LEGO Set Review: Weapons Wagon from 1996

I present you today a new kind of post I'm very excited about! Here I will show you and review a LEGO set from 1996 from the Western line. All started years ago when I was in a second hand app and a post selling this set for 25€ appeared on my screen. It looked in an almost perfect condition so I had no doubts. Older LEGO sets have something special in my opinion. They look so simply and cool. They look awesome to display.

The kit itself has 59 parts and 1 minifig. The minifig has different accesories to use and the cannon shots 1x1 round bricks! It must have been an amazing set to play with as a kid. The cloth of the carriage still looks perfectly white 30 years later. 

The minifig still looks pretty good even the face has an eye that looks misprinted. The yellow head gives it a vintage feeling that makes it even better! Horse looks amazing too. Is the same mould LEGO still uses today but as the whole set it looks simply but amazing. I'm surprised because I didn't expect some parts of this set to already exist back then!

The instructions look simple too and they aren't as easy to follow as more recent sets because the new parts you build in each steps aren't showed above as usual. You look at the page and you have to find the parts added in this step to search for them and build them in your real build. The book is in a good shape too luckily.

Love the little scenes shown here

I don't have the original box but here I show you a picture of it.

Source: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=6716-1#T=S&O={%22iconly%22:0}

Nowadays the prices are over 40€/40$ in Bricklink for used ones and well over 100€/$ for sealed ones. These prices in BrickLink. In second hand apps or wherever you can buy old/used stuff you might be lucky to find them cheaper.

I made a YouTube video for it where I recorded the building process. If you want to take a look you can do it here:

Many thanks for reading guys! Hope you liked it! Let me know what do you think! Next one might be a Ferrari F1 set I got as a kid which was my first LEGO set ever I would say! But first I have to find a place in my room for it! 

Thought it would be worth it to share the thumbnail too

Rif War Spanish minifig

 In this post I present you my latest minifig. The idea has been in my head for some time now and I'm happy how it turned out. It is a Rif War Spanish soldier. 

The Rif War was a series of conflicts happened in northern Morocco between native tribes and the French and Spanish rulers there. Led by Abd el-Krim the tribes fought mainly the Spanish troops and got some victories like Annual which here in Spain is known as the Annual Disaster that caused a political crisis in the country. The French were afraid the problems expanded to their part of Morocco and decided to help the Spanish government and both countries did operations together like the Disembark of Alhucemas were Spain made the first organized disembark mixing ground sea and air units. Abd el Krim surrendered in 1926 and since 1927 until 1956 when Morocco got it's independence from Spain there were no major problems. 

Talking now about the minifig itself I painted it ina couple days and I think it looks pretty decent. I will try to find a green color that fits better the LEGO Olive Green color. All is hand-painted by me. Torso is fake LEGO from AliExpress same as the hat. The torso is one of the 10 I got months ago and I find them specially useful for Spanish uniforms from the 1920s-1930s. Of course they are very useful too for Chinese troops from the Second Sino-Japanese War which is what they are/were sell for. The gear is from BrickWarriors and the Gewehr 98 rifle is from BrickArms and is hand-painted by me too. 

I'm thinking about doing a MOC in the future about this war. I would need to do some more minifigs of course. I will see in the future. Is one idea of many but Spain is my country and I'm proud of it and I want to show history of my country since even here in Spain they are barely known nowadays and it's a shame and sometimes a controversial topic here because nowadays the history of Spain is always used as a political argument from left and right political parties. 

Now using a side cap I made years ago.

Reference pictures:

Colourised picture with Francisco Franco in the middle. Source: https://www.abc.es/historia/abci-el-krim-franco-conquisto-espana-guarida-rifeno-desangro-ejercito-202103230108_noticia.html 

Source: zinnfigur.com

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Colorization/comments/nuehjo/corporal_of_the_spanish_army_in_the_early_1920s/

And finally a video I made of the minifig for social media.

I really hope you liked this post guys! Stay tuned because in a matter of days I plan to post a new one!

