It will come as no surprise that the Eye of LEGOscum can be very critical when it comes to LEGO
Star Wars. And so it is encouraging that this
Star Wars issue - and in particular the focus on
The Freekmaker Adventures - is another improvement on previous editions.
Blocks goes to show that the leverage they have garnered by having staff who are AFOLs first and journalists second, instead of journalists who have been given a piece on LEGO, is being rewarded by LEGO with early access and the time to properly research and write a story rather than having to hustle on the day a press release gets sent out by LEGO's PR partners just to compile some generic coverage.
So let's start with the cover: jam-packed with eye catching graphics and teaser blurbs that pop out from the page, this month's release promises an in-depth feature on
The Freemaker Adventures, with interviews of crew and cast, production insights, set reviews and look at Uglies (if you are reading this before August 12th 2016 you should check out their
very ugly competition to win both LEGO
The Freemaker Adventures sets). To complement the cover Blocks had a
special "naked" poster printed and sold exclusively at their
Star Wars Celebration Europe 3 stand at the ExCel centre in London (July 15 - 17, 2016).
That's not all for LEGO
Star Wars fans because Blocks has photo instructions to build the creatures of the Geonosis arena that accompany the
mini Acklay which came with June's LEGO
Star Wars Magazine, reviews of the Summer 2016 sets, an interview with the team who designed and built the
giant Death Star at LEGOLAND Windsor, a twin review-ette of the LEGO
Star Wars: Force Builder app and the LEGO Brand Store exclusive Escape The Space Slug.
Out of the 114 pages inside the cover over 50% is given over to
Star Wars. But readers who aren't interested in the theme need not put their copy away just yet. Oh no! Because there is a huge spread on Aliens, with MOC diorama and minifig builds and feature interviews with some of the creators. For those of you into princesses, enchantment and candy-floss animation there's a lovely 10 page series of MOC 16x16 vignettes which have all been inspired by classic Disney movies.
To my eye there are only two faults with this issue. The first being some of the photography could have had the white balance adjusted a bit better - off white backgrounds are easily rectified in post these days. And the second is the instructions on the mini Queen xenomorph are impossible to follow. Hopefully the team at Blocks magazine will rectify that with a higher resolution upload.
The twenty-second issue of Blocks Magazine is priced £4.99 and can be found at most supermarkets and high street news agents in the UK. If you live overseas, or just prefer to let your postie do the walking, you can
set up a subscription for anywhere in the world via the Blocks Magazine website and make a mild saving at the same time.
This isn't the only Blocks magazine to have a LEGO
Star Wars focus - there are another 9.5 issues with more than a touch of The Force to them, and you can discover more in our
Mega Blocks Round Up, which we'll keep updated with coverage of relevant Blocks publications.
