My son is graduating from Duplo to Lego, and the Junior sets are advertised as a good starting point. From my experience this is true and they seem to serve as stepping stone quite well. Probably not something an older child or AFOL would want in their collection though.

Box/Instructions

The box is attractive, as with most Lego products. It clearly shows the product and it's features. The instructions are a little more simplistic than standard Lego sets, such as the City range, with most steps only including one or two parts - although this is expected for the target audience.

Parts

Not a huge number of parts, again though it is expected in regards to the target audience. A couple of very specialised parts such as the chassis and skip help reduce build complexity although they don't make very good donor parts to custom sets because there is no flexibility in their use. Printed parts are of good quality, and it is nice to see these rather than stickers which would be more difficult for young hands to apply.

Minifigures

Two minifigures, nothing special in their prints. They are fairly generic though so can easily take on other roles during play including builder, mechanic or any other manual labour type jobs.

The build

Extremely simple build, with the only tough parts for smaller hands being the wheels for the trolley and yellow 'dumpster' bin. My son (4 years old) breezed through the whole build in around 15 minutes and felt a good sense of achievement for his efforts.

The completed model

The final model is acceptable in design, although the lack of roof does look strange on the vehicle, I can see the thought behind not including this as it makes positioning of the driver much easier. Play value is limited as a set on it's own as the only main feature is the tipping skip part of the vehicle. Combined with other city style models though this does provide some good play time.

Overall opinion

I am reviewing this set for what it is - an introduction to Lego for younger kids. In that light it is a good set and did provide some good play time for my son. I'm sure it would do the same for most younger kids. I don't see this getting much use as a full set or as a parts donor too far down the line though due to the number of specialised parts.