I can't recall any Technic polybags from the past 15-20 years, so this is a surprising addition to the 2021 lineup, but certainly a promising one. I'm not that much of a Technic fan, but sometimes I pick up the smaller sets that look interesting, and this is certainly one of them. As a kid playing with a toy helicopter, one will find themselves in a challenge to rotate its two propellers at once when imitating its flight - well, not anymore with this little model!

We get a surprisingly massive package with its 70 pieces, and after opening it appears that the smaller bits are even packaged separately in a smaller bag, which I can only see as extra waste. But the instructions are still folded, so the whole assembly had to fit on two pages and in 22 steps - and I love this! Nowadays all the sets come with instructions so simplified you have to add only one part per step, but this reminds me of the older times when even the larger sets had folded instructions - lots of paper spared, although you have to be more careful :D Construction is enjoyable and takes around 10 minutes, which could seem long for a polybag, but this is a Technic set, so it is reasonable.

When the final shape is formulated, the finished model looks just great. The aircraft is massive, the proportions seem fair and the colours go well together. And it wouldn't be a real Technic set without a function, so there is one (even with this few pieces): the two rotors are connected to each other by some gears, so when one of them rotates, the other does as well. Moreover, the axle of the main rotor is reachable at the bottom, so you can operate the two gears at the same time by rotating that. It's not an elaborate gimmick, but works neatly, and is very satisfying to see in action.

There is so much potential in smaller sets like that: they can introduce someone to a certain theme or Lego as a whole, and makes it possible to pick up some cool model at a pocket money price. I really cannot say anything negative about this set, except for one: this is a polybag, so it has a limited availability, I also had to buy it at a higher price as I would have found reasonable, and I'm sure lots of people couldn't get this because it is so hard to find. So if anyone reads this from Lego: make small sets widely available again, pretty please! And also, you could go greener and more reasonable by shortening the instruction booklets at other sets as well :P Bottom line: I can definitely recommend this to anyone who can find this at a reasonable price and loves Lego (and of course you do, why would you read this if you don't :D).

When I read the first news about this figure, I thought: 'Blah, another policeman. It doesn't make sense.' But now I know how does it look like, and I like it! I made a Pros/Cons list (well, there's no point of writing an Eurobricks.style review about such a small set).

Pros

• The clothing is very nice. The dark blue works perfect as a main colour (it gives a little USA-feeling I think).
  
• The detailed torso with belt, pen and badge is just great!
  
• The cap with the badge is also cool.
• The small black gadget with the identity card is awesome.
  

Cons

• The handcuffs - they are very common in other police sets. TLG could give something other accessory (for example a baton).
  
• It's just a small 'con': the badge on the cap is golden, while the one on the torso and on the black gadget is silver.
  
• The price - collectable minifigures are a bit pricey.

In conclusion, I think it is one of the best minifigs of Series 9. If you collect City/Town sets, get some of them for your local police station!

Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad English grammar! :D

If the police force is the most well-equipped public service in LEGO City in terms of size, then the firefighter team would surely come as second. We've seen several fire sets in the $10/10€ price range throughout the history of the theme, most of which were off-road, 4x4 type vehicles (7942, 60247, 60279), so one may wonder: could there be anything new under the sun? Let's see...

Box and instructions

We have a standard 10-bucks-set-sized box, on which the new computer-generated images still feel cheap and ugly compared to the earlier real photographs - same goes for the standardised white cover of the instruction booklet, which is a good ink-saver this way nonetheless. The instructions tell a full story: first we build the firewoman, then the tree, from which she tries to lure down the poor kitten with a fish. But the tree catches fire, so we need to move quickly and build the fire truck to tackle the flames - I found this rather cute :D More experienced builders can read the instructions by looking at only every second or third page (I get it that it is for the lower end of the 5+ age range, it is just interesting to compare it with 10-20 years ago when sets with a similar age range had half as many pages as today).

Minifig(s)

The only minifig is a firefighter with the newish neon yellow helmet - I'm glad it's included in such a small set like this. For City collectors, this may be just another firefighter, but it is nicely decorated nonetheless. (The glasses are strange to me though - wouldn't that be uncomfortable for her to wear the helmet and her glasses at the same time?) The cute little kitten (same as in the 2022 advent calendar) is another playable character and a welcome addition. (Little guy must be starving if the firewoman could lure him down with a fish twice as big as him!)

The builds

The tree is nothing special, as it uses arch bricks that can be commonly seen in other brick-built trees, but it does the job. The yellow foliage suggests that the dry autumn leaves were the reason of the whole trouble.

For the vehicle, I like that it is 4 studs wide, I've always found 6-wide passenger cars too big for minifig scale. Instead of being built on the standard City vehicle base, the vehicle's core structure is shaped brilliantly with standard, round and modified plates, which gives it a great detail for this size and age range. The finished vehicle is shaped nicely, the usual red colour looks fresh with this little splash of neon yellow. My only complaint goes for the upper backlights: tossing a 1x4 trans-red tile underneath the roof leaves a small gap in between, which feels unfinished this way. Honestly, the provided accessories feel a bit lacklustre: the ladder is too small for being very useful, and I'd have preferred a simple fire extinguisher instead of this futuristic water pistol, but it adds some playability to the set I guess. (The shootable 'water' pieces are cleverly stored in a box at the back of the vehicle.) And for the turning action feature - we have seen it before, but it's another playability-increasing function.

