LEGO Creator VW T2 Camper Van review -- Yes, the video needs to be this long! Set 10279

hello everyone this is the lego creator expert volkswagen t2 camper van as best i can tell this specifically represents a vehicle produced between 1967 and 1971. there were multiple minor variations of the vw type 2 van minivan microbus whatever you want to call it through the years and this particularly is from the second generation and the first minor generation inside of that with the turn signals down below the headlights there were later very variations that had more squarish turn signals up above a lot of people said that these are in the wrong place but it's just because this is representing a very specific subset of these vehicles and i think it does an excellent job of that i've seen a lot of these in person throughout my life and then i went back and looked at photographs specifically to compare for this this review here and the front end is really good i have some issues with how it looks from the side but as i come around to the back it again looks fantastic and the build for this is so unconventional it is built like nothing i have ever put together from lego it almost feels like almost feels like it comes from a different design team an entire different design team with different design philosophies than anything that i've seen from lego before it really didn't make sense to me but i trusted the process along the way and most of it came together pretty well certainly with the the finished results just looking at it but uh from a durability and handle ability perspective there are a number of major issues with this that a lot of people have called out already and i'm not talking about just super lego fans but just regular casual fans as well this is also a pretty massive build it is done to a different scale compared to the first uh creator vw type 2 which represented a t1 a first generation one the red and white one that they did this is much bigger than that so if you already have one of those and then you want to get this and display them next to each other it's not going to look right at all unfortunately they really don't go together well as a family it's it's a noticeable difference in scale almost an uncanny uh difference because you want it to be just a little you want this one to be just a little bit smaller that one the other one to be just a little bit bigger than they'll be compatible as far as features are concerned this has a very nicely integrated working steering system there's a ton of technic building that goes on inside of there the entire front end underneath in the frame area is solid technique with no gaps whatsoever but this is smooth it is well integrated it's appropriate to have a spare tire option on on some of these and this is done really well it's it's slick in how it's done and they also have this skinnier version of a tire that fits really well with this scale i think and this actually gives you a decent range of turning radius as well on the side you got the side view mirror that can be adjusted in angle a little bit and also this door will open which is nice and it works well enough for me i'll talk about the interior a little bit later on and the passenger side door also opens the same far more impressive is how the sliding door works over here its mechanism is inspired by the real thing and there's just one little cheat button that you can see sticking down here it's a little bit obvious from the outside but it's important to get this to pop out because there are almost no gaps along the side i mean there's a tiny bit of gap right there i think that if i kind of squeeze things together carefully i can remove some of that but gaps all throughout the the side are almost non-existent so this cheater button pushes out from the inside just a little bit it's actually spring loaded inside of there as well to get this to open up and then this properly slides it actually slides down the track which in this case is underneath here it should be you know really built in but there's there is a gap that you can see here that's you know obvious once you notice it but i think that's more than acceptable and i like how how authentic this is and how well it works almost as impressive but i'd say much more over built is the camper top because this is a camper van you can see a little bit of gap around the side here which is unfortunate the whole thing is spring loaded though and there's just a ton of technic stuff that's that's hidden inside of this roof i'm just going to pop it up from from underneath a little bit it has a little bit of a mouse trap sort of uh feature in it it's spring loaded and then this is a cloth piece that is specially made just for this model uh you don't have the little observation window i don't know if if in the real ones all of them had the little window bit on this but the orange color is pretty dang appropriate the only thing that i personally don't like here is that there's a big gap at the front which kind of just just yells at you when this is on display because from a slightly higher angle you can really see inside of there all the technic mechanisms and there's there's a lot in there and unfortunately you see colors through that you don't want to see that it takes away from the overall look of this thing though the overall presentability of it i'd say at the back you can open this and that's nice and smooth works perfectly fine and you can also open up the engine compartment and this works also appropriately you got to kind of pull it out a little bit and then push it in at the top because it's intended to to rotate in there that's just like the real thing does and there's a detailed engine inside as well it's very difficult to see inside of there without a flashlight but if you were the builder you experienced it as it went together and you know that it's there a little look from the underside shows you that they've got the cylinder blocks there and everything but i do want to