Review: 42057 Ultralight Helicopter
Posted by Huw,2017 sets are finding their way onto the shelves of US stores already and a few dozen are now available at shop.LEGO.com (or will be tomorrow).
Unfortunately, we in Europe have a few more weeks to wait before we can get our hands on them which could have made it difficult for us to provide timely reviews. Thankfully however, our LEGO US affiliate manager has sent us a boxful of sets, and we have also received some Batman Movie ones from the LEGO community team, so we have more than enough to keep us going for the next few weeks.
Anyway, the subject of this first 2017 set review is one of the smaller Technic offerings, 42057 Ultralight Helicopter, the latest in a long line of Technic helicopters stretching back 40 years to 1977.
Box
There is no change to the style of the artwork on the boxes: it remains adequate and functional but not overly exciting.
This is a 2-in-1 model so instructions are provided for the main helicopter and for this experimental aircraft.
The box suggests that digital instructions are available for Apple and Android devices, but despite looking on both my Android phone and tablet I could not even find the app, let alone the instructions for this particular model.
Here is the LEGO Technic 40 years logo that will appear on the box of all 2017 sets.
Parts
The parts come packed in three unnumbered bags, along with two instruction manuals, one for each model, and a sticker sheet.
Other than the printed 1x3 beam we first reported earlier in the month, there is just one new part, 6167281, which is like this part but with axles instead of pins.
I did think that the single 'Double Bush 3M Ø4.9' in red in the set was a re-colour, but it seems that it first appeared in a Ninjago set in 2012.
Construction
Construction in unremarkable and straightforward, although progress is slowed by the need to apply stickers to every panel: even the seat has two of them.
The printed beam is utilised in the body of the model.
After 64 of 85 steps, it is just a case of adding the tail, side wheels and panels to complete the model.
The completed model
When all stickered up it looks pretty good. Thankfully they are easy to apply to the panels, which are quite forgiving of minor alignment issues.
In terms of functionality, there is not a great deal. There is a lever on the side that rotates the tail fin...
... and that is it. There is no crank to rotate the rotor blades and they do not turn when you push it on the floor (although admittedly that would be a bit odd in a helicopter model...)
Instead they, and the two-cylinder engine, are operated by manually rotating the tan gears at the bottom.
I found it hard to 'swoosh' the aircraft and turn them at the same time with one hand.
The front view shows the main design flaw of the model: the wheels! Frankly, at a 45 degree angle to the ground they look ridiculous. Most microlight helicopters I can find pictures of have landing skids but those that do have wheels have them mounted perpendicular to the ground, as you would expect.
Verdict
Despite the problem with wheels and the lack of a crank to rotate the blades, I actually quite like this model and it looks cool enough to excite young Technic builders thanks to the stickers: without them it would be a bit bland
AFOLs are not really going to be excited though, and it is nowhere near as good as similarly sized helicopters that have been released in the past such as 8232 Chopper Force (which has a very clever mechanism for rotating the blades), but it does look to be one of the better small Technic sets of next year.
So, it is one for die-hard collectors and the target audience: boys aged 8-10.
Priced at $19.99 in the USA, it can be ordered now from shop.LEGO.com: USA | Canada
The set was provided by LEGO. The review is an expression of my own opinions.
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18 comments on this article
The app has been there for a while (at least for Apple), never checked it tough.
I found the app on the Android store, but it is only available for tablets.
Cool--is this model in it?
I really hate the overuse of stickers with modern Technic sets. At least they didn't cover all the moving pieces.
This looks to me like an autogyro, not a helicopter. In an autogyro, the main rotor is unpowered and is turned by air flowing through it, thus generating lift. So it's actually technically correct that there is no crank to turn the rotor blades.
I really like this gyrocopter probably my second favourite of the technic sets after the Ocean Explorer. Yesterday I called my local Lego store and the employee told me they expected some 2017 sets on December 17th but he couldn't say which sets.
Even without the rotor blades and engine being crank-driven or wheel-driven, I think the amount of functionality here is pretty amazing for a $20 set. A two-cylinder engine linked to both propellers, and working steering on top of that? That's pretty neat in my book! The 45-degree wheels may not be realistic but I don't think they look bad, and the angle doesn't appear to impede their functioning in any way. Perhaps more importantly, I don't know if there would have been any way to mount them straight at this scale without making the wheel housings even bulkier.
Speaking of the wheels, the reason most microlight helicopters don't look like this one is because this one is technically not a helicopter but a gyrocopter/autogyro. If you search "gyrocopter" you will find many, many ultralight aircraft more closely resembling this one. Some of them even have a camber (tilt) to the rear wheels like this one, albeit not a full 45 degree positive camber on each side.
I don't think it's quite accurate to call 8232 a "similar sized" helicopter set. That set had around 90 more parts, cost nearly twice as much as this one after adjusting for inflation, and measured around 25% longer. There WAS a http://brickset.com/sets/8215-1/Gyro-Copter set released that same year, though by comparison it was only around half the size and price of this new one. It had a crank to turn the rotors but lacked an engine. It's actually the only previous Technic gyrocopter I was able to find on the Brickset database.
Thanks for the review and excellent photos!
^ Thank you. I wonder why they didn't call it a gyrocopter to start with. You are right, this model looks much more them: http://tinyurl.com/zbb3o5v
It's an interesting set and choice for a vehicle - like the guys say (and I was wondering) a gyrocopter had only been produced once before. The functions look surprisingly well executed for a model of this size. Sometimes they really are basic, but to be able to move the engines and the tail rotor with steering is about as much as you would expect here.
Generally, I would hold out for the larger Technic sets because they have the piece count to introduce really good mechanisms, but this is a good introduction all the same. Thanks for the review - it'll slightly soften the blow that 2017 sets probably won't be out in the UK until, you know, 2017...
20$?! That's rather expensive!
No new parts? Isn't there the new pinhole with two axles connector under the seat connecting the white beams and guiding the axle for the rotation?
^ You are right! I missed that! Thank you, I'll update the article.
I would guess that the app isn't available on the UK app stores yet because the model itself isn't due to be released here for a while.
It's a nice looking model, but it sounds like they could've done better with the mechanism. But that's probably more a gripe about the overall direction of Technic and the way that mechanisms seem to have gone from being the basis of sets to a peripheral feature (at least in the case of smaller models presumably aimed at younger builders).
Seat is also a re-coloured part, than never existed in DBG before.
For "boys" is a bit of an antiquated sentiment, no?
^Agreeing with unsoluble. Thought it was an unnecessary statement, especially with Technic being one of the only ranges in the LEGO catalogue not aimed at any one group, and LEGO in the past couple of years have gotten MUCH better in trying to balance out figures in their sets.
Reading the review, I think this set looks to be the perfect Technic starter set. It has mechanical features you can interact with that aren't complicated to understand, and it has an aesthetic where it's clearly stylised and basic but also fairly solid. The wheels look fine to me, especially as you would expect it to just sit on them rather than travel along the ground.
@Loerwyn: While Technic can certainly be enjoyed by anybody, I do think it's still primarily designed and marketed with boys in mind. A lack of gendered characters or stereotypically gender-associated colors and iconography doesn't automatically mean a product is gender-neutral. But it will be interesting to see if that changes in the future.
@Aanchir: What part of the design or marketing of this model indicates to you that it has "boys in mind"? I honestly don't understand where that is coming from, other than personal projection. (Which I'm not saying is anyone's fault; it's an inherent stereotyping that most people above a certain age absorbed unknowingly. ...which is why it's good to work against the pigeon-holing wherever possible, I think.)