Brickwares Blog

It’s been a while since the last update, I’ve been busy launching The Correctness, which I highly recommend you all check out.

Lots of Indiana Jones set reviews here, it seems, but that makes sense, with my son being crazy about them. Today’s set is the Chauchilla Cemetery Battle (7196).
This set contains some great elements, including a motorcycle, and some skull-faced baddies.

The set comes with 5 minifigs: Indy, Mutt, 2 guardians, and a skeleton. The guardians have double faces, one normal, and one skeleton-like.

The set also contains a golden treasure chest, and golden goblet, and a spider’s web, all found in the skeleton’s chamber

The skeleton’s chamber is the smaller of the two areas in the set, the larger being the antechamber, complete with trap. There are hiding areas for the guardians, and ramp areas for the motorcycle.

But the most fun part, by far, is the reversing wall. You can place a minifig on the platform, and flip him into the skeleton’s chamber

Here’s a picture of the whole thing put together.

On the whole, a nice little set. My son played with it for a long time after building, and it has a lot of interesting elements that can be used for other projects. Not my favorite Indy set, but not too bad.

A week or so ago, I finally got around to building The Indiana Jones set “Shanghai Chase” (7862). The set is a medium sized one, and didn’t take very long to put together. It features some interesting elements, 5 minifigs, and some interesting building techniques.

Of the box, 2 bags (each with a small parts bag) and the instructions.

The set contains 5 minifigs: Indiana Jones in a white dinner jacket (also with hat), Willie Scott, Short Round, and 2 gangsters.

On the whole, the piece count in this set isn’t very large (244), but you’re essentially getting 2 cars and 5 minifigs.

i decided to star with the “good guys” car. It was a simple build, with a couple of items of interest. I especially liked the grill. It’s a character piece, which gives this car a very distinct look.

The other item of interest is the “softtop” roof of the car, which is a fabric piece, including a cut out in the top for the minifigs to fall through.

While the car is fairly simple to build, and contains few pieces, it has a LOT of character, and looks impressive when completed. One odd thing is that the depth of the seats makes it a little tricky for Indy to see while driving (not that Indy needs to be able to!)

On to the Bad guys! They get a black truck, which is similar in design to the first car. One thing of note that I quite like is the construction of the running boards. They’re made with hinged pieces, and angled over the wheels.

The Bad guy car partially built.

And completed

Here’s the whole shebang

Only a few pieces left over after building

This was a good set overall. Easy to build, fun to play, lots of minifigs, and some character pieces. I’d give it an 8/10.

I finally found some time to build the Green Grocer set (10185). This was a big set, and took a long time to build. The amount of small pieces and detail was very impressive. This set added a lot of what was missing from the Cafe Corner, in that there is some interior and “life” to the set. Sadly, this applies to the first level only, as the upper two levels are very sparse in the details, with the exception of a grandfather clock (which seemed a little overbuilt), and a radiator (which was interesting). I also thought the fire escape, while interesting, was very strange in the parts that were chosen to make it. It again seemed like choices were made to be clever, rather than efficient.

Lots of pieces in the set, impressive out of the box, as modeled by my erstwhile assistant.

The grocer section was clearly the highpoint of this set, it’s extremely detailed, and well built. I love the items on the shelves, and the refrigerator. Clearly a lot of time and energy went into designing this portion of the set. I recall reading an interview with the designer where he basically said that the cost became an issue, and was the reason that the rest of the set was a bit sparse. Personally, I would pay a bit more for this kind of quality.

Here’s first floor built.

The upper floors don’t warrant a lot of discussion, apart from the clock and radiator, seen here.

Here is the fire escape, note the use of the harpoon gun for a rail. This struck me as an odd choice. I’m not sure why I hate it, but I do.

The completed set, front and back.

The last step was to add this to the Cafe Corner and the Market set. It’s fairly impressive when all connected, and we added the City Horse Trailer set to add to the street feel. I’ve heard that there will be a third “official” set to complete the block (the Market was a fan creation, but in my opinion holds its own nicely) coming out this year. That should take care of my Xmas list nicely.

On the whole, I like this set a lot. It has great interior and exterior details, it has some great building techniques, and relatively few problems. Not recommended for younger builders, as it is a bit tricky to put together.

That brings us to the end of the build review for the Green Grocer. Hope you enjoyed it, feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think of the site, and the review.