caution you if you want to try to see this detail a little bit better after this thing is put together pick it up like i have done pick up the entire thing don't just lean it forward onto its front wheels and front bumper more on that later to show you the interior i'm not going to remove the camper roof segment which does require being a little bit careful with how you fold the cloth here and it will get crinkled up over time if you leave it in its compressed form unfortunately so another thing to look out for there but i'm just going to detach this there there's a couple of very simple connections at the front and all this slides on back and off there you can see a little bit of just how over built this is it's pretty wild and very very colorful this interior is nice right now i've got the rear seat folded flat for carrying cargo but this can convert in its proper way where it goes down a little bit and loses any gap in the center there and gives you the nice angle i like the colors with the dark orange and striping with the tan you see a little bit of yellow talking about color you see a little bit of yellow of the the the build back here with all of those headlight bricks but this does leave a little bit of cargo space at the back like you would like to see tan and dark red going along here ample uh ledge table area you know all along along the side here nothing that you can do down below there but the kitchenette space is nicely detailed you have the small table that can be rotated on two axes to bring it right up to eat from there at the rear seat little sink little stove and there's also storage space down below both of these small cabinets can be opened and this one has a blue tank in it that i think represents uh drinking water and not a fire extinguisher and this over here is a mini fridge that's stocked up it's much more difficult to appreciate the forward driving compartment because you cannot remove the front roof segment but you can see a little bit of the detail in there with the seats the steering wheel is also connected to the wheels that's always nice to see and it was implemented well now there is a little bit of dash in the front but it's very difficult to see with just a very small sticker applied there and i will point out that at least in my opinion these seats are way way way too small for the scale i mean come on it almost looks minifig appropriate all right let me cover the side builds here because up on top this whole time i've had a couple of folding chairs just sitting in a nice little nook on the roof and these have two stickers each and these do look appropriately scaled to the vehicle i would say and i like how they fold up you know this all just looks like some nice good set dressing to have around the thing and finally there's also this surfboard which originally i had inside in the back you can just barely insert this through the rear tailgate window sort of thing you have to find just the right angle to get past the fin maybe even temporarily fold the fin off to the side but there is a way to to make it work when you've got the the rear seat folded down and i like the color scheme for this let me take a few minutes to talk about things that i don't like about this set first of all i personally don't like this brow line right here it just feels squished like the front is nice and open you know the whole vw look is to have kind of bug eyes you know big wide open almost a chibi kind of feel in many cases you know there's a certain charm to it and this squashes some of that charm and in my personal opinion it could have been just a little bit a little bit taller there i also don't like how all of this is thick the the white section is significantly thicker than the medium azure section it doesn't just have the little rail that these vans have had traditionally that just goes along and adds a little bit of thickness for just essentially the width of one brick all of this all the way up to here just continues with that same width and doesn't look so good from some angles to me especially more towards the front i don't know it seems more noticeable to me in person than it does in pictures but it's just not quite quite right that may be nitpicking a little bit though speaking of nitpicking a lot of folks have asked me to talk about the color match between the sticker sheet and the medium azure of the main body and you can see that there is a difference right there i think some people have had sticker sheets that have more more variation and more of a difference between those two colors that bothers me a little bit but not too much fortunately you look at the front those come off that same sticker sheet and that doesn't look so bad there for the the cabin air intakes also check out this hubcap here it's printed on one side with what looks like a drum lacquered finish but it's actually not done that way it's just printing from one side it's a very bright silver and it's just not solid like you'd like to see and there's just variation from one to the next so this one here is not so bad you still see some of that but some of them are better than others these rear air intakes i forgot to mention are prints as well but these are good and there are four different ones because they're mirrored from side to side i'm happy to see that that black is nice and opaque and consistent i mentioned earlier that if you want to look at the detail of the engine a little bit better or even if you want to access the rear cargo area to put the surfboard in there or anything you don't want to pick this up from the back and put weight on the front of the vehicle and see if i can just demonstrate that here the bumper will there it is the bumper will fall off with the greatest of ease and this will also happen while you're just handling it if you just pick up the model and want to move it let's say from one shelf to another you know to to look at it this happens very frequently a lot of people have complained about this it's not