The Police Cruiser is absurdly solidly built. Like, I'm not sure if I've ever built a more solidly built set, and I've built a bunch of BlueBrixx-Pro space ships that could reasonably be used to club someone to death (e.g. the fairly club-shaped Prometheus or Voyager). There are also a bunch of clever techniques throughout, e.g. for the trunk and rear lights of the Cruiser. I honestly had a blast building this set; best 6€ spent ever.

The final result does obviously look like a Police Cruiser. There are a bunch of highlights -- like the interior, the front bumper, or the rear lights -- but also a few spots that look a bit rough, like the blocky shape of the hood or the open hinges of the trunk. At this scale, it would be unreasonably to expect a flawless design (that's what the full-size Police Cruiser is for, I presume), so I'm very happy about this.

There's also a 2x4 printed plaque on a simple stand, so the set can be used as a display piece. The Police Cruiser is eight studs wide like (some of the) Speed-Champions-inspired cars (e.g. my Lamborghini Sian by QuanGuan), so it might fit fairly well into a brick-built cityscape (but definitely not on the stupid new-ish LEGO street system, which doesn't even fit the small 6w cars, like, what, are the Danes for real?).

I do wonder who the target audience is supposed to be. There are some play features: the trunk can be hinged open, and it's easy to pop off the roof to access the interior. The wheels also turn, obviously, though the four low-friction axle pins aren't quite as nice as two proper axles would've been. However, for a genuine play set, I would expect openable doors and a hinged hood and possibly two or three minifigs. Maybe this small-ish version of the Police Cruiser is just for show, as that small plaque indicates, similar to the mini-scale and midi-scale Star Trek ships that BlueBrixx used to produce? I'm not really sure; it does seem a bit small for that.

The original 20€ price isn't really what I have in my mind for adult-oriented products on the EU market, but LEGO's unreasonably expensive pricing has heavily distorted the market anyway, so, ehhh. If I were a hardcore RoboCop fan, I definitely would've preferred the bigger version; if I were a kid, I wouldn't care about the IP. Maybe that's why the set was still available when I came late to the party for their -70% sale? But, just to be clear, the Police Cruiser was very fun to build and would've absolutely been worth even a ~15€-ish price. It's just not something that I'd proudly show off to visitors or weirdos on the internet (which does seem to be a major selling point for most adult-oriented sets).

tl;dr

Fun and extremely solid build. Good brick quality with excellent prints. Works very well as a generic police car for those who don't care about the IP. Absurdly cheap at the (-70%) reduced price but somewhat expensive at the original one.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

The "Semi Mechanical Whale" is MJ set #13059, consisting of 1388pcs. Like other sets of the series (e.g. the Goshawk and the Dragonfly), the set includes a battery box with two LEDs, a bunch of prints, and a ridiculous amount of metallic parts. The basic construction of the Whale is made of Technic parts with ordinary System bricks on top. A manual crank operates a Technic mechanism that has the Whale flap its fins and tail and open its mouth.

YourWOBB ([store page]) currently sell the set for 10.49€ plus 13.19€ shipping (i.e. ca. 24€ total), resulting in an absurdly low price-per-brick of 0.017€/brick. I bought mine back in November 2025 during the 11/11 event together with a bunch of other sets at roughly the same price.

This is my fourth MJ set after the Mechanical Dragonfly, the Ice Dragon, and the Mechanical Goshawk. Of those four, the Whale is definitely my least favourite thanks to some issues with the brick quality and building process. The final result is nevertheless fantastic. Still, despite the clever design, many cool parts, and the absurdly cheap price, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this one.

Shipping & Packaging

I ordered the set together with (among others) MJ's Ice Dragon, so please see that review for more details on the shipping and outer packaging. The Whale itself came in a clear resealable plastic bag that held the printed instruction manual plus four resealable bags numbered "0" to "3", corresponding to the three separate building parts and the spares. Inside those resealable bags were the usual plastic brick baggies. Those baggies each had a bold black-on-white print for the part number (e.g. "1") and also a small print with an individual ID, e.g. "13059.3.5" for the fifth baggy of part three of this set.

A really like that MJ gather all baggies of a part in a larger resealable bag; sorting the various baggies can get pretty annoying depending on how many baggies there are. I wish other brands would adopt this as well (especially looking at you, Pantasy, with your seventeen steps for the Opera!).

Instruction Manual

The printed manual is the usual fare. Print quality is excellent, but there are a bunch of steps per page: the 1388pcs are spread over 265 steps, which are printed on only 69 pages, so we end up with ca. five bricks per step and four steps per page. Usually, a page contains either only a single step or, like, eight, which might me difficult for those used to basic brands like LEGO.

Each step features a tooltip that lists which new bricks are required. Metallic parts are indicated with a sparkle symbol; flat silver or pearl gold do look a little shiny thanks to a colour gradient but are not easily distinguishable from ordinary grey or yellow. In each step's main image, new bricks are outlined in red; old bricks are printed in full colour. The colours are fairly recognisable but I did have my problems with yellow/orange/pearl gold and I did mix up flat silver/metallic silver once.

Other than that, the manual is reasonably easy to follow and does not make any mistakes. This definitely isn't a set for beginners, though.

Brick Quality

First of all the excellent: the metallic coating is flawless, at least as good as e.g. Pantasy's (who I'd consider the market leader in terms of quality at the moment). There are five different metallic colours that I noticed: metallic silver, which is pretty much the main colour of the whale; a brassy warm gold, used for the main accents like the teeth or those engines on the whale's back; metallic gold, used only for those exhausts at the tail fin; a dark Titanium-like silver, used here and there for accents, and a vaguely rosy grey, used rarely for accents. I think the Goshawk had the same except for the brassy warm gold, whereas the Dragonfly only had the "common" silver and gold, plus a more mediocre blue.

According to the instruction manual, most of the metallic parts are spray-painted; only the two gold exhaust pipes plus three silver fins are coated by "electrodeposition". I don't really see any difference in quality between these two methods, nor do I see a difference between the spray-painted metallic silver and the electrodeposition metallic silver. No matter the method or colour, the metallic coating doesn't rub off easily and both looks and feels fantastic (in contrast to some other brands, e.g. BlueBrixx with their O'Neill and ZheGao with their Aircraft Carrier).

