This is the first instalment of the 2012 LEGO Cars 2 releases in 2012. A total of 8 sets has been released for this earlier this year. They are
- 9478 Francesco Bernoulli
- 9479 Ivan Mater
- 9480 Finn McMissile
- 9481 Jeff Gorvette
- 9483 Agent Mater’s Escape
- 9484 Red’s Water Rescue
- 9485 Ultimate Race Set
- 9486 Oil Rig Escape
Weirdly enough, you will notice that 9482 is missing. Not too sure why Lego has chosen to skip this number for this release. Out of these 8 sets, the first four are the smaller sets consisting of individual vehicles in their “new” outfits and designs in the latest Cars 2 movie. The only big set in this release is the 9486 Oil Rig Escape which I’ll have to see if I’m able to free up some display space in order build this set.
Since the first 4 sets are smaller, let me start with these in the first part of my review for this series. The 9478 to 9481 consisted of individual Cars characters in their new outfits for the new show.
The first in line is the 9478 Francesco Bernoulli. A simple small box, a small package of parts and a thin set of instructions.
Assembly took less than 10 mins, given the small quantity of bricks involved. The final outcome is a Francesco Bernoulli with a lane marker and a green flag. There are no stickers involved in this set and all the additional details are printed directly onto the parts. These are mainly on the body of Francesco.
Suddenly, I recalled that there was another release of Francesco in one of the sets in the last series. Putting them side by side shows the differences in the two designs of Francesco with the one on the left being the newer release.
The second set I touched on was the 9479 Ivan Mater. This is Mater disguising himself as a Russian Spy in order to infiltrate the Russian gang. Once again, the same simple small box, package of parts and instructions were found in this set.
Assembly is again very straight forward. The final product is a blue colored Mater still maintaining his characteristics tow truck look and large front teeth. However, his broken headlight are no longer found in this outfit.
The third set is that of 9480 Finn McMissile. He is a master spy very much like out 007 James Bond, equipped with very fancy weapons and high tech gadgets in his outfit.
The completed Finn McMissile shows off all the fancy weaponry and sensors to help him survive in the world of spies. He has a missile on his right and a tommy gun on his left fenders. Targeting Heads-Up Display (HUD) and forward looking rader sensors are mounted on his body to help him seek out the enemies.
The last of the small boxes series is the 9481 Jeff Gorvette. Frankly, I could not recall the role of Jeff Gorvette in the Cars 2 show :-p After some googling, I managed to found out that “Jeff Gorvette is one of the greatest American racecars alive today. Donning the stars and stripes of his country’s flag, the #24 Corvette C6.R has proven his ability to succeed on the big ovals and the road courses of the Grand Touring Sports circuits.”
Similar to the the 9478 Francesco Bernoulli, this set comes with race track accessories including the lane marking and a race light system. Jeff is also heavily decorated with the American flag colours and stars that are all printed on instead of having stickers. Not too sure why, but his eyes reminded me of Lightning McQueen.
These 4 small sets are cheap to buy and unique to add on to the cars in the Cars series introduced by Lego since 2011. In fact, in my opinion, collecting these cars are similar to collecting MiniFigures in the other Lego series. Let’s hope that Lego will continue to introduce new ones as long as Disney keeps the Cars series going. I’ll introduce more in the next part of my review of this series.