that big of a deal because there's no destruction that occurs here it's easy to put this back however as part of the process of this wedging itself off there are some other pieces that lose a little bit of other assemblies that lose a little bit of integrity let me see oh yeah i think you can see it right now this 1x6 light gray colored plate right here is starting to shimmy off to one side just from that little bit this was perfect i had just rebuilt this front end before starting this review so that just happened so you can see that better from head on this is actually angled now it started to angle off to the side i'm not sure if you can see it on camera right now but also the connection between the light gray and this black technic piece modified technic brick piece or technic plate technically i suppose is starting to to open up there's a little bit of gap there's also a tiny bit of gap in this one but essentially those are starting to loosen apart from each other and i have found that it is extremely easy to get that to happen accidentally if you just put a little bit too much force under the front bumper and it's not straight up basically anything that's going to loosen the front bumper like i just did has an opportunity to loosen all this stuff up and when it loosens up it's a major pain to put it back together unless you have surgical precision and maybe some tools to get in from the top from the from the driver's compartment and very carefully wedge the pieces back together it's stuff that is part of the interface between this whole technic block here which like i mentioned earlier is super super dense but works really really well and more of the brick building stuff on the front so you basically go from brick based stuff with some some technic uh uh technic bricks you know with some things actually connected together with pins to full technic here and beam based construction at the front and then forward of that goes back to brick stuff and something in the interface between those later two building techniques just aren't good they should have had something to to stop this right here from happening once that loosen loosens up it's a real pain in the same vein i mentioned earlier that the construction of this entire thing is very odd it's very different from anything that i've experienced before some of that is fascinating and works out really really well as a matter of fact much of it does because just look at this you know the the lack of gaps here yet the fact that you can open up these doors and things and how that how that works the the scaling overall a lot of this is really really good but there were some quirks along the way that are negative definitely negative especially with the construction of the front end there was one point at which i almost deconstructed accidentally the whole front end as it existed at the time before i put the finishing touches on here and well before i got to the the bumper assembly just because well it's hard to describe just how much work that lego typically puts into their assemblies that for instance a a mock maker an independent person would not do to ensure that folks of all different ages and levels of experience with lego stuff can put together a model from start to finish without fear and without having to worry about accidentally you know crumbling everything up and some of that work doesn't seem to have been done here this feels a little bit more like a mock and how it goes together a a custom creation an individual's custom creation that didn't go through the many many layers of review internal review for design that lego typically goes through for ease of following the instructions and also ensuring that there aren't steps along the way where just normal assembly without the greatest care could cause things to come apart and some of the front end things are very fragile you have to be extraordinarily careful with how it goes together there are also quirks that just aren't mentioned like the fact that if you want to remove the the roof here it is critical that you not just open up the the rear and then start sliding this off as it's intended to be slid off towards the back you actually want to open up the side here slide this out and then find a good spot from the front to push it back and then it'll slide just fine but you don't want to pull from back here otherwise it'll start to pull things apart when you put this back together you want to make sure that you put the rear in first otherwise if you just try to slide it forward it will get caught this little door down here to the engine or the engine the rear engine cover or port is very finicky as you open it up it's it's hitting the top and the bottom simultaneously there's definitely some stress in there i can even see this tile on the left being lifted up as i try to get this to slide through it's just like i said just not following the standard uh standards the standard level of of care that i'm used to from lego care for the parts care for you know avoiding what technically should be considered an illegal technique i like how this ends up it works okay for me but you know it's just not stuff that i'm used to there are a bunch of bunch of areas where little gaps will start to appear if you just handle this a little bit too much the gaps along here how difficult this is to get to stay flat the fact that this is keeping that very nice and exclusive cloth piece all crinkled up at all times so that i'm already starting to see some some longer term damage occurring to that cloth piece there and i've only had this built for a couple days now i don't like that and also you don't want to just do like this because it'll pinch in there it might have a little bit of it stick out so you want to take care of there i recommend displaying this always open if you want to keep this long term and then of course like i mentioned before you still see that gap up at the top so it's not the best thing for display so there are a lot of negative