Also very good: the prints are sharp and bold, and I'm counting nineteen of them. Any brand that claims that prints are so terribly expensive that stickers are the way to go had obviously lost the plot (not counting prints that go over multiple bricks; that is legitimately expensive because it requires loads of manual labour).

Now my main issue: the brick quality. System bricks come (I'm pretty sure) from GoBricks, so those have nice clutch and small injection points and good colour consistency. The Technic parts, however, range from pretty nice (e.g. the pins) over somewhat tight (e.g. the axle pins) to an absolute nightmare (most of the axles and/or axle connectors). Pushing an axle through a gear should not result in terribly creaking nor require a hydraulic press. Considering that the set is fairly delicate during its build -- it's often practically impossible to really push against an assembly with much force -- the quality of the Technic axles is barely sufficient. I don't think I've ever been this annoyed by a set's brick quality before, and I was close to giving up at the end of the first part. Thankfully, the second and third part of the assembly were not as annoying, but still.

Also, the tail fin is attached by two axle connectors. One has practically no grip; I needed to shove a bit of scotch tape inside to make sure that it wouldn't fall off. Also also, a Technic panel is attached by a single pin that doesn't have sufficient friction to keep it aligned; it's only a visual issue but still mildly annoying.

I was also missing a brick (a Technic connector with three pin holes in a row and a 90° rotated axle hole below), but thankfully could continue the build without it. There are two extra baggies (numbered "0") with lots of small spare parts, plus a few spares in the normal baggies, but I actually didn't need any of those, so kudos for that, at least. I do want to note that there are zero spares in metallic colours, even though the set consists of lots and lots of metallic bricks.

Functions

As I wrote above, a hand crank in the stand operates a Technic mechanism. This flaps the wings, opens and closes the bottom jaw, and lowers and raises the tail fin over two joints. This mechanism is ready to be motorised, i.e. the connection points are already installed. This is not a bad idea because the transmission is pretty terrible; you'll have to turn the crank for half an eternity to make the Whale do anything.

The set includes simple lights: There are two LEDs inside a Technic pin, each directly connected by thin wires to a battery box that requires three AG13 batteries (disassembled like for the Dragonfly). The light is transmitted through clear hoses in a spiral around the Technic springs towards the Whale's eyes. However, the LEDs are too weak (or the transmission too lossy) for the eyes to really light up; when I turn off the lights in my room, the eyes are dimly lit, but compared to those spirals around the springs, it's really negligible.

The lights are turned on and off by rotating a gear at the Whale's side. For some reason, this gear is connected to another one, so it's unreasonably awkward to operate it by hand. The other MJ sets I've built had a much more accessible gear to operate the lights, but I guess the designers went for form over function this time.

While the instruction manual does spend a step or two on managing the wires, in the end, they're supposed to just awkwardly hang out of the Whale's sides in a wide loop. Also, the wires directly pass by a huge gear, which seems pretty dangerous to me. I doubt that the wires would survive if they got tangled in the gear. Thankfully, that hasn't happened to me yet (and it's not like I'm gonna use that hand crank for twenty hours a day. Or even twenty seconds a day. Or ever again).

Overall, the lights are not the high point of the set -- which is another reason why I don't like it as much as the other three MJ sets I've built, where the lights were pretty amazing. Still, it's crazy that there are lights at all, considering the set's absurdly cheap price. (And again, all the other brands that claim that lights are super expensive and cannot be done have obviously lost the plot.)

Design & Building Process

The set is separated into three parts. The first builds the base and the Whale from its torso to its tail fin, including the Technic mechanism. The second part adds details to the torso, especially at its back. The third part builds the Whale's head and fins.

The design is astonishingly detailed and incredibly clever. I'm sure the Technic mechanism won't be a grand relevation for those who regularly deal with these things (i.e. not me), but the resulting motion looks fantastic, especially for the two-jointed tail fin. The Whale generally looks gorgeous from pretty much all angles. MJ's designer(s) are obviously very talented and I hope that we'll get many sets like this one.

However, I do feel like the design was mostly designed on a computer without much iteration of building the set in reality. The manual sometimes does things in a weird order, the gears occasionally come close to clipping against a brick's edge, the cables are dangerously close to a big rotating gear, and the quality of the Technic axles isn't really compatible with the more elaborate techniques without much frustration. There also are some odd differences on the left or right side, where a piece is flat silver on one side and grey on the other. This doesn't seem deliberate, so I have no idea what's going on.

Also, I do wonder about the occasional colour choice. MJ obviously has the capability of producing/acquiring the Technic pieces in any colour they like, giving us the occasional accent in a frosty blue or orange or flat silver or pearl gold. But they still use LEGO's moronic blue or red or tan pins and axles in spots where there simply is no good reason to use those colours. I'm not too torn up about it because practically every brand does this, but... why?

In total, I found the building process incredibly frustrating at times (especially in the first of three parts) but also quite fun and rewarding during others. Mostly this has nothing to do with the design, though, but is caused by the subpar quality of the Technic axles/connectirs.

tl;dr

Gorgeous design with a clever Technic mechanism. Lots of fantastic metallic parts and prints. The lights could be brighter and their placement feels a bit wasted. The System brick quality is very good but the Technic axle quality is disappointingly subpar. If you don't mind the occasional point of frustration, I do recommend this set, especially at the absurdly cheap price. But in my own ranking of MJ sets, the Whale certainly brings up the rear behind the Dragonfly, Ice Dragon, and Goshawk. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to what else the designer of this set and MJ in general will bring onto the market in the future.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

This is the third and final part of my review on Pantasy's Opera (#85019). Due to its seventeen building parts, I needed to split the review (or not show a whole bunch of photos that I think would be nice to see), so here we are. Please check the following links for my reviews of the ground floor (parts #1 to #6) and of the upper floor (parts #7 to #16). This review is about the final step of the set, #17, which gives the Opera a roof. I've also added some final remarks on the entire set here as well.

