The arrival of the new LEGO® Movie spin-off theme, Unikitty! has been met with equal measures of excitement and apathy. The sets are based on the animated TV series, which is based on characters from The LEGO Movie. The main draw being the star of the show Princess Unikitty, but she doesn’t inhabit the Unikingdom alone. Among the crazy cast of characters is science loving Dr. Fox. Who just happens to be the focus of the interesting new set. The Magnifying Machine is a fun life-sized microscope and I’ve just built it so that’s take a quick look at this quirky new set.
Product Details
Put on your Dr. Fox™ glasses and build a life-sized LEGO® Unikitty™! 40314 Dr. Fox Magnifying Machine with zoom action and petri dish. Pretend to examine the LEGO elements under the microscope and further Dr. Fox’s vital research into sunshine and sparkle dust!
- Set Name: Dr. Fox Magnifying Machine
- Set Number: 40376
- Pieces: 360
- RRP: £14.99
- Measurements: over 6cm high, 7cm wide and 10cm deep.
- Availability: LEGO Brand Retail Store & shop.LEGO.com
The Set
There’s been a spate of ‘life-sized’ LEGO builds recently from the LEGO Friends Friendship Box to Newt’s magical case of creatures. Dr. Fox’s Magnifying Machine, recreates a microscope using LEGO. Although the set doesn’t magnify stuff the to same decreed as an actual microscope, there is a Minifigure-scale magnifying glass used. This does partly enlarge things, however it’s unless the world biological sciences with be ditching their current equipment for the LEGO version.
Lack of usefulness in the world’s top labs may be one thing, but at least it does have its fair share of rare parts. In particular the purple coloured plates, the bright bluish green curved bows and the odd looking 2×4 bricks with a hinge stub.
As well as the microscope, you also get a Petri dish filled with sunshine and sparkle dish samples made from various 2×2 tiles. These each have printed detail on them and are basically just random printed parts such as a pizza, snowflake and strawberry.
To round off the set, a pair of cardboard glasses, styled after Dr. Fox are also included. Random I know but why not dress as a cartoon fox scientist and research magical particles with a pretend microscope?
Overall
It may be a small set, but that shouldn’t be it’s flaws can’t be highlighted. Although the barrel of the Magnifying Machine can be ‘zoomed’ up and down just like a real microscope, this can only be done by moving the whole thing. It would of been great if a longer Technic pins was used with a additional gear dial on one or both of the outside of the microscope were used. So you could move it as you would a real microscope. Plus I’d have liked to of seen a Dr. Fox figure included instead of the glasses, even if it meant the set cost a couple of pounds more. Still its a very quirky little set and has some cool parts.
