Lego has dedicated a Juniors and Duplo line to last years Cars 3 movie. While both themes are not exactly the first choice for AFOLs, I still thought that the small Junior sets looked like a lot of fun.
When the movie was released, I decided that it was time for my daughters first cinema visit. We properly enjoyed ourselves (Popcorn and all) and right after the movie bought 10730 Lightning McQueen Speed Launcher.
Soon after 10731 Cruz Ramirez Race Simulator and 10732 Guido and Luigi’s Pit Stop followed. Much to my daughters delight I finally completed her collection with 10733 Mater’s Junkyard this week. A perfect opportunity then to take a look at the whole range of our Cars 3 sets.
As promised by the Juniors theme the build is super easy. A lot of premium sets use stickers nowadays. All four Cars 3 sets however use prints for their decorated parts, giving them a premium feel and high durability.
10730 Lightning McQueen Speed Launcher features the main protagonist of the Cars movies: Lightning McQueen. As a consequence its no doubt going to be the most popular of the four sets.
I like the design of the car, but I would prefer the slightly more opened eyes of Lightning McQueen in 10743 Smokey’s Garage. The Speed Launcher looks nice, but doesn’t work all that well. I’m sure this could easily be remedied with a bit of custom building, but my daughter didn’t really care.
10731 Cruz Ramirez Race Simulator features the second main protagonist of the Cars 3 movie. So for kids that have watched the Cars 3 movie, this set is the natural choice along Lightning McQueen.
The Race Simulator is featured in the movies storyline and looks great. Cruz Ramirez (or Lightning) can be put on a rotating platform, which helps to use the simulator just like shown in the movie.
While I generally like the design of Cruz Ramirez, I’m not too happy with Legos decision to use an orange 2×2 plate to connect the back to the chassis. While this certainly helps younger builders during construction, the orange piece is clearly visible against the otherwise yellow bodywork from most angles.
10732 Guido and Luigi’s Pit Stop brings us the two fun italian friends, that build up Lightnings pit crew. Both perfectly resemble the characters from the movies and fittingly come with a pit stop build.
My daughter loves Guido (blue) and Luigi (yellow) due to their fun italian accent in the movies, but we always tend to mix them up. Maybe writing this article will help 😉
Last, but not least 10733 Mater’s Junkyard brings us Lightnings best friend Mater.
I think the rendition is spot-on and the accompanying builds represent Mater’s junkyard along with some tuning parts. While the crane parts are really simple, they offer a lot of opportunities for play.
Overall
All four sets are great and I recommend buying them if your kids liked the Cars movies. While the structures have been put aside after a while the cars are in non-stop use unlike any other Lego set my daughter owns.