The size of the finished Opera is identical to the size without the roof because its highest point is not the roof but those twin angel-like statues that are part of the front wall (built in part #16). For reference, the Opera is 25cm wide (less than 23cm without the streetlamps), about 27cm deep (less than 26cm if you only take the ground plate into account), and pretty much exactly 36cm tall (28cm without the dome and twin turrets).

Additional Notes on the Brick Quality

Part #17 doesn't actually contain all that many bricks, so there won't be much difference to what I discussed previously. We pretty much just get a few big plates in dark red for the actual roof, a handful of white bricks for the outer edge, lots of small stuff and a big hexagonal plate in metallic gold for the chandelier, and some clear parts for the dome. Like before, clutch remains excellent, injection points are tiny, colours are reasonably consistent, the metallic gold coating is perfect, the prints are crisp, and the clear parts are clear.

An unfortunate exception to the clear parts are the four quarter dome pieces. By the standards of most other brands, I wouldn't describe them as milky, but they are noticeably less brilliant compared to the other clear parts. Also, even though the domes were separately packaged, they have accrued a bunch of microscratches (most likely during production, so the fault might lie with GoBricks and not Pantasy). I'll be honest: Pantasy is justifying a comparably high price with their excellent quality, so I expected better. If this were pretty much any other brand (except Lumibricks/FunWhole, COBI, or LEGO), I'd be happy with the quality, but from Pantasy I do expect a little extra, especially for something as exposed as the frickin' large dome.

Design & Building Process of Part #17

The roof honestly feels just like an afterthought. Sure, the chandelier is gorgeous and just as over the top as the rest of the set, and the dome is nicely printed. But the roof is legitimately made of just a single layer of large plates with some smaller plates at the edges to hold everything together.

This design does make sense in-universe -- I'd be surprised if the roofs of actual operas or theatres were anything other than just plain structures; it's not as if the public were supposed see it, especially not for buildings that predate aerial photography. But this is not a faithful design of an existing building; it's a high-quality and (comparably) high-price set that focuses on its wonderfully detailed and gorgeously over-the-top design. Unless one puts the Opera on the top shelf, the front and the roof are the two sides that will be permanently visible, so why is the roof just a bunch of open studs? I would've been fine with a layer of plain tiles, and even open studs could've symbolised a gravel roof, but certainly not in dark red.

I don't know, maybe I've set my expectations too high. Compared to LEGO's modular buildings (which usually don't tile and sometimes don't even furnish their upper floors), the Opera is so many miles ahead that it's kinda sad. I'd definitely say that Pantasy share the market lead with Lumibricks/FunWhole when it comes to these sets (allegedly; I haven't built a Lumibricks set yet). But the roof could come straight from a LEGO set and left me disappointed. Since it's the final part of the set, this disappointment is what's going to stick in my mind. Seems unnecessary and kinda out of character. Maybe they originally had something different planned? There is that ladder in the upper floor that leads nowhere...

Final Thoughts

In total, Pantasy's Opera is a gorgeous set, possibly the most beautiful I've ever built. It is clearly meant to be viewed from the front, which is absurdly detailed and richer in overabdundant bling and excessive flourishes than a dozen other modular buildings put together. The other three sides of the building are plain or even ugly -- but the back wall hinges open like a dollhouse and a side wall can be hinged open as well. The interior is just as absurdly over the top as the front; I loved it! The only drops of bitterness are the untiled floors of the backstage areas (i.e. the literal backstage and the dressing room), and the oddly plain and stud-covered roof.

Quality-wise the Opera may be the best set I've ever built. Clutch is excellent and injection points are tiny -- sometimes even placed on the bottom side of tiles, which I haven't seen before even with GoBricks. The coating of the many metallic gold pieces is flawless and doesn't rub off in the slightest. The UV printing is excellent and the pad printing is very good but not perfect; nevertheless, the overall print quality is at or very close to the very top of all brick brands. Clear parts are clear, but microscratches do exist, and the big dome is a tad milky. In total, I'd say that Pantasy's brick quality is the best I've seen so far.

The Opera's build is geuinely fun. The design of the Opera is symmetric, so some parts of the build are mirrored and thus repetitive, but there's still a lot of variation. The many flourishes do make the build a bit finnicky -- I did get a bit annoyed here and there, but maybe I just have sausage fingers.

The official price of US$190 is pretty high for a Chinese set considering the 3518 pieces, many of which are tiny but many of which are also gold-coated or printed. Amazon regularly sell the Opera for a more reasonable 160€ and even frequently discount it to 136€. I'd definitely call that price fair (although I do want to note that MJ offer smaller sets with a similar quality at a cheaper per-brick price while including lighting). If you're interested in modular buildings and like the excessive design, Pantasy's Opera is an easy recommendation. Personally, I'm definitely going to buy more Pantasy sets in the future, most likely their Prague Astronomical Clock and perhaps a completely different style like their Architecture Firm (both of which come with lighting AFAIK). I'll just need to find an empty spot on my shelves first...

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

Pantasy's Opera is separated into so many parts that I need to split the review a second time if I want to show at least one photo per part, so here we go. This post reviews the upper floor of Pantasy's Opera (#85019), using the building parts #7 to #16 of 17. Part #1 to #6 made up the ground floor, see my review here. Part #17 will be the roof, which will thankfully leave me enough slots open in Reddit's twenty picture limit that I'll be able to show a bunch of pics of the entire building.

The upper floor's width is just a tad larger than 24cm; it's about 27cm deep and 26cm tall. This makes its footprint a bit larger than the ground floor, mostly thanks to those rectangular twin turrets at the top of the Opera's front. It is also more than twice as tall as the ground floor. It'd be fair to say that the Opera's theatre is two stories tall; there are some balconies that technically make up a second or third story (depending on whether you count in the UK or the US way).

When placed on top of the ground floor, the Opera is 36cm tall. The roof actually won't add anything to this because those twin angel-like statues on top of the rectangular twin turrets are the highest points. When you open up the hinged back wall, the Opera is about 36cm deep. If you open up the hinged side wall, it is about 33cm wide. Even with the side wall closed, you'll still need 25cm of shelf space because the street lamps are wider than the building's footprint.

