Tales of Woe Are Sure To Follow If You Dare Enter The Mummy's Tomb!
Written: Apr 09 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice mid sized set, four figures, great to add on to larger sets.
Cons: No longer made, hard to find.
The Bottom Line: Hotep will have his revenge ...
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| Freak369's Full Review: LEGO - Mummy's Tomb |
Someone recently made a comment that left me a little depressed about the current Lego themes. "They don't make them the way they used to". In a way, I do have to agree. When the Adventurer theme was released I fell in love with it immediately; I mean, what's not to love about sets that are well made, thought out and have some excellent elements to them. Moreover, the high replay value that you can get from them. Sadly, that's not the case with the newer sets or themes; you get something that is so specific and has to be built a certain way in order for it to work properly that it really takes a lot of the fun out of building it and playing with it. If the Lego designers would take a look at some of the older sets and listen to what the fanatics want and expect from them when they are cooking up new ideas, it would certainly be a win-win situation. As a whole, this set gets a solid seven out of a possible ten. They could have included more basic bricks so that you could enlarge the scene but hey, I just write the reviews.
Mummy's Tomb
Built on a sandstone gray base plate, this mid sized set consists of a main chamber and side scene. Depends on how you build this set, you can end up with something that looks great or something that looks pretty horrible. The downfall here is that that you aren't getting enough elements to give it a high replay value if this is the only set that you have in the Egypt theme. Sure you can rip the vehicle apart and use those pieces but even that is only going to give you 37 extra pieces to work with. Some of the coolest parts of this set are the toppling column and if you follow the instructions to the letter, a somewhat functional catapult. Even when I built this according to the directions, it has a 75% failure rated and let's face it, if it only works 25% of the time, it's not something I want in a scene.
The main chamber isn't really a chamber. It's an open sided area that houses Hotep; if you build it according to the provided instructions you set the figure on a base that can be rotated. Whee, I am sure a mummy that's a few thousand years old is really going to get a kick out of being spun around. Some of the best pieces are the stenciled hieroglyphics that appear on the front and sides of the chamber. These are the first class ones instead of the ones that come with stickers. To me these really make the set worth collecting and providing you take care of them, they will last a long time. Yu can clear coat them or use a sealer on them to protect them but there are some Lego purists that refuse to go that route.
Figures
The four figures that you get with this set are the mummy [presumably another version of Hotep], Professor Kilroy, Johnny Thunder and the dastardly Slyboot. These are some of the basic characters that appeared in a lot of the Egyptian sets so you aren't really getting anything major here. Sure, it is nice to get another mummy figure but the colors that were picked for Hotep in a few of the sets [including this one] are so busy and loud that you can't really 'like' it a lot. The upside is that he has that wickedly awesome head dress; a piece that really makes him look great in spite of the clothing choices the designers made. Slyboot has his usually black tuxedo on; the usually silver stenciled detail seems a bit hokey for desert wear but hey, when you are thieving a tomb or stealing priceless treasure, fashion choices are rarely a big deal. On a side note, if you do any amount of reading about this series you will see conflicting entries about Slyboot. That is the correct spelling of his name, taken directly from the comic books that were added to selected sets. His name is not Slybot or Sir Slyboot, just simple, Slyboot.
Price
When this set was first introduced it had a suggested retail price of about thirty dollars; a bit high in my opinion for what you get but by the time this was introduced, people were already hooked on the theme so Lego could ask what ever they wanted for it and fools like myself would stand at the counter and hand over the cash for it. These days, asking thirty dollars for it isn't a big deal. It was discontinued by Lego but is still something that fetches a nice price at auction sites. I purchased one several years ago for about fifteen dollars but recently grabbed one at a toy convention for twenty five. Not bad but I know that I could have talked the seller down a little more if I would have pressed it.
The Egyptian Adventurers Collection
Treasure Raiders – 5909
Scorpion Tracker – 5918
Treasure Tomb – 5919
Bi-Wing Baron – 5928
Oasis Ambush – 5938
Mummy's Tomb- 5958
Sphinx Secret Surprise – 5978
Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins– 5988
The Lost Tomb - 2996
Egyptian Mummy - 1183
Adventurer's Accessories - 5381
There are more than a few accessory sets to go along with the Egyptian theme; if you have the patience, you can turn pretty much any Adventurer set into something that can be used with this theme. I am extremely fortunate to have all of the sets in the collection but that doesn't stop my from constantly scouring toys stores and conventions to pick up more of them.
The Bottom Line
This is part of the Adventurer series but it is a sub-set; simply put, after they created the main theme they decided to branch out with different themes like Jungle, Amazon and Egyptian. And then there are the promotional sets that were released by various companies; while they were nice to get as perks or freebies, it made it almost impossible to try and keep track of the sets by the numbers or names because, more often than not, they slapped some generic name on a set and expected people to be able to tell the difference between three or four sets that had the same name. If you were a Lego fanatic and saw a set listed as "Mummy", you had to do a lot of homework to try and figure out which set it was and what came with it. Thankfully, the ones released by Lego had specific names, well, that is until you started to get the European sets that were identical in regards to piece inventory but carried different names.
Name: Mummy's Tomb
Theme: Adventurers / Egypt
Set Number: 5958
Pieces: 253
Age Recommendation: 6 and older
Difficulty Level: Easy to moderate
Assembly Time: 10 – 20 minutes
Price: $25.00
As always, thanks for the visit…
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2007 Freak369
Other Adventurer set reviews
Johnny Thunder
Johnny Thunder and Baby Dino
River Raft
Sam Sinister And Baby T
Dr. Lightning's Car
Adventurers Pen
Jungle Surprise
Island Racer
Research Glider
Amazon Ancient Ruins
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 25.00
Type of Toy: Blocks
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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