Back in January 2018, the LEGO Ideas team held a competition themed around LEGO moments in space open to all builders, to unleash their creative talent. The winner of the contest would have his or her set made into a gift with purchase set. Nearly a year and a half later, we get to see the official set in its final form, with touchups from the LEGO design team, all packaged up and ready to be enjoyed by fans all over the world. The inspiration behind the design is the old-school rocket rides that one would find in storefronts and malls in just about every country.
Packaging & instructions
The box artwork is plain and simple, with the finished build against a space-themed background. It’s nothing overly distracting — what you see is what you get. The set comes in three unnumbered bags, with an instruction booklet. The instruction booklet has an introduction and a bit on the background of the fan designer Mark Smiley, including his journey and the inspiration for his design.
The build
The build starts simply, with the housing that will eventually host and hide the internal mechanism made with Technic parts.
A 2x2x2 container box is used as the slot to receive the tokens to activate the ride (though inserting a token doesn’t actually do so, of course).
A triple axle and pin connector is the main part that connects the rest of the Technic bits to build the movement of the mechanism.
The front panel of the housing is detailed with studs and stars — simple yet effective decorations that may not seem like much, but fit in very nicely with the housing.
Yellow tiles are used to conceal the mechanism within, and a smooth and brightly curved pedestal is formed.
The second part of the build is the rocket, which starts with the underside of the rocket layered with a studs-not-on-top (SNOT) finish.
Decorative elements adorn the sides, and a seat is placed to form a nice and cozy structure for a single-seater rocket. As the nose cone is placed, the rocket starts to take shape into its final form.
All that’s left is to place the tail fins and flaps.
The finished rocket is slotted into the exposed Technic pin and fits quite snugly as expected.
The minifig
The freckle-faced minifigure kid comes with short legs and a torso with a blue Classic Space minifig faceprint. This is a torso that we’ve seen before in the 2016 City People pack (60134) and the 2018 Roller Coaster (10261).
The finished build
The finished build is a lovely LEGO rocket that comes to life with a clever and simple mechanism. The colors are bright and fit the theme of what you’d imagine a kid would enjoy.
Play feature
The mechanism that gives the rocket a bouncing ride is a simple yet very effective tool that makes the tiny ride come alive with a continuous turn of the lever.
Here’s the view of the ride from the back. It’s not exactly a pretty view without the decorative panel, but it gives you a view of the magic behind the scenes.
Summary
There are two things we love about this gift with purchase set. First, it’s great to see the LEGO Ideas platform and LEGO building community give birth to a gift-with-purchase set like this. Second, LEGO System parts coupled with hidden Technic parts are a great idea that should be incorporated into every tiny set to give them extended and unique play features, and this is one of the best examples.
Every other gift with purchase should take its lead from this unique approach and play with the strengths of the LEGO System and Technic combination. Over and above that, we can’t wait to see the fan community modify this idea to make this simple design into something different beyond the rocket’s movements.
LEGO Ideas 40335 Cosmic Rocket Ride will be available as a Gift With Promotion in weeks to come. We will share more details as they become available.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Check out our full gallery:
This is great! Seems odd they didn’t put a crank handle on there, but obviously it’s easy enough to add one.
Crank handle use alot of motion. For a small set you may have to use two hands for that crank motion. So this method is the right choice since it only requires a spin from two fingers.