My review of the ground floor contains a bunch of details on the shipping, packaging, and instruction manual. I also already wrote a lot about the general brick quality and of course the building experience of the ground floor, so please have a look at that review if you're interested in those things. Here, I'll only add additional things I noticed and try not to repeat myself. (But somehow I end up writing entire novels anyway, whoops?)

Additional notes on the brick quality

As I wrote in my review of the Opera's ground floor, the brick quality of Pantasy is a tad better than what I'm accustomed to from GoBricks, making this the best quality I've ever seen in bricks. However, with the upper floor making up almost two thirds of the set, I did finally have enough bricks to notice some minor colour deviations even in the previously excellent light nougat. The colour consistency is still far better than I've experienced with pretty much any other brand, but it is not as flawless as I'd hoped for when building the ground floor. Colour deviations are more readily apparent in dark red, which is known to be a problematic colour for pretty much any brand.

The number of prints remains staggering, including a cornucopia of various pad-printed pieces, e.g. for the stage curtains, and what have to be UV-printed pieces for the portraits. Both are excellent choices in technique; pad printing is great for single colours (like the patterns on the curtains and walls), whereas UV printing causes a relief-like structure in multiple colours (looking a lot like an actual painting).

The metallic gold remains excellent, the clear parts are wonderfully clear, clutch is lovely, and injection points are small but occasionally placed in visible spots.

Minifigures

The Opera's upper floor also includes the five minifigs of the set. Pantasy's minifigs look remarkably different from LEGO's, using a more doll-like body shape with overexaggerated heads. Their torsos can be rotated against the legs (but not freely). The minifigs can't bend their legs; instead, there are two leg pieces for each fig, depending on whether you want it to sit or to stand. When standing, the minifig has two inverted studs underneath the shoes but does require more than 1x2 studs of free space (I think LEGO's Friends figures have similarly large feet). When sitting, the figs have one central negative stud under the butt, perfect for Pantasy's seats but incompatible with those of other brands.

The minifigs do have fairly nice prints on the torso's front and back, sometimes also on the legs and arms. I'd still only call them mediocre in terms of details; all five figs are fairly basic in their design without any extras or accessories. Personally, I really don't care about minifigs at all, but these ones kinda creep me out a little with their big heads and dead eyes. I've heard that the minifigs of later sets look less creepy; I'm sure I'll find out in time.

Design & Building Process

The Opera's upper floor is made of parts #7 to #16 of a total of 17, probably using a bit less than two thirds of the total 3518 brick count. I'll go through these ten parts individually:

Part #7 begins with the front wall of the upper floor, building a gorgeous one-and-a-half floors tall window that is seamlessly printed and comes pre-assembled. The metallic gold on white continues to be an extravagant colour choice that does look almost horrifically gaudy; I absolutely love it!

Part #8 adds the large 'The Opera' lettering at the front but still leaves the front unfinished. This part also builds the actual floor of the upper floor, using a bunch of big plates. So far, the upper floor is a fairly straight-forward build, but the end result of #8 isn't quite as stable as I'd like: so far, it's a frickin' huge wall attached to a frickin' huge base without any other supports.

Part #9 adds inner windows to the front and builds the supports for the right-side balconies. I'm happy that Pantasy remembered to add a staircase to the balcony level; it really grinds my gears when the minifigures are supposed to teleport to the upper floors...

Part #10 is the first part of the second instruction manual. This part builds the outer right-side wall. There's another gorgeously UV-printed portrait here that I really liked. Building the golden arches around the printed panels (possibly symbolising curtains to an imaginary extension of the building?) was a bit finicky, but the result sure does look lovely. The single-seater balcony is built on a hinged wall, which opens half the back wall of the upper floor.

Part #11 adds the double-seater balcony to the right side. Lots of gold and dark red, which looks very rich and not quite as gaudy as the gold on white. I'm not quite sure why the brick-built seats have three studs; the minifigs only use one? They can sit on these seats, so it's not a problem, but I don't get it.

Part #12 builds the stage and the central rows of seats. This part is one of the sets highlights thanks to the more than twenty prints used for the curtains alone and the brick-built contrabass. I'm not all that fond of the cardboard inlay that makes up the stage background (either dark red or flowery yellow, probably for 'Phantom' and 'The Queen', as is announced on the banners at the front), but it's a cool idea, I suppose.

Part #13 adds the lower left wall with a dressing room for the actress. The side wall hinges open to reveal the vanity table, which is definitely cool, but I'm a little annoyed that the floor remains open studs without any tiling (same as the backstage area).

Part #14 builds the inner wall of the upper left side, adding two more gorgeous UV-printed paintings. Same as at the right side, the left half of the back wall is attached by hinges and can be opened. There's also another single-seater balcony here, plus a ladder so people can bash their heads against the ceiling? Not sure why, there's nothing up there. Did they original plan to have a traverse with stage lights or something? Maybe a hatch to the roof? I sure don't know, but now the ladder leads nowhere.

Part #15 pretty much mirrors the outer wall of part #10, just on the left side of the building. There's another hinged back wall with an attached balcony, too. It was kinda redundant to assemble, but that is how buildings usually work, so... ehhh. This part finishes the interior of the Opera, so now we're just left with the final touches.

Part #16 adds more flourishes to the front wall, including those two UV-printed banners ('Phantom' and 'The Queen') that announce what the Opera is playing. I also really like the copper-green gable over the central 'The Opera' print. The white rectangular twin turrets with the gold angel-like statues are alo built now. For some reason, there are two orange plates inside each angels; no idea why they didn't use white or light nougat or gold or any other reasonable colour. The grand finale of #16 are the minifigs, which I personally don't really care for, but sure.

All in all, the upper floor of the Opera is lovingly detailed and the design is absurdly over the top. The red-and-gold interior manages to look much more respectably elegant compared to the more gaudy white-and-gold front, but personally, I just love the overstated bling of the outside. The build is overall fun and engaging though a little redundant thanks to the mirrored structure of the left and right sides. That's kind of a necessity, though; can't exactly have a symmetric building without mirroring stuff, can you? Still, I really do love the front view of the Opera, and opening it up to reveal the interior is magical.

