“The Lego Mobile Police Unit is challenging to build, fun to play with, and very reasonably-priced. We loved it.”
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£33.49
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Initial thoughts: Typically, when Lego comes in to our house, we wait until Flea’s …

Lego Universe, the brand new online game from the boffins at Lego, is a must-have toy for many youngsters this Christmas. We think the game will naturally appeal to kids more than other online games, particularly those who are big fans of Lego games on DS and Wii. However, the gameplay here is relatively tricky. To control the game, you need to use both mouth and keyboard and the instructions are text rather than audio, so players need to be confident with computers, and good readers.

Lego Heroes are the successor to the Lego Bionicle range, and word in the playground is that these figures are WAY cooler than Bionicles. That’s not a cliché – I took this figure with me when I collected Flea from school and her friends thought they were brilliant. The figures are designed for ages 6+ so I wondered how Flea would cope assembling her villain figure, but she was fine, and managed to put it together with minimal assistance from her cousin, who’s also five.

When we received this, I had to wrack my brains a little to make the Toy Story connection – but this is the pizza planet delivery truck that Buzz and Woody ride in during the first Toy Story movie. This set is over 8 inches long, and is aimed at 7-12 year olds. The box includes a truck, Buzz, Rex and Hamm figure and a secret switch that makes the truck fire pizzas!

The Lego Toy Story train chase prompted quite unprecedented excitement in our house. This is a toy train that looks like a toy train should! There is a bright engine and three carriages and the added bonus of a host of Toy Story minifigures – Hamm, Woody, Buzz, Rex and Bullseye. Once complete the train is 23 inches long and 4 inches high – substantial and large enough for little hands to play with.

This is a fairly robust 4×4 style fire engine for kids aged 1-5 that comes in six pieces and includes a fire chief to drive the engine. It’s simple enough for a three year old to assemble without adult help, and Flea was delighted with it.

The first words that came out of his mouth when my 7 year old saw the Lego Star Wars Luke’s Landspeeder was “look at all the characters! COOL!” Which is a mighty fine endorsement to be kicking off with. This comes with five characters (C-3PO, R2-D2, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and a Sandtrooper) which is quite unusual for this size kit.

The minute my son saw the two Lego Ben10 Alien Force sets we were sent to review (Swampfire and Humungousaur), he identified them as a ‘sort of Bionicle’. And they are pretty much that, but for the Ben 10 crowd. There are six different characters to collect (as well as these two there is also Spidermonkey, Chromastone, Bill Chill and Jet Ray). Although Bionicles come in cooler boxes.

The Lego minifigures are great quality and very affordable, but even so, I can see this range becoming VERY expensive very quickly if you keep getting duplicates – there are websites available that tell you the bar codes of the different figures if you want to cheat but even having looked at those I know the odds of me remembering what we’re looking for when I’m at the checkout in Tesco are pretty remote. A bit disappointing, for us, despite the quality of the toy itself, which is fine.

What’s not to like? Lego + Star Wars = little boy’s dream come true. And when Dan saw the size of this Lego Star Wars Tie Defender craft and the number of pieces involved his response was “cool!”. The end product is a rather great looking craft which Dan now has by his bed. He may have even stroked it at some point. We do have quite a lot of Lego and the Lego Star Wars Tie Defender certainly didn’t disappoint.

It’s a nice set as a starter for 4 year olds, but it’s a bit limited so I’d buy two – and a base board.

The game is really easy to play and loads of fun. It says that it is for 6+ years and I’m thinking that it’s mainly because of the small pieces because both of my little sisters thought it was great too.

A fantastic game that’s suitable for even young children, with a little adult support. We also loved that the kids started to make up their own rules and versions of the game after a while – suggesting this is one that will be pulled out of the games cupboard for many years to come.

If like me, you love playing these sorts of games with your kids, but would rather eat your own eyeballs than sing along to High School Musical, then Lego Rock Band for Wii is perfect. It couldn’t be any cooler – Iggy Pop does the game voiceovers! You can introduce your kids to Bowie, if you haven’t got around to it yet. I think overall Lego Rock Band is one of the better music games for the Wii, since it entertains kids and won’t offend the adults’ music sensibilities.