I was all set to prefer Tiger's Temple but I was mildly surprised. The temple is a subtle set of pastel psychadelia with no clear cohesion on color. The shape is nice and the swirls are cool but it sort of makes my eyes glaze over. Penguin's Playground is sharper in contrast and tighter with the palette. The use of blue instead of medium azure for water is very striking. The transparent dark blue pieces also are a nice look against the main white background. There is a splash of pink (a penguin's favorite color) and one tan piece. That tan piece (a 2x2 round "boat stud" plate) really should have been replaced with a trans-clear one to continue the icy theme.
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| In secret cave watching you. Do NOT make eye contact! |
Typical of this sort of set is the dinner plate with a piece of food in it. Who feeds wild animals from a plate? Perhaps this is a zoo penguin what with the carefully carved slide and steps going up to it. Even then, they just throw a bunch of dead kippers at the aquatic birds who swallow them whole. I think live bait would be more fun.
The penguin itself is a new mold design and the painting is of course very well done. There are even some small white stripes in the inside concave area of the wings. The coolest thing about the bird is that its underside not only fits a stud, but is hollow even further up. A bar fits well in there but it is not snug. Nevertheless you could have your own penguinsicle!
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| Doing levitation exercises. Stay back 20,000 feet. |
The construction of the ice tower was fun. There's only a few little bits but I feel they were used well to give the effect of a playground (for penguins). I got all anal retentive on this and tried to make all the LEGO logos face the same direction. It worked surprisingly well. What I didn't immediately expect from the package pictures was the small pink ice cave under the slide. This is where the penguins would go to hatch their secret plans.
With 46 + 5 pieces this is the most well endowed Series 4 animal set. Given that there is a better than small amount of pieces in a single color (or absence of color), I'd say there's some real value here. The trans-dark blue is a bonus. If I were you I'd pick up like 30 of these sets. Then you'd have enough white to make a diorama with a polar bear being attacked by a couple dozen Arctic chickens. That's zoology, kids!
