LEGO 41597 Go Brick Me! Set review
The announcement of the LEGO 41597 Go Brick Me! set at the New York Toy Fair this year was met with enthusiasm in the AFOL circles particularly with a Low price per piece ratio of USD4.2c (708pcs, USD29.99) . that makes it one of the best if not the best price per piece sets at the moment. This set is also listed at SGD50 and MYR150 respectively.
The premise is simple. A set that lets you generally create any Brickheadz figure you like. The biggest surprise of all when we purchased this set was discovering this little snippet on the side of the box that states that TWO full Brickheadz figures can be built with the bricks in the box. With a price that is triple that of a regular Brickheadz set(USD9.99), we guess that this would very well be the minimum expectation for any discerning buyer.
The second surprise that greeted us once we opened the box was how tightly packaged the set was. This was definitely a first for us and bodes well for future sets.
Contents of the package included a sticker sheet, a manual and several bags(pictured below)
Contents of the manual shows how to properly navigate through this set. Firstly, you build Nonnie (A white Brickheadz figure designed to represent everyone and possibly a playful nickname of the word “anonymous”) with contents from Bag 1 (More information about Nonnie after the review) , Then, by using Nonnie as a visualization tool, you may design the apparel (torso and legs) and then design the head. We believe Nonnie was put there as a “practice” figure. We liked Nonnie so much that we kept it as it was but do note you do need to dismantle Nonnie if you indeed intend to build two separate full Brickheadz with this set.
For the torso: The manual provides instructions/templates to create 8 different apparel designs
Next up, the head : The manual then provides instructions to create 12 different hairstyles including hair ribbons, a snapback and a pair of headphones.
Finally, the manual also provides the user visual guides on places to paste the provided stickers as well as changing hand orientation to hold the various accessories given ranging from cameras to books to wants to microphones
You can see the sheer number of bricks left after we created
1) Nonnie,
2) Nonnie and a Brickheadz.
The number of the bricks provided is definitely a conscious decision made by LEGO in order to create a set meant to represent the various ethnicity around the world and with different fashion choices. By providing 4 hair colour options and 3 skin tone options, you would be left with bricks for 2 hair colours and 1 skin tone after the build.
We can spot at least two new moulds done up for this set; a round rimmed and a square rimmed spectacle element to the scale of a Brickheadz model. We decided to give our Brickheadz creation a little bit of character/sophitication by inserting a square rimmed glasses to him and playing a bit with the eyes along the way.
As a final conclusion, we believe that this 41597 Go Brick Me! set will attract much atttention due to the wonderful price per ratio and the simple promise of creating a customisable human shaped Brickheadz that you like and is definitely a unique set in the current LEGO portfolio .
We wholeheartedly recommend getting it if only for the parts!
Nonnie
Marcos Bessa, a Senior Designer in LEGO and head of the Brickheadz design team introduced Nonnie while on his trip to Singapore to launch the first Brickheadz
A group of lucky AFOLs were invited to the LEGO office after being selected in a lucky draw of purchasers and Nonnie was introduced to them there.
Nonnie was even featured in the 2017 version of the Inside Tour where he became an exclusive gift for tour participants.
Nonnie even has an Instagram page where the form of “sitting a Brickheadz down” is shared!
To know more about how the Brickheadz line came about, take a look at this comprehensive interview from Brickset which also shows a giant supersized Nonnie!