The only thing that's left now is the roof, so I might post that review tomorrow or whenever. I'm actually a little apprehensive; with how few bricks are left in those baggies, the roof might just've been an afterthought to the designer... But we'll see!

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

'The Opera' is a modular building by Pantasy, set number #85019. It consists of 3518 pieces, many of which are printed or metallic. The set was released in 2025 and is (as far as I remember) Pantasy's first modular building of the "Let's throw as many golden flourishes in there as physically possible" series. The original version (which I bought) comes without light, but there is also an upgraded version with lights. The set has a footprint of 23cm x 26cm (width x depth); so far I've only built the ground floor with a height of ca. 10cm (plus 3cm staircase).

On the Pantasy website the set is offered US$190 before shipping (I think? Shipping is currently unavailable to Germany, so I can't check). Amazon offer it for 160€ without any discounts but regularly feature it at 15% off for a total of 136€ (all prices from Germany). Under the assumption that Pantasy's shipping is free (no idea whether true), the original prices results in ca. 4.7€ct/brick, which is on the expensive side for Chinese bricks but seems reasonable considering the many non-standard parts. The discounted Amazon price results in 3.9€ct/brick, which is still more expensive than other Chinese brands but fairly reasonable overall. Considering that the Opera consists of lots of large parts, many prints, a frankly absurd amount of metallic pieces, and the overall quality of the design and the bricks, I'd say that the price is definitely worth it, even at full price.

The Opera is my second 'genuine' modular building after the XMORK Cities Library, and my fourth if you include BlueBrixx' Astronomer's Lighthouse and their Eurocamper. Although I have so far only built the ground floor of the Opera, I'm pretty sure that the full set will blow the other three out of the water, although I have to say that I am inordinately fond of XMORK's Library.

Shipping & Packaging

I ordered the set on Amazon, so you can just substitute your own experiences with Amazon shipping for this part. This is my first time buying a Chinese brick set from Amazon instead of the usual stores like YourWOBB or Barweer, but Amazon actually had a better price this time. I'm not sure if Pantasy has an "understanding" with the various stores; I think one of these high-quality brands (might've been Lumibricks/FunWhole) introduced fixed pricing a year ago or so (which is legal in China as far as I'm aware; also I'm not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice yadda yadda; please don't sue me, I need all my money to buy more bricks).

The set was shipped in a plain cardboard box with the original Pantasy box inside. That box is nicely printed with a big rendering of the set on the front and the usual details on the back. The box is (of course) properly sealed and doesn't need to be torn open.

Inside the box are two printed manuals and the various brick baggies. The set is divided into seventeen parts, typically with two or three baggies each, so you'll have to sort the baggies before you can start building. There are three extra baggies, two for large plates and one for multi-part prints and minifigures. Dividing the 3518 bricks into 17 parts means ca. 200 bricks per part, which is surprisingly little. Admittedly, BlueBrixx' Astronomer's Lighthouse was a bit extreme with its >850 bricks per part, but even the more beginner-friendly brands usually have at least a few more bricks per part, e.g. Mould King's Hogwarts with 250 bricks per part or their Razor Crest with 330 bricks per part. Or maybe I just find it odd to only open two baggies per part; that could be the case as well. It certainly doesn't require as much empty space on my table, that's for sure.

The clear plastic baggies have a nice if simple print design in pastel pink and azure; the part number is boldly printed multiple times on the baggy. There is also a discreet white number with a unique ID on the baggy (e.g. "985019 5 2" for the second baggy of the fifth part of this set).

The instruction manuals were just haphazardly placed in the box and arrived with some bends and creases. That's unfortunate because there's a cardboard inlay for the Opera's stage background in there that was also slightly bent. I do think that more care should have been taken here, but it might have happened during shipping, so ehhh. And the cardboard was only bent, not creased, so I guess no harm done.

Instruction Manual

The instructions are divided across two manuals. The first contains steps #1-#9 and the second #10-#17, meaning that the ground floor is contained in the first manual but the upper floor requires both (i.e. you can't just split the set to build with a friend, unless one of you uses a digital manual). In total the 3518 pieces are spread over 682 steps and 224 pages, resulting in ca. five bricks per step and three steps per page, both of which is reasonable.

Each step features the usual tooltip that lists which bricks are needed. Metallic parts are marked with a sparkle. Black parts are outlined in white to distinguish them from other dark colours, which are outlined in black. Within the manual proper, the bricks from the current step are outlined in turquoise, and the bricks from previous steps are neither greyed-out nor desaturated but printed in full colour.

I feel like the print opacity could be a bit better; most colours appear a bit pale in the manual. Some colours also aren't easily recognisable; it took me a few seconds to figure out that the tan-looking colour is supposed to be light nougat and that the dark-tan-looking colour is supposed to be brown. The light nougat also looks almost the same as light yellow in the manual, but it's obvious which colour is correct from context. There is a correction sheet for step #18 that was folded five times so it would fit into its own tiny baggy. Not sure why they didn't just add it to the manual; I guess it must've been cheaper to fold it into its own little package and add another baggy to the box?

The manual itself is easy to understand. The only thing that tripped me up is that when adding a sub-assembly to the rest of the set, Pantasy usually also adds other new bricks, whereas most brands use that step exclusively to place the sub-assembly in the set and only introduce new bricks in the next step.

Brick Quality

I think Pantasy gets its bricks from GoBricks, but even for GoBricks the quality is great. Clutch is consistently nice and certainly never an issue, with the exception of the inverted studs of the window frames that are a little too tight. Colours are mostly consistent, but I did notice some minor deviations in the usual 'problematic' colours like dark grey, white, and red, plus some more distinct variations in (the usually even more problematic) dark red. The light nougat is extremely consistent, which is lovely considering that entire walls are built in this colour.

Injection points are small and often on a stud or negative stud. I was delighted to see that the injection points of most tiles are placed inside the negative studs where they are invisible instead of on one of the sides; I guess GoBricks improved their moulds even further compared to what I've seen so far? The bricks have a lovely glossy finish but do show some microscratches, especially on the surface of tiles. I think LEGO still holds the top spot when it comes to the finish (although I'd say that they've been overtaken by GoBricks in pretty much all other regards).

