We’re big fans of LEGO’s Botanical Collection here at TBB; heck, it inspired a whole collaborative display at BrickCon recently. It seems to be popular with the public at large, too, as new sets keep popping up. One of the latest to be announced is LEGO Icons 10370 Poinsettia – a flower native to Mexico with, believe it or not, a link to the holiday season. With 608 pieces, it will retail for US $49.99 | CAN $64.99 | UK £44.99 from October 1st, although you can pre-order it now. (It may also be available from third-party sellers such as Amazon or eBay.) Now there’s loads of time until the festive season starts, but might this flowery offering be worth picking up before then? Read on to find out!
The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
The box and contents
The box feels satisfyingly dense given its modest size. The front and rear show off the flower on a black background and some ‘lifestyle’ shots, respectively.
Within, we find an instruction booklet and six paper bags. It’s pretty tightly packed in there, and my copy of the instructions did have a small corner fold on the back page.
Those instructions contain a couple of double-page spreads about the subject matter. I’m no botanist, so I found it very informative. Apparently, poinsettias are a popular gift in the holiday season! We’ve got loads of time to have it built by Christmas, then. Still, better crack on…
The build
We start, as most botanical sets do these days, with the pot. Straight away we will use some interesting geometry to make its eight-sided shape. Round jumper plates are placed at 45-degree angles, with similarly angled bricks going on shortly afterwards. The gap created is exactly a half-plate wide, which means we can use 1×2 bricks with studs on the side to control the orientation. I’ll be making a mental note of that particular trick!
After locking in the shape with semi-circular plates and jumpers, we add the external panelling. There’s a conspicuous anti-stud added on top as well. I wonder what that’ll be for?
We’ll have to wait and see, as more plates and bricks swiftly cover it up. That brings us to the end of the first bag of bits.
Our plant container looks a bit naked so let’s polish off that panelling! That same trick with the 1×2 Studs Not on Top (SNOT) bricks is used again here.
New re-colour klaxon! The first of many in this set. This is the only one in light nougat, though. Eight of these curved panels help to create the woven wicker-basket look of the poinsettia’s pot.
As it turns out, that anti-stud from earlier is just used as a stopper for a Technic axle. This goes on just before the sides are finished, alongside some dirt.
With the pot finished, the final parts in this bag are for the beginnings of the plant stem.
Now we’re delving into the new colourways. The most eye-catching are the ‘shuriken’ style parts – a pair of each in dark red and dark green, where they’ve only appeared in metallic or transparent colours previously. But the 1×1 hinge, pointed wedges and pollen pieces are all new in their respective colours too.
We set about using those new wedges right away. The arch pieces (on the far left in the pic above) aren’t new re-colours, but they are rare, having only been in three other sets so far. They combine to make some very pointy leaves.
We have six leaves in total, attached using ball joints on Technic stems. Consequently, they have a good range of movement, allowing for some natural randomness to make them look more… Well, natural.
The remaining re-colours go towards a pair of smaller, presumably not-quite-fully-blossomed flowers. The smaller petals are attached to the dark red bracts by way of a bar through Technic pins.
That bar slots into some longer stems, again made using the same construction as before. Our potted poinsettia is growing!
But with the greatest respect to these little buds, we need something a little more imposing to finish the look. Bags four and five each build a larger flower, identical in each. Re-colour-wise, there are two noteworthy novelties. The fledgling reddish-orange family of parts gets a new addition in the form of a T-bar, while the recently introduced triangular flag appears in red for the first time.
I was also surprised to learn that those Technic wheels had never appeared in green before! They form the base of these larger flowers. A series of click hinges on Technic axles will hold more leaves and bracts.
Each flower has five leaf-and-bract sets. Five is an unusual number in LEGO geometry, so it’s cool to see this pattern pop up. But getting things to line up can be quite fiddly as a result. It’s not helped by the fact the leaves (using another new dark green part, incidentally) pop off their hinges quite easily.
The finishing touch is to create the petals in the middle. This whole sub-assembly is made of parts in new colours – evidence of just how good the Botanical Collection is for such things!
Bright light yellow stigma pieces cap it all off. Despite the fiddly construction, it has to be said that the finished article looks beautiful.
If you liked building those, then good news… You get to do it all over again in the sixth and final bag! The central flower construction is almost exactly the same. The only exception is the dark red bracts, which are slightly shorter and therefore built slightly differently from what came before.
The finished model
This LEGO model depicts the Grande Italia variant of the poinsettia, with its vibrant red bracts and petals. Although presumably chosen for its popularity, I really like the choice of colours – dark red and dark green work so well together! The yellow stigma and light nougat pot are the perfect offset to these darker colours.
If there’s a criticism to be made of how it looks, it’s perhaps that the smaller flowers don’t quite look as impressive as their larger counterparts. It’s probably driven by the use of the ninja stars, but they feel a little flat to me. Not distractingly so – it’s a small nitpick, as the whole ensemble does look great.
I appreciate the detail of the woven basket, too. The texture is very convincing. It would be easy to make these pots an afterthought, but it’s clear that the care designers afford to the ‘botanical’ element of the Botanical Collection also extends to their containers. It’s little details like these that make sets stand out!
Conclusions and recommendation
10370 Poinsettia is a great example of what makes the Botanical line so popular. It’s a fun build with a handful of interesting techniques. Yes, half of the build is essentially the same thing three times over – but it doesn’t feel like a drag. It’s a great – and, at $50, cheap – source of unusual re-colours. And of course, it’s a beautiful display piece. I know Christmas is still a ways away, but if you’re looking for a unique take on the festive gift, this would make a great choice. Then again, I would say it’s worth picking up at any time of year!
LEGO Icons 10370 Poinsettia is available for pre-order now for US $49.99 | CAN $64.99 | UK £44.99, with shipping and general availability starting from October 1. It may also be available from third-party sellers such as Amazon or eBay..
The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
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