Pamper Your Little Lego Princess With The Belville "Fairy Tale Accessory" Pack
Written: Dec 12 '05 (Updated Feb 14 '06)
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Pros: Great set, tons of goodies, gems, magic wands, awesome for all the Castle themed sets.
Cons: Hard to find, not the most cost effective way to acquire gemstones.
The Bottom Line: Need to spruce up your castle? Has your Lego princess gotten picky? The Belville Fairy Tale pack might help!
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| Freak369's Full Review: LEGO Belville Fairy Tale Accessories |
One of the coolest things about being a Lego fanatic is the people that you meet at conventions. A few years ago I attended one in San Diego and it was a complete blast. I’d completely forgotten that I’d given someone my email address in case they came across any older Belville sets; for some strange reason there were a few local stores in the area that got a ton of the Velville Shell promotional sets in stock. This person lived in Los Angeles and knew of a few Factory 2 U stores that got them in; long story short, he came across a seller that was getting rid of a ton of the Belville Fairy Tale accessory packs for $3.00 a piece. Knowing a good deal when he saw it, he snapped them up and emailed me to see if I wanted any of them. He had his eye on some of the older Ninja sets that I had multiple of so we struck up a trade. I ended up with five accessory packs in exchange for a $9.99 [suggested retail value] Ninja set. He was happy, I was happy and the brood had no idea we made the deal ... that means I don’t have to share any of my Belville treasure with them! Even though they are slightly girlie, that wouldn’t stop them from snagging the gems, sword and goblet.
Lego Belville Fairy Tale Accessories
The Belville theme was originally introduced to try and get more girls into the Lego theme; the early sets were scattered and seemed random. When the designers finally settled on a castle theme they didn’t exactly do a lot of research when it came to the overall scheme of thins. The figures came in different sizes, buildings weren’t the same scale [size] and they were hard to find in retail stores. Thankfully people didn’t give up on the line, with some test marketing and listening to feedback from Lego lovers, they revamped the series and are still producing Belville sets. They almost axed it from production but they knew that eventually they would get things right and adding this accessory pack to the line up was a step in the right direction. The down side is that these are almost never available in retail stores unless you go to a location inside of one of the LegoLand theme parks.
Accessory packs can be a great way to get rarer items or things that are not in abundance in regular sets. This one has a “fairy tale” theme to it but in all honesty, you can use it with anything in the Castle, Knights or Ninja themes. Well, that goes for most of the pieces but certainly not all of them. The clamshell is a rare item and what makes it really nice is that it opens, you can’t really fit much inside of it outside of a gold coin or flat 1 x 1 tile but it is great if you are doing an underwater scene. You get two apples in the set, one red and one green. These are nice things to have if you are going to try and do an orchard but you would need a ton of them to make it look appealing [no pun]. I was a little disappointed that there’s only one goblet in the set; what can you do with just one of them? The same thing goes with the large silver sword; more to the point, why bother to even have a weapon in this accessory pack? I would have rather seen them add more gems or stenciled tile pieces than a sword. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sword but it sort of doesn’t make sense that they would have a weapon [and only one weapon] in this type of “girlie” set.
If it sounded like I was bashing the set, I’m not, I am just trying to get the bad stuff out of the way first so when I start ranting and raving about the awesome pieces, I don’t get too far off track. There are four gemstones / jewels in the set; these can be used in treasure chests, on the princesses table, in the large silver bowl that comes with the set or clustered around one of the dragons from the Castle sets. These do vary from set to set but the ones that I got the most of were yellow, red, green and pink. There are also three magic wands, but only one of them glows in the dark. By far the two best pieces are the silver gem cluster and the flat 1 x 1 stenciled love letter tile. The gem cluster was popular in the Rock Raiders series and are cool things to have. When it comes to the most detailed piece, that goes to the love letter tile; but I do have admit, the magic potion tile is pretty wicked too.
Things To Know
• There are three metallic pieces in the set; the crown, sword and gem cluster. These are pretty delicate pieces that will tarnish if you handle them a lot. A good way to preserve them is to hit them with a spray on sealer or clear nail polish.
• Since this set contains small pieces they are a choking hazard for smaller kids and should be kept away from them. Likewise, they are prone to get sucked up into a vacuum if left on the floor but more importantly, they aren’t the most pleasant of things to step on in the middle of the night so make sure they are cleaned up properly when you are done using them.
The Bottom Line
If you are just looking to stock up on a certain thing like gems or wands this isn’t the most cost effective way to go about boosting your inventory. Stick with a reputable brick broker like Baylit to buy a large number of a certain item. Now, if you are looking to pick up a lot of things, these types of accessory packs are a great investment. Most of the pieces can be used with the Castle, Ninja or Knight themes but there are some girlie items that just won’t cut it. The butterflies were promptly packed up and sent out to a brick trader in exchange for other pieces; they are small, cute and could add a lot of detail to a scene but they are not something that I want to end up stepping on in the middle of the night. For three bucks a pack my friend got a great deal and he was kind enough to ‘share the wealth’ with me. These aren’t the easiest of sets to find but they are well worth hunting down if you are looking to add some detail to a Belville scene or just want to spoil your little Lego princess a little.
The Stats
Set Name: Fairy Tale Accessories
Family Set: : Belville
Lego Set: 5399
Number of Pieces: 23
Age Recommendation: 6 and older
Ease Of Assembly: Easy Peasy
Time Of Assembly: None
Cost: $2.99 - $3.99
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2005 Freak369
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Life on Mars Accessories
Castle Accessories
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Belville set reviews ..
• Adventurous Puppies • Cottage of The Witch • Belville Pen • Wind Surfer • The Royal Crystal Palace •
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): see review
Type of Toy: Blocks
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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