Smyths Toys sent us these 4 LEGO City Mining sets to review. They’re exclusive to the store, and came in very handy keeping us occupied on the recent snow day!
LEGO City, while initially featuring sets based around city life, has become the catchall label for their bulk standard building sets.
So outside of the usual metropolitan themes such as emergency services, construction, and transport – it has also branched out into the likes of space, deep sea exploration, and mining.
One issue with the LEGO City line was that it rarely featured female minifigures. The suspicion was that LEGO saw this as a boys line, and they wouldn’t want to play with ‘girl’ figures.
Well, thankfully that thinking has fallen by the wayside, and now LEGO City sets often feature female minifigures in non-stereotypical roles. Here they are miners, demolition experts, and geologists – a great range of roles to play with.
Anyway, as we had so many sets we did this as a family activity – and our daughter had quite the mining community at the end of it.
Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of the sets.
LEGO 60184 Mining Team (RRP £9.99)
The cheapest of the line, this also requires the least construction – but you do get 4 minifigures. One of them is a woman, who appears to be a munitions expert – which is cool. Very minimal building, so would suit a child lower in the 5-12 age rang in terms of putting it together.
LEGO City 60185 Mining Power Splitter (RRP £12.99)
Again not a great deal of construction, and only one minifigure, but a nice little addition to the line.
LEGO City 60186 Mining Heavy Driller (RRP £39.99)
This is a decent set, with 2 vehicles including the very cool drilling machine (that reminds me of the mole in Thunderbird 2). It also has 3 minifgures, including a female geologist.
LEGO City 60188 Mining Experts Site (RRP £79.99)
The headliner, this bumper set offers a range of vehicles and equipment plus 2 female minifigures. It also comes with a bear…!
Construction was more involved than the others. Daughter was disappointed that the big mining machine didn’t work as she thought from the packing illustration. A lesson about marketing for her.
Overall, if your kid is into construction and mining toys, this will be perfect for them. A big plus for me is the inclusion of female minifigures. Sure, it’s still heavily weighted towards males (4 out of 14 figures), but it’s great to have women represented and another sign of real progress from LEGO.
We got 60185 for a birthday gift a few weeks ago, it’s a nice little machine. My son was very impressed with the glow in the dark spider!