Review: LEGO 40121 – Painting Easter Eggs

March 5, 2015 | 0

I recently got my hands on Painting Easter Eggs, the second seasonal vignette by LEGO this year after the Valentines Day Dinner set. I’m a huge fan of vignettes in general as I really like the challenge of restricting yourself to a predetermined base to build on. I think creativity flourishes best when you’re forced to work within certain constraints.

The Painting Easter Eggs set is currently a LEGO.com exclusive in Australia. If you’re lucky enough to live in a country with official/certified LEGO stores, you should be able to find the set there as well.

Name: Painting Easter Egg
Set Number: 40121
Pieces: 153
Price: AU$14.99 (Buy from LEGO.com [AUS] [USA])
Exclusive to: LEGO.com and LEGO Stores
Minifigures: 2
Theme: Seasonal
Year of Release: 2015
Instructions: LEGO 40121 Painting Easter Eggs

Weighing in at a modest 153 pieces, Painting Easter Eggs is a small set that you can leisurely put together in less than half an hour. Like its name suggests, the vignette celebrates the Easter tradition of painting egg shells in a very quaint looking kitchen.

Let’s check out the minifigures included in the set.

We get an adult lady and a boy in this set. My guess is that they’re family and the mum is helping the kid out with decorating a batch of boiled eggs just in time for Easter. Both minifigures have common LEGO torsos, but the young boy wins out with the cool and trendy Classic Space inspired shirt. You can never have too many of these torsos.

The mum has a smirk with a raised eyebrow and hair neatly done up. She has two uncommon accessories, a paint pallette and a paintbrush. The boy’s cocky face is a little weird – I don’t know if its just me but it makes him look a lot older than his age suggests. I think it’s because of his bushy eyebrows.

Both minifigures have alternate expressions, the boy has a look of pure shock on his face and the mum has a slightly uncomfortable and distressed look. You’ll see why both these faces make perfect sense in a bit.

To kick things off, you assemble a cute little piece of the outside which gives you an indication of where the family’s eggs come from. Certainly not from any supermarket, they get their eggs directly from a hen! It’s an extremely simple model and kind of unnecessary but I think its great that you get some flowers and a chicken.

I’m a huge fan of chickens and farm livestock – getting to add another chicken to my extensive collection earns major brownie points with me!

And here’s the completed vignette. Sitting on an 8 x 8 plate, we’re treated to a comical scene of the worst thing that can go wrong when doing anything with eggs. As mum is hard at work painting a batch of fresh eggs, her young son has clumsily dropped an egg on the floor and caused a mess.

I really love how colourful and bright the colours in the kitchen are. From the red, blue and yellow paint pots on the shelf to the lime green kitchen cabinets, the entire vignette has a warm, inviting and fun vibrancy that perfectly suits the scene that’s depicted.

Here’s another look at the scene from another angle, the star of this set is undoubtedly the egg on the floor. It’s such a simple yet obvious build but does so much in anchoring the entire vignette together.

For a small base, there’s a lot going on such as a complete kitchen stove, complete with what I think is a bottle of dish detergent. There’s a sink and even a coffee maker on the countertop – pretty much all the essential ingredients of a cosy kitchen.

Pop open the oven and you’ll also find a tasty batch of cookies! There’s a pot on the stove with a spare egg boiling away which is a nice touch.

The Easter vignette looks great from every angle. Flip it around and you’re greeted with a gorgeous looking wall section. These new dark red masonry bricks are absolutely gorgeous and I already want hundreds of them. You can easily replace the dark red masonry bricks for any other regular bricks as they’re fairly incognito and you won’t miss them if you’re looking at the kitchen.

The red bricks were the biggest surprise of this set and will be a delight for any LEGO buillders

What I liked:

• It’s a vignette
• Vibrant colours and a fun scene
• Tons of useful parts

What I didn’t like: 

• Not readily available in Australia.

Final thoughts: 40121 Painting Easter Eggs is an exceptional seasonal set. It looks great on display and most importantly is a lot of fun. It’s always been my wish for LEGO to do more vignettes so I’m extremely glad that we’re getting vignette seasonal sets this year.

The only real shame about this great set is that you can’t get it in Australia without buying it from LEGO.com. So if you were only after this set, you either cough up $30 for shipping or are forced to buy $200 worth of LEGO.

I can see myself keeping this year’s Easter LEGO set on my display shelf for a long time. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and is super cute. If you’re into celebrating Easter with chocolate eggs and anthropomorphic bunnies, this will be the perfect centerpiece for your Easter feast.

Can’t wait to see what vignette we get after this!

Rating: 5/5

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