little quirks which ultimately that gap right there a lot of little negative quirks which ultimately add up to a very poor user or consumer review average for this set on lego.com from people who have actually bought this and have taken the time to really describe exactly what issues they've had not just random haters coming through and saying i didn't i don't know how to do lego and this was terrible nothing worked no folks who clearly from their comments know what they're doing and still had a lot of issues that they didn't like when all is done these are this sets leftover pieces lots of them and that bright green colored technic pin with anti-stud at the end it's kind of the opposite of the blue piece over there is new for 2021 they also do include the two extra pieces and stickers for the alternate license plates i showed you the california ones that i put on to mine this is what the sticker sheet looked like at least the main one and then there's this optional extra sticker sheet i didn't use any of these bits because i want to show you the set in its most pure form but i appreciate the inclusion of all these some of them you can put on the board most of them you can put on the exterior of the vehicle some of them unfortunately would cover multiple pieces depending upon where you put them but i mean all those are up to you so that's nice you know it's just bonus stuff and i like extra stickers that i can decide what to do with i paid 180 u.s for this set and i feel like i got my money's worth in terms of amount of lego stuff here because the size of it is pretty impressive but there's also the mass you pick this up carefully i recommend using a vulcan salute technique for the front fork your fingers like this and don't place pressure on the front of the bumper try to get under there a little bit farther to where the the mechanism or where the frame really is and the steering mechanism there we go nice and safe there's a lot of weight to this you feel that when it's done you also experience that while building it there's there's so much inside of this so much of it studs on the side construction it's nice and smooth all the mechanisms i really appreciate the steering that works well the engine that's nicely detailed even though you don't really see it that much once it's done you appreciate that as you build it as as the person you know who owns the thing and is going through the assembly the fact that everything can open up pretty appropriately like i appreciate all that stuff the interior detail the front's not so good but back here in fact the rear seat can fold like all that all that is value a little extra things a tiny bit of extra value there but overall i personally have a positive impression of this as an experienced lego builder however i cannot recommend this to folks who are not experienced lego builders if you are just coming back to lego as an adult for the first time or if you've only built a handful of lego sets in your life and you're not engineering focused if you if you are not highly dexterous if you don't have a lot of experience putting together fiddly things or just doing fiddly physical things in life you know with your hands with fine detail and paying attention to well if i put these together what's actually happening here you know if you don't have that that that extra sense of kind of looking at the the the chess mindset of looking down the line of if i put this together if i put a little bit too much pressure here it's going to cause that to come apart that come come apart you can experience some devastation while building this very very easily there are several steps at the front that are tricky there's some steps at the rear that are tricky and just generally there are a bunch of advanced techniques through this putting together the roof a lot of these things are not for newcomers so though this is in the 18 plus line is kind of presented in the 18 plus line is hey adults you can come try lego stuff like lego is for you as well this one is not for you unless you are ready to be really careful if you have model building experience um you're probably okay there are a bunch of hobbies out there a bunch of professions that will prepare you for something like this but if you just think it looks really cool and you want to put together a lego set and have it look like this in the end but you don't know really what you're getting into stay away go don't take my word for it go look at the reviews on lego.com from regular people it's very easy to pick out just uh review bombing you know where somebody just comes through and just like i hate this everything is terrible it's the worst thing you ever wanna i wanna refund you know you can ignore those entirely but there are a bunch of like thick comments where people go into detail about exactly what issues they had and they they show through what they're saying that they have experienced that they know what they were doing you know even folks who have built lego stuff before are having a lot of issues uh with this so this is like a super they will call this like a super advanced model not in how it's how it's finished uh you know the the the final form of it but how it goes together and uh who it's who it's right for so just be warned about that uh overall i like i like it now that it's done but i wish that it wasn't so quirky along along the way and i wish that i didn't have to be so careful to just move it from one place to another let me know what you think especially if you have any personal experience with this comment section is now open i hope that you enjoyed this hope that this provided some useful information to you and i'll talk to you soon you

Channel: JANG's LEGO Reviews

Views: 41,230

Rating: 4.9463687 out of 5

Keywords: lego, review, lego new, set, minifig, minifigs, jang, jangbricks, brick, legos, lego review, set review, 2021, lego 2021, Лего, レゴ, 레고, 乐高, लेगो

Id: DR90-T9g_wE

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021