(Written by William)
It’s the 100th anniversary of A. A. Milne’s creation, Winnie the Pooh! To celebrate, LEGO released two sets featuring the honey-loving bear in the #43300 LEGO Winnie the Pooh set, and his best little companion, Piglet, in the #43305 LEGO Piglet’s Birthday Fun. You will have to buy each separately, but they do make an amazing duo.
For clarity’s sake, I do want to point out that I grew up with Winnie the Pooh. So, even before building anything, I’m already in love with these sets. Let’s see if you need to be as much of a fan as I am before taking a trip to the Hundred Acre Wood…
LEGO Winnie the Pooh – Statues in Motion
When LEGO designers create a statue of a popular character, it is extremely impressive how they can recreate some of the more fluid features. This is especially true when it comes to very stylized characters like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. This great artistic representation, however, tends to come at the cost of limited posability. Fortunately, with these sets, LEGO designers managed to keep a good deal of movement. So, let’s break down how each character can move.
Winnie the Pooh comes with fixed legs, which means that he does have to remain seated at all times. Given the substantial weight of the model, this is probably for the best for stability reasons. However, he can rotate his ankles. The feet are connected using a locking hinge, so you can dial in the exact direction you want the feet to be in, and they’ll stay in place. Moving up to the arms and hands, there is a large ball-joint built into the shoulders. The arm is mounted flush to the body, so you don’t get the full movement of the ball-joint. You can only raise and lower each arm. The wrist of each hand has a basic friction-pin connector that does most of the heavy lifting for creating more expressive poses. Finally, the head is mounted to the body with a large ball-joint. Just like the arms, this is a flush connection, so you can only rotate the head left and right. And at the top of the head are two ears connected with small ball-joints and allowing for a good range of motion.
Moving on to Piglet, his legs are fixed in a standing position. The legs are connected using pin connectors to the body and to the feet. This means the feet can be rotated to help balance the statue. The arms are also connected with ball-joints, allowing the arms to rotate and move up and down. However, due to the position of the ball-socket, Piglet has trouble tilting his arms forward and back. Piglet comes with a half-pin-half-axle connection between the body and the head, allowing left and right rotation. The ears are large leaves with a rounded plate stem. Thanks to this rounded plate, you can tilt Piglet’s ears up and down.
All in all, this is not the most robust amount of movement in a LEGO statue, however, it is enough for sets that are purpose-built to be display pieces. Given the amount of special shaping that goes on in these sets, they actually have more mobility than I was expecting.
LEGO Winnie the Pooh – Hidden Surprises
As these are mostly display sets, it’s nice that LEGO designers added some hidden surprises, play-features, and accessories. Pooh Bear’s “Hunny” jar opens up and reveals two scenes. Each scene comes with a smaller character. One features a minifigure version of Pooh, while the other is an Eeyore. These are the same characters you get from the LEGO Ideas Winnie the Pooh’s House set released some time back. Sadly, they didn’t improve Eeyore. He still remains a solid piece that can’t move.
As for Piglet’s cake, there is a minifigure of Piglet with one side being a house and the other a small garden scene. These little vignettes aren’t much in terms of play, but they do make a nice little treat for those who value minifigures.
In addition to the scenes in the “Hunny” jar, Winnie the Pooh has a couple of extra surprises hidden in the model. If you remove the chest of the statue, you get a picture of what is closest to his heart, namely, all his friends. This is a simple picture nicely framed. His other surprise lets you see what he is thinking about. Remove the top section of his head and look inside. In there is a thought bubble with the words, “Think, think, think.” Turn the section of his head you removed over, and there you get an idea of what these thoughts are about: a whole shelf of honey!
LEGO Winnie the Pooh – Decorations
Even though these sets mostly target adult collectors, they do contain some stickers, but fortunately, not a lot. Piglet only has two, while Winnie the Pooh has six. Let’s take a look at where they are.
When it comes to Winnie the Pooh, there are two on the outside of his jar. These are placed on slopes and form the word, “Hunny.” Open up the jar, and you get two more stickers each on panels. These are what give the interior most of its decorations. The final two stickers are the picture of all his friends in his chest and the “Think, think, think,” words found inside his head. Each of these is placed on 2×4 tiles.
Piglet’s stickers are found inside his cake. They are placed on the interior panels of his little house. Piglet’s face is printed.
LEGO Winnie the Pooh – Final Thoughts
These sets are meant to go with one another, and they are absolutely adorable both separately and together. LEGO designers managed to really capture the art style of these characters and scaled them well against one another. With that said, these are art pieces. Do not expect to play with them much after building them. If you do want to play, Piglet does feel like a slightly better choice, but it isn’t what I’d recommend.
If price is a concern, you can try out Piglet first since the $39.99 price tag is a lot easier to manage, and you won’t feel too bad even if you end up not liking the set as much. At $149.99, you need to be a true fan of Winnie the Pooh.
I do feel the prices are reasonable. You get a lot of parts, including some that aren’t so common. And when it comes to Pooh, he is rather dense. What you don’t get is a lot of minifigures, which can be a damper for some collectors. In the video below, I will show you the two characters in more detail.
So, would I recommend these models? Honestly, I think you really need to be a big Winnie the Pooh fan first. I’m in that category, so I love these sets. However, if I were mainly a LEGO fan and just had a passing interest in Winnie the Pooh, I probably would skip these. After all, inside the instructions, there were advertisements for a couple more models coming soon. One is Doug the Dog and the bird from Up. The other is Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. So, if you’re a fan of these more than Pooh, just save up for when they get released. You can find both sets at the LEGO Disney section of the Online LEGO Shop.
What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Winnie the Pooh sets? Feel free to share your thoughts and own reviews in the comment section below!
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