Welcome to the Playmobil Playland, where we take a peek inside those impressive blue boxes and see what treasures await within. Sometimes we’ll have step-by-step photos walking you through assembly, maybe we’ll discuss and review a particular set or theme, or maybe we’ll have an unboxing video.
Playmobil has launched a new line called My Figures with four new sets. My Figures is all about letting kids create their own Playmobil figures using the mix-and-match parts and unleashing their creativity! They are like a real life character creator for Playmobil! This quick video shows our unboxing as well as the dancing feature from the Magical Dance set.
Specs
- Product Number: 70978
- Number of pieces: 114
- Number of figures: 6
- Extras required: n/a
Pirates’ Island (not pictured as we did not receive a copy of this set)
- Product Number: 70979
- Number of pieces: 130
- Number of figures: 6
- Extras required: n/a
- Product Number: 70980
- Number of pieces: 120
- Number of figures: 6
- Extras required: Water for the fire hose!
- Product Number: 70981
- Number of pieces: 132
- Number of figures: 6
- Extras required: n/a
Ease of Build
On a scale of 1–5, these playsets themselves are all an average 2. Nothing was overly complex in assembling any of the playsets. Probably the most complex piece is the hose and pump contraption from the Rescue Mission set, but our 10-year-old assembled it and had it functioning without any assistance.
While, on the whole, assembling a custom figure was about a 2 difficulty, some of the arms and head pieces were a little more difficult to get aligned and in place correctly for assembly. I had to help get a character snapped together once or twice out of ten figures built.
Coolest Features
Obviously, the coolest feature of MyFigures is the ability to create your own figures by mixing and matching pieces! The assembly process is relatively straightforward:
- Snap a grey connector onto your chosen legs
- Put the arms into the shoulder holes on your chosen torso
- While holding the arms in place, slide it down over the connector
- Snap the head into the neck hole and into the connector
- Add hair, hat, and/or accessories
What may not be obvious at first is that the grey connector does a lot of work on the assembly. Not only does it hold the torso to the legs, but it also has slots that hold the arms onto the torso, and when the head is stuck in, it acts like a lynch pin to hold then keep everything together!
Hands down the coolest thing about these sets is the variety of parts to make your custom figures. Each set contains legs, bodies, arms, and heads for six figures. In addition, there are a variety of hair pieces, hats, helmets, crowns, etc. to also adorn each head in each set. While the variations are themed to each set, they can easily be mix-and-matched across sets as well. These are the nine figures our kids made initially, but since we first opened the sets and finishing writing this, they have disassembled and reassembled several dozen new characters! The replayability of these figures, especially for kids who like making characters, is immensely high. And I’d be remiss not to point out the most important part of the variety of character parts – inclusivity and representation! The variety of skin tones and hair styles means almost every kid can make a character that they can self-identify with–which was the first thing our kids did before then making up imaginary characters.
One really cool feature that stood out to me esthetically is the translucent, bumpy inert on the Horse Ranch playset. It doesn’t do anything functionally, but it is just a really cool looking effect that gives the impression of a light breeze blowing across the pond.
Probably the coolest feature of the playsets themselves is the fire hose, hydrant, pump contraption of the Rescue Mission set. In reviewing the Water Park Themed Sets last year, the water pump mechanism for the hot tub was one of the biggest let downs so when I first saw another water pump feature, I was prepared to be let down again. Instead, this updated water pump design is ingenious and works amazingly well! This feature consists of a pressure pump connect to a hose with an on-off valve that then connects to the hydrant and the hose. The valve is easily opened and closed via a small red handle. When closed, depressing the plunger on the pump repeatedly increases the pressure inside the pump box (flashbacks to water rockets ensue). Once the valve is opened, water (or air if there is no water in the pump) flows out the hose. The windows in the house facade of the set are spinners with “fire” on one side and blank on the other. Aiming the hose at the windows results in them spinning and putting out the fire. We didn’t have time or space to try it out with water so just used air and it worked great, so I can only imagine it would be even more fun with water!
One thing I did want to note as it is something that shocked me when I saw it, and I immediately removed it from the sets before our kids played with them is that the Rescue Mission set includes an accessory that is a realistic (for its size) looking pistol that goes with the police officer. While it may be a good opportunity to discuss guns, gun safety, and your family’s views on firearms, it’s definitely not the sort of thing I’d expect in a Playmobil set and was caught quite off guard.
The last thing I wanted to mention about these sets is that almost all of the parts (except a few very tiny bags) are all recycled plastic packaging that is much more likely to also be recyclable in your neighborhood. Plastic waste is always a concern of ours and I’m happy to see Playmobil’s continued dedication to reducing the waste from their packaging.
Disclosure: These Playmobil sets were provided free of charge for review purposes. All opinions remain our own.
Click through to read all of “Playmobil Playland: ‘My Figures’ Brings Character Creation to Life” at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!