The metallic coating of the pieces is excellent and similar to what I encountered in MJ sets (e.g. their Dragonfly and Goshawk). It definitely doesn't rub off while handling the pieces (unlike the coating used in the ZheGao Aircraft Carrier or the BlueBrixx-Pro Asgard O'Neill). The coating on some of the tiles did have the usual microscratches, which is unfortunate, but for the purely decorative elements the coating is flawless.

There are lots of detailed prints, not only for things like the portraits but even for the ground floor's baseboards. The multi-part prints are perfectly aligned because the bricks were assembled before printing (like ~every brand does except for LEGO). However, there are some minor print flaws here and there, and sometimes it feels like the print could be a bit more opaque (e.g. for the portraits); I'd say that the BlueBrixx/XingBao print quality is a smidge better than Pantasy's, but it's still very good.

Clear parts are (at least so far) wonderfully clear and not the slightest bit milky. The usual microscratches do exist on e.g. the window panes as well, though.

Design & Building Process

Generally, the design is excellent and possibly the richest and most detailed I've ever seen in any set of any brand. The ground floor has been separated into six parts, so I'll go through them one by one.

Part #1 (steps #1 to #16) builds the base and is essentially just a mosaic of small plates and tiles on top of large plates. There isn't much to say here, but I do want to note that the building is plain grey from the underside without any moronic splatches of colour (unlike lots of LEGO sets), so it will look good even on the top shelves of a glass cabinet.

Part #2 (steps #17 to #39) adds the back and side walls of the ground floor. The many (identical) prints on the baseboards were a nice surprise! This part also adds the first printed portrait (woman in a yellow gown) with a super gaudy golden picture frame, setting the theme for the rest of the build.

Part #3 (steps #40 to #73) continues with the interior of the ground floor, adding a nicely printed vase, some plants, and two additional portraits in gilded frames. While I did enjoy building the vase, I really dislike those three-leaf plant parts (I'm always afraid of accidentally breaking off one of the leaves). The intricate and tiny details of the the picture frames were also annoying to build with my sausage fingers, but I guess that's the price for building a set like this.

Part #4 (steps #74 to #101) adds the two spiral staircases. I expected this part to be annoyingly repetitive but actually had a blast! The staircases are really cool to build and definitely the best design of a brick-built staircase I've seen so far!

Part #5 (steps #102 to #145) again continues with the interior, adding two dark grey statues that I personally find ugly and annoying to build (mostly because I have no idea what they're supposed to show, but also because I have sausage fingers and these are all tiny plates and stuff). Part #5 also adds two oversized candelabras and starts building the front wall of the ground floor.

Part #6 (steps #146 to #188) finishes the front wall and the entire ground floor. There's a lot of intricate detailing here; I guess when the designer asked how much budget they had for the front, their boss just said 'yes'. There's a nicely printed rotating door here, though the build is just a tad too tight to comfortably rotate it with ease. Part #6 closes with two nicely printed banners and two fancy streetlamps.

In total, the ground floor of Pantasy's Opera is by itself already one of the most gorgeous sets I've ever built. Although I dearly love XMORK's Cities Library with its playful and colourful nature, all the shiny gold and overabundant flourishes of the Opera let the Library appear plain by comparison. I'm looking forward to how ridiculous the rest of the Opera has to be; I've seen lots of images of the outside but I'm sure the interior has to be experienced in person...

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator.]

Context

The 'Diorama: three legged world destroyer' is BlueBrixx-Special no. #107311, released ca. 2025 and consisting of 1162pcs ([store page]). It is an unlicensed depiction of a Tripod from the 2005 Spielberg movie 'War of the Worlds', enthroned over a streetscape with a half-ruined skyscraper and the wrecks of a tank, military helicopter, and two cars amidst loads of rubble. The base with the streetscape has a footprint of 23cm x 26cm, the skyscraper is 13cm tall, and the full set with the Tripod reaches about 35cm in height (plus/minus a bit, depending on how you align the Tripod's legs).

At its full price, the set costs 45€ (plus 6€ shipping within Germany, more expensive internationally), resulting in a rather expensive 4.4ct/brick. I bought it during the 2025 Black Friday sale when it was 20% off, resulting (with fractional shipping costs) in a more reasonable 3.3ct/brick. I'd call this an okay-ish price, considering that the brand is German and that there are a bunch of large plates in the base; it's certainly not as cheap as most Chinese brands, however.

This is my sixth Architecture-style set after Mould King's Hogwarts, BlueBrixx' Steel Plant, obiblock's City 17, ModBrix' Chernobyl, and BlueBrixx' SpaceX Drone Ship, but my first proper diorama, where a significant part of the build doesn't go in the cityscape but some kind of vehicle (i.e. the actual Tripod). Of these six, I'd say that the Tripod has the most fun and varied build.

Shipping & Packaging

I bought the set together with, among others, the Freshwater Angelfish, so please check that review for more details on the shipping. The Tripod itself came in the typical plain cardboard box used for BlueBrixx-Specials with only a printed sticker on the lid denoting what set it is.

Inside that cardboard box were the various brick baggies, all of them unnumbered. BlueBrixx-Special sets (like ModBrix sets) have been using surprisingly shitty plastic bags for a while now that have weird folds and creases at the inside, where bricks can get stuck. I write this in every review of these sets, but I still can't believe that it's possible to fuck up the plastic baggies.

Instruction Manual

BlueBrixx-Specials don't come with printed manuals. The PDF can be downloaded for free after registration even without buying anything, so feel free to have a look at the manual yourselves.

The manual uses 173 pages for 283 steps, i.e. on average ca. 1.6 steps per page and 4.1 brick per step, both of which make the manual fairly easy to follow. As is common, each step features a tooltip with the list of required bricks. Bricks from previous steps are printed in full colour, but those of the current step are outlined in red. Colours are accurate, but it's sometimes a little difficult to distinguish the colours of tiny parts (e.g. 1x1 round plates) and to distinguish round plates with a central hole from solid round plates. Still, that's fine.