The completed model and verdict

All components come together nicely, resulting in a nice little playset. Lots of useful pieces (grey kitten, leaves, small candlelight, neon yellow helmet, light blue fish), nice and unusual designs, lots of functions - it feels like the whole price point has been filled, and no expense has been spared, which is something I rarely think about a LEGO set. If we compare this fire truck to the previous off-road fire vehicles mentioned at the beginning of the review, this set not only gives a similar value, but even beats the two more recent sets in terms of content and playability for the very same price, which is a great thing in today's inflation-hit world. (Well, in fact we had a 10-20% price increase for all sets here in Hungary, but considering that basic food items like bread or butter have seen a 50-70% price increase, this can be considered quite moderate :D ). After 2019, I could not say too many positive things about the new directions where the LEGO City theme was going, but I think it really comes back in the game with the $10/10€ sets this year. This set may not bring much new to the table if you've been collecting City sets for years, but it is definitely a recommended set if you want a small boost for your local firefighter team.

After 18 years of the LEGO City theme with 140+ police-related sets released, it becomes more and more difficult to come up with original ideas for the city law enforcement unit. In 2023, the designers tackled this challenge surprisingly well via introducing the police training sets (too bad that the police academy is at least thrice as big as the only public school in the city, but that's another story). This polybag is the smallest one of the police training sets, let's see how well does the theme work in this scale.

The set is rather original compared to other polybags: instead of a minifig and a small vehicle, we get a full obstacle course for our recruit on a bike. The minifig wears a simple but effective training outfit with the new torso depicting the Lego City police badge and some creases for texture - I think he is fitting enough for this setting. The 36 pieces may not seem like much, but I'm very happy that we can get so many useful parts in such a small set (mountain bike, biker helmet, round tiles with log pattern, and also a plate in neon yellow colour). The prop designs do their job, I particularly like the obstacle with the logs and stairs, it's very simple, but works nicely. The small 'seesaw' contains the only 'function' in the set, and it can be quite challenging for our rider to pass through! The water bottle is a nice touch. The cones (presumably for practising sharp turns) are very simple, but they do their job as well.

Putting everything together takes only a few minutes, and the finished scene seems surprisingly substantial. The obstacle course can be rearranged in lots of ways, and kids can also build their own custom obstacles for our recruit to tackle (at least that's what I would do if I've got this as a kid :D ), so it can be fun to play with. The only minor notice is that the instructor figure is only available in the largest police training set, but I think a regular City officer can also serve this purpose.

Overall I think this is a very fresh idea for a LEGO set, and it works very well. This polybag is packed with lots of uncommon parts for a low price, and can provide lots of fun, so I can recommend getting one (or more, if you want your own police cadet biker army built)... in case you can find any. Because it's a polybag, again, with limited availability. So my biggest recurring concern stays: dear LEGO, please make small affordable sets like this much more widely available, to make it possible for people with less income / children with pocket money to enter the world of LEGO!

There's a reason why this set looked incredibly familiar when the first official images of 2023 City sets went online: it has a striking resemblance to a 2022 Friends set, 41694 Pet Clinic Ambulance. However, medical services are not too common in Lego City, and vets haven't appeared at all until now, so it is a welcome inclusion. I'm trying to review this set correctly, but note that I am certainly not the target audience of this kit :D

The box has the standard City 4+ design. One thing that surprised me is the way the top of the box is glued to the rest: it was not in line with the adjacent edge of the box, which is a quality issue I haven't seen before, not in a single LEGO set. The computer-rendered images around the packaging look way worse and more artificial than the older, photographed ones in my opinion.

The instruction booklet's cover has the new unified design with white background and all - I appreciate the efforts to waste less ink, but this design feels relatively empty, and the rendered cover image makes things even worse. The instructions themselves are veeery simplified, showing the needed parts in a drawn hand on the left side, and the assembly on the right side for each step. One thing that surprised me is that the wheel axles are pre-assembled to the vehicle base, I thought these were separate parts. The whole assembly only takes a few minutes.

We have two vet minifigs - no new parts here, but they look splendid and effective. They are also quite useful since doctor figures are kind of rare, especially in cheaper retail sets. We also get two nice animals, a cat and a doggo - these also look great, although my cat's face is not printed symmetrically, which is another strange quality issue I haven't ever met before. It can be heard from more and more places that LEGO's quality is in a decline, which is very sad if true because the prices keep going higher and higher... We also have some nice accessories like the syringe, bone and biscuit (and one spare of each), and also a bowl and a stretcher - nothing very exclusive here, but these complement the set nicely. The vehicle is OK for a 4+ set I guess - it does not look terrible, though I think it could use a roof (the driver would fit in perfectly even with a roof), and the three-coloured sirens look quite strange in my opinion. Another minor issue is that we can't fit all the characters into the vehicle at once - maybe some bar attached to the back of the vehicle could act as some device to grab while travelling.

I think we have a nice value here for 10 bucks: four playable characters, all of which are very useful in a City scenario, and an OK vehicle and accessories. (We had a slight price increase here in Hungary, I think that's due to our weak currency, so this makes the value here a bit worse.) The most serious issues are the quality inconsistencies, and there are a minor tweaks where the vehicle could have been improved, but I think it's a nice set, even though the design department were a bit lazy with copying the homework of Friends :D The target age range can play exciting missions (or cat-and-dog fights :P), and the City collectors can have some useful bits to their layout, and/or MOC a more realistic vet van using these parts. So if you would like to have a vet unit in your city, and/or expand the number of medical personnel and pets in town, I can recommend this set.