Misini UH-60 Review

Today we have this amazing UH-60 from Misini to review. They sent it to me to do a collaboration on Instagram but I thought it would be cool to show it here too in case anyone wanted to see an in-depth review. This is the famous Black Hawk. In this version it has different weapons to choose that can be carried under the side "wings". Developed by Sikorsky in the 70s the Black Hawk is one of the most famous designs in the history of helicopters.

This very well designed UH-60 from Misini includes 1159 pieces of LEGO compatible parts. Quality is very high so parts fit very well with each other. I don't know if they are from GoBricks but quality is the same I would say. The colors match perfectly LEGO ones. Scale is 1:35. Sizes are 57.3cm long, 47.2cm wide and 16.7cm tall and it doesn't include minifigs but they are the weakest point of these sets so it is not a problem in my opinion. Both front doors and rear ones open. Stickers have improved and these ones have a nice quality. 

Design of the cabin is my favourite part

Instructions are easy to follow. Just like LEGO ones. When you open the box parts come in different bags and here comes the only thing I didn't like. They put many little bags inside a big bag and I would prefer 4 medium bags one for each step with 3-4 little bags inside to build every step. Instead you have to search for the 3-4 bags of each step inside the big one. Not a big deal but could be improved for the future. There are spare pieces too in case you lose some while building.

And that was all. I think I wrote all I wanted to share about it. A very cool helicopter if you like them. I hope you liked reading this! Might review more things I might get in the future. I'm specially interested in reviewing older LEGO sets.

Here you can take a look at their store through my affiliate link:  https://misinimoc.com/?ref=ari23#

Find it at Amazon here: https://amzn.eu/d/5CpHooh

And here at AliExpress: https://tinyurl.com/DEM7003

Instagram post link with a video included: https://www.instagram.com/p/DM3RIiosPF_/?img_index=1

DAK Defenses MOC

 During 1942 the fate of the African Theatre of War was decided when Rommel was stopped in El Alamein at the doors of the very important Suez canal. After a first battle which finished with a stalemate there was a second one where the Allied troops were able to defeat the Italo-German forces and push them many hundred kilometers back into Lybia to never step in Egypt again. 

Due the circumstances of the war in this front and because the front itself was too wide the Germans built fortificated static positions like the one represented here and sorrounded them with mines and barbedwire in what is called "Devil's garden". An estimated 3 million mines were laid before the battle according to Wikipedia site.

In this new MOC (My Own Creation) I show you today I did my best to represent an example of the German defenses around El Alamein. 

Main picture of the MOC

Inspiration for this build (and information for this post!) is taken from these pages from a book called "Afrika Korps. Rommel's warriors" from the collection "World War 2 Elite Troops" from the publishing company Tikal (Susaeta Ediciones).

Reference picture for the build

As you may have noticed my build isn't as big and either has barbedwire or any similar stuff around it but that's because a lack of parts to do it bigger.

These positions consisted of 16 to 24 men with a 37 or 50mm PaK anti tank gun and a mortar sometimes. In the scene I represented in my build the soldiers are putting their new PaK 38 in it's position. 

This PaK 50 design of mine is from 2013-2014 but I think it still looks decent nowadays

In the flanks there were machine guns. To represent this I put a MG 42 laying on the ground in one flank as you can see below.

Behind the soldier above you can see the space for the mortar. Shown below too.

And that's all the information I can give you. The book says these positions where very useful to stop the Allied units. I had fun building this. I find it kinda different to what I usually build. The tan color is one of my favourite and this almost all tan build looks amazing to the eye I would say. At least for mines. The North African front (and whole African fronts to be honest) are amazing to study and learn about. I find it a super interesting topic. War there was something else. It may not have been as tough as the Eastern front but this war of movements in an almost plain desert of thousands of kilometers had crazy things not seen in any other place like the Long Range Desert Group depots/bases behind enemy lines or the (obviously) very high temperatures they faced during the days and cold in the nights. I really hope you enjoyed reading this and the whole MOC itself. In a future post I may upload my DAK army showing you the minifigs more in detail and giving more information in case anyone wants to build them. Here are the rest of the pictures and the YouTube video.

AliExpress DAK minifigs offer an amazing base to start with

Long life to my old PaK 50 design!

Many hours and patience put into these hand-painted gear

Probably my favourite minifig of the MOC. Dark Brown Kar 98k is something else :-)