Although the manual is mostly easy to follow, sometimes the camera angles are suboptimal. There is also one step where you're supposed to magically teleport a brick into an already existing assembly (#99 while building the skyscraper; the black 1x1 brick should've been added between steps #94 and #95), but it's an obvious fix even with minimal building experience. Still, I wouldn't recommend the set for absolute beginners.

Brick Quality

As far as I know, BlueBrixx-Specials are sourced from various manufacturers, which is evident in some differences in brick quality. For example, some bricks have almost invisible injection points, whereas others have fairly obvious indentations. Some of the slope bricks have smooth surfaces, whereas others have the more common coarse texture. Colour consistency is okay, but there are noticeable differences especially in the dark grey.

Aside from that, the bricks are perfectly serviceable. Clutch is always good, ranging from buttery smooth to perhaps a little stiff. The finish is nicely glossy if not quite at LEGO levels, but microscratches are common though not egregious. There are neither prints nor stickers, no special colours, and too few transparent parts to say anything about them. All bricks are reasonably coloured, except for one Technic pin that is bright red for some reason.

I had no missing or faulty bricks and a fairly normal number of spares. It's interesting to compare this to the BlueBrixx-Specials from a few years ago, where there were spares galore but the brick quality was also considerably worse. I definitely prefer it like this and am glad that BlueBrixx are continuously improving their quality (though I did get a surprising number of mismoulds lately, even if not in this set).

Design & Building Process

The first ten steps build the foundation of the base and are pretty generic. The streetscape is a wall lying on its side, which is initially interesting to build but soon becoming repetitive. It takes a lot of bricks and a lot of steps, too (#15 to #59), probably between a quarter and a third of the entire set. Then we add a lot of rubble (#60 to #82), which again is only initially interesting.

I enjoyed the side builds a lot, starting with the skyscraper (#83 to #106), then the military helicopter (#107 to #127), the two cars (#128 to #139), and finally the tank (#140 to #162). The tank is a bit more flimsy than I'd prefer, and it also only loosely sits inside a depression instead of being connected to the base with studs or clips, but these side builds are nevertheless all fantastic. I think I'd love building a diorama or Architecture-style set with lots of different and varied side builds; Mould King's Hogwarts was annoyingly repetitive and obiblock's City 17 just had the same style of building a dozen times, but I think there are a bunch of Skyline sets that do stuff like this. I'll definitely need to have a look because this part really was a blast.

Roughly the second half of the set (#163 to #283) is spent on the actual Tripod. This is where the set feels quite a bit like a MOC: there are some clever building techniques, but it does feel a little half-baked at times. The body/head isn't quite as stable as I'd like, but it is, again, perfectly serviceable. The three legs do seem absurdly flimsy, but as soon as the Tripod is connected to the base, it stands stably and without wobbling. I wouldn't try to run a marathon while holding the set and would remove the Tripod for a longer car drive, but it's definitely not gonna come crashing down just because you bumped into the table or shelf the set is sitting on.

The final result does look impressive. The set definitely has its chocolate side (i.e. two sides of the skyscraper are ugly) and I don't think this really aligns with the chocolate side of the Tripod, but it's nice enough. The depiction of the Tripod is faithful enough that I immediately recognised it despite only having watched the movie once as a ~ten year old two decades ago, and I liked the looks of the set well enough that I bought it despite not really being a fan of the movie. As always, the BlueBrixx designers are doing fantastic work.

Conclusion

It looks good, it's fun to build, the quality is reasonably, no issues anywhere. The Tripod is very much geared towards niche audiences, but if you belong to that niche, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. I'd nevertheless wait for it to be on sale (probably next during the Black Friday week or perhaps a few weeks before that in their 'Blue Week') because the price isn't as cheap as most Chinese brands. Be aware that there's neither a printed manual nor a nicely designed box, and that this won't be a good gift for a first-timer who has never used building bricks before.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator]

Context

The Asgard O'Neill Class is BlueBrixx-Pro set #108746 [store page]. Released in 2025, the set consists of 1407pcs, most of which are either metallic silver, glow-in-the-dark white, pearl dark grey, or trans light blue. At its original price of 100€ (plus 6€ shipping within Germany), the set is fairly expensive with 7.1ct/brick, though this is somewhat offset by the many "expensive" colours. I bought it during last year's Black Friday week for 80€, which made the price much more reasonable. Right now (late April 2026) the set is on sale for -50%, probably because the set contains some now-declared "illegal" parts that BlueBrixx needs to get rid of until May or so. At this price, the set is a steal. I wish I had waited this long, but, oh well.

I'm a huge Stargate fan and already have the Prometheus (entirely in flat silver), the Ancient's Aurora, and the Goa'uld Al'kesh. The Prometheus and Aurora are some of my all-time favourite spaceships and the Al'kesh is almost ubiquitous in the series as well. The O'Neill, if I remember correctly, only appears in a single episode, making its importance rather negligible compared to some still-not-produced sets like the Daedalus or the Ha'tak. I would've passed it by entirely (like I did their Beliskner or Wraith Cruiser), but I couldn't resist the absurd bling and pulled the trigger.

The set comes on a black stand that includes a multi-part print for the "Stargate" plaque. On the stand, the O'Neill is 20cm tall, 41cm long, and 44cm wide. The stand has a footprint of 23cm x 6.5cm. If you want to put it on a shelf, it needs to be 25cm deep.

Shipping & Packaging

I bought the set alongside some others during the Black Friday week, so please check out my review of the Freshwater Angelfish for more details on the shipping and outer packaging.

The O'Neill itself comes in a fairly large box that is nicely printed (as usual for BlueBrixx-Pro sets), in which there is a cardboard inlay to give the box more stability (and probably also to reduce the vast emptiness inside the too-large box). The inlay contains the printed manual and the various plastic baggies, which are divided into four parts and printed in black on white. Those baggies also have individual consecutive numbers (i.e. 108746-1 to 108746-27) printed in a smaller font.

Instruction Manual

The printed manual is a bit smaller than A4 size and of generally very good quality. BlueBrixx-Pro manuals desaturate the colours of previous steps a little to highlight what is added in each step, which IMO is the best way of doing manuals; new parts are additionally outlined in red. Each step features the usual tooltip with a list of what new bricks are needed. Metallic parts are marked with a sparkle to distinguish them from grey (though there is no grey in this set); steps with glow-in-the-dark parts have a "glow in the dark" symbol to distinguish this colour from, I don't know, some weird shade of pale lime that certainly doesn't exist in this set either.

The manual spreads the 1407pcs over 226 steps (six parts per step) and over ~100 pages (ca. two steps per page), which is neither too dense nor too simple. I'd say that the manual is easy to follow, though it might be a step up from LEGO manuals.

Brick Quality

Clutch is generally good but a little creaky, probably thanks to the metallic coating. Injection points range from almost invisibly small to fairly large, as is customary for XingBao-produced bricks. Colour consistency is okay with some deviations in the glow-in-the-dark white and the metallic silver. Clear parts are adequately clear. The print quality is excellent; the multi-part print for the Stargate is preassembled on a carrier plate to make sure that the alignment is perfect.

The inner skeleton of the ship is held in glow-in-the-dark white with the idea that it will make the trans light blue windows glow in the dark. This does not work in the slightest. My guess is that the phosphorescence of the glow-in-the-dark bricks is blocked by the light blue. Claude finds that likely: apparently glow-in-the-dark is excited by 350nm-420nm violet light and then glows in ~520nm green light, but the trans light blue bricks only transmit 450nm-490nm, i.e. they block both the violet light that excites the phosphorescence material as well as the phosphorescence emission. Nevertheless, it's a cool idea by BlueBrixx, but I don't get why they didn't test it before specially ordering a ton of useless glow-in-the-dark Technic bricks that no doubt drove up the price of the set a little.

Still, I'm happy to see that glow-in-the-dark bricks are still a thing. I'm sure there's a lot of cool stuff that could be done with this. I'm not a Halloween guy myself (it's not really a German thing, at least not in my age group), but some glowing brick-built skeleton sets seem an obvious application. Or maybe some deep sea vistas? Or maybe even some spaceships? That eerie pale lime colour does look pretty cool on its own! Anyway...

My biggest gripe about the set is the metallic silver coating. It does rub off fairly easily, i.e. most bricks are missing the coating at their corners, with one 2x6 tile missing an entire edge. Even worse, my fingertips were thoroughly coated in silver after building a few steps. Now, I don't think that there is any health concern (this is a German company pushing sets on the German market and we're kinda the kings of regulating anything and everything), but it doesn't exactly scream high quality either. I had the same experience with ZheGao's absurdly golden Aircraft Carrier, and being compared with ZheGao in terms of brick quality is generally not a good sign. Other brands seem to use a different coating method (or maybe add a finishing layer on top of it?); I didn't have this issue at all with the MJ sets like their Mechanical Goshawk, even though that one had lots of bricks in three different metallic colours.

Also, I had a mismould of a 2x2 round plate. In five years of alt-bricks, I think I only had two mismoulds, and both came in sets I bought in November 2025. Not sure if I just had bad luck or if there is some quality assurance issue going around, but I've also found more missing bricks in the last few months than in the four years combined (and I'm not talking about BlueBrixx here but all brands). Still, BlueBrixx have a pretty good spare part service, and this set also did have a very solid number of spare parts, so kudos to BlueBrixx for both.

Design & Building Process

The set is divided into four parts, the first of which builds the stand and the "neck" of the ship. The stand is the usual fare for Stargate sets, i.e. a fairly plain black rectangle that looks appropriately elegant but unobtrusive. Personally, I loved the "shadow" stands of the Enterprise E and NX-01, but ehh, it's fine. Building the neck of the ship was pretty fun. I loved using the glow-in-the-dark bricks!

Part two adds wings to the ship. It's fairly fun for the first wing and then obviously repetitive for the second one, but still fun enough. There are some non-standard techniques here, but of the four parts, I'd call this one the most tame one.

Part three adds the stern of the ship and the underside of the bow. I found the stern quite creatively designed and lots of fun to build, mostly using large sub-assemblies that slot into place with surprising ease. Also, those 3x3 rounded corner slopes look super cool in metallic silver, and I really love the accents in pearl dark grey. The underside of the bow also has a few surprises and is fun to build.

Part four adds the upper side of the bow, that dark skeletal bridge from the neck to the stern, the vertical structures at the wings, and finally the four cannons. The upper side of the bow is fairly boring to build (essentially just a mosaic of tiles, though I do love the wedge tiles!). It's attached with two hinge bricks and four studs to the bow's underside, which is kinda awkward to do and fell apart in my hands (mostly because it should first be attached to the four studs at the rear and then clipped into the hinge bricks, but the manual completely ignores that those four studs at the rear even exist -- I certainly share some blame here, but the manual should be clearer). I'm not sure if the hinges are really necessary here; they create a slope of one plate's thickness over a length of, what, twenty studs? Even knowing that there is a slight slope, I can barely see it. If I hadn't built it, I don't think I would notice it. Still, kudos to the designer for sticking so close to the original.

That pearl dark grey skeletal bridge from the neck to the rear does look very cool but is fairly frustrating to build, mostly because I had to judge by eye how to space the clippy things to the rods. I can't say that I'm a fan, even if the result does look nice. The vertical sections at the wings are identical for both sides but reasonably interesting to build. I like that they're attached not only by twelve studs each but also by a Technic axle; this certainly improves the stability a lot.

The end result speaks for itself. The ship is easily recognisable, the colour choices are excellent, and it just looks very sleek and gorgeous. The designer certainly outdid himself!

tl;dr

Well-designed and gorgeous set with lots of cool colours. My biggest gripe is that the metallic silver coating doesn't have the best quality, leading to rubbed off corners and silver fingers. At the full price, that's less than ideal. Nevertheless, BlueBrixx have shown once again why they're pretty much the top brand when it comes to accurate reproductions of licenced space ships. I'm looking forward to their version of Atlantis, and I dearly hope that they'll soon announce a Daedalus and a Ha'tak.

[Obligatory link to Red5-Leader's Venator]