PlaymoFriends
General => Report & Review => Topic started by: Wesley Myers on January 03, 2011, 19:50:55
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Here we have the Playmobil 4251 Kitchen for the Princess Castle 4250 (commonly known as the 'Magic Castle').
This was one of two add-ons for the 4250. The other add-on being the Treasure Room (review to come soon).
These add-ons helped make the 4250 into a bigger castle with more play options. It also helped increase the "footprint" of the castle.
The 4250 replaced the previous 3019 Fairytale Castle, the latter being much bigger in size as the pictures show.
The colours were also changed but essentially used the same pieces, but a lot less for the new 4250.
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The box itself shows how it is to be attached to the 4250 as well as only one example of an alternate play image.
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This set is what it claims to be - a kitchen. It has a lot of accessories for play, something that Playmobil seems to be moving away from in sets for boys.
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The set comes with only one figure - she wears removable large brown shoes (possibly to represent clogs) on bare feet. As can be seen in the pictures of the interior the kitchen it comes with a plethora of cooking accessories and foods. There is a lack of utensils with only one knife present.
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The piece I like the best in this kitchen is the oven itself. It is a very large piece reminiscent of what might be seen in a castle. It is a multi-piece assembly with a sticker for the back of it to represent tiles. As you can see there are spaces on the side of it to hold various implements. In fact, there are so many implements, that the box photos do not show them all and there is a lack of space to put them. This is good, because you get lots - this is not so good because they could have had some more shelving for the room.
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As we all know and hear complaints about is the holes in the System-X pieces that show after the structure is built. To overcome this the set supplies stickers to place over the exposed holes. This does help. However, it would be nice to have pieces that just do not have extra holes. However, this would have cost Playmobil more money to develop a larger variety of System-X pieces.
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As stated previously, the colours for the 4250 Castle are different from the 3019 - this is not all that is different. The towers and tower tops on the 3019 are of the typical rigid playmobil ABS plastic. However, on the kitchen, as can be seen in the picture, not only the turret top is of a rubber, but also the gold tip to it as well is made of a rubber. I imagine this (using rubber) being the brain-child of some consortium of employees who get paid a lot of money to come up with ways to worry management that children could fall on the castle and impale themselves ...
I guess only time will tell how well these turret tops age and if they become brittle and break with age.
One other thing to note is the fact the box-art shows the gold of the turrets and the pink/fuchsia to be shiny. Obviously this is a photo of a pre-production model - and not one using the rubber, which is not shiny at all. Either that, or they photo-shopped it, but my guess would be of a pre-production model using ABS plastic which was later changed.
The actual pieces are not that bad in appearance but enough of a difference that it is noticeable.
All-in-all this is a very good set and definitely increases the play-value of the 4250. I only wish they had add-ons like this with lots of accessories for the castles themed for boys.
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Great review Wesley! Never managed to get hold of this set but I was able to get two of the recent add-ons from the DS catalaogues... the female klikcy is pretty...
I found these palace to be not so impressive as the 3019 palace...But still, these are nicely done and beautiful sets!
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Thank you, Wesley. I think I shall add that stove to my Steck houses.
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Thank you, Wesley. I think I shall add that stove to my Steck houses.
I was thinking the same thing, Gordon. It looks like a really nice set, Wesley. Thanks for the review.
Joe
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This is an excellent review, Wesley. very thorough! I've always kind of overlooked this whole theme until recently, but it has GREAT play value. Thanks! :wave:
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I totally agree with you on the quality of the oven, Wesley! A true gem! I can see many uses for this item! Thank you for the excellent review!
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Wonderful review. You are very perceptive! That is one on my wish list, so I really appreciate your thoughtful review. I love the klicky it comes with :thanks:
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Thanks Wesley. I have been looking at this set often and look forward to your treasury review.
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I just read this again...I have the treasure room set and the gold tip of the turret top is not made of rubber... its strong plastic...maybe another safety feature in your set Wesley, the USA/Canada safety type ?
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I have this set. It's very nice. Great review.
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Great review, Wesley :wave:
I love the "squishy" turret :D
Damo :)
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Great Review Wesley,
We managed to get a hold of these sets as well and the tops are Squishy, However the turrets on the 3019 we recently got werent squishy. For even stranger things. We have two [urlhttp://playmodb.org/cgi-bin/showinv.pl?setnum=5756]5756[/url] (Third on its way) and one has squishy turrets and the other has hard plasctic ones. Which I think is very weird. Anybody has an explenation for that?
BTW these sets (5756) are awesome as the purple turrets with golden thingies underneath and golden turret top look VERY good IMO (will post pictures soon)
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Are you buying them off ebay or new? Because like someone mentioned, it could be an extra safety standard for the lawsuit-happy US.
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sounds to me that the squishy torrets are cheaper to make. maybe they needed to reduce costs?
they look cheap btw, sorry. :-[ a plastic shiny torret Im sure would look better.
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thanks for the review westly ;)
Great review Wesley! Never managed to get hold of this set but I was able to get two of the recent add-ons from the DS catalaogues... the female klikcy is pretty...
I found these palace to be not so impressive as the 3019 palace...But still, these are nicely done and beautiful sets!
it's not at all like 3019 i have it i regret buing it suddently :-\
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sounds to me that the squishy torrets are cheaper to make. maybe they needed to reduce costs?
they look cheap btw, sorry. :-[ a plastic shiny torret Im sure would look better.
i don't think the hard plastic turrets were replaced by the rubber ones to cut down on production costs - like some have previosuly mentioned, I would say it's more like a new prevention/safety measure, which is good I think (although not that good for us collectors, but the main target of toys are KIDS - we have to deal with that lol)
good review wesley, thanks - I too love the oven, and the tiles inside
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Are you buying them off ebay or new? Because like someone mentioned, it could be an extra safety standard for the lawsuit-happy US.
Got the one with the soft turrets from our Local add site...could be from the US but I doubt it...the hard ones were straight from the box into my daughters hands :-) I'll make sure and check when back home Thursday night!
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thank you W.Myers!! ...for helping me find this 'samurai skirt' (on your kitchen maid)...its pattern & colour combination is really perfect...I'll have to have one (but waste the rest of her parts...maybe will have to donate the rest of her for our medical students ;D)
I was thinking of starting a thread to ask/share our despair/frustration with most klickies having unprinted backs and here's another good example? (am I right to guess that the skirt is only printed on the front?) :hmm:
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I was thinking of starting a thread to ask/share our despair/frustration with most klickies having unprinted backs and here's another good example? (am I right to guess that the skirt is only printed on the front?) :hmm:
This drives me crazy, for sure! Even the kids' overalls are printed only on the front! ???
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thank you W.Myers!! ...for helping me find this 'samurai skirt' (on your kitchen maid)...its pattern & colour combination is really perfect...I'll have to have one (but waste the rest of her parts...maybe will have to donate the rest of her for our medical students ;D)
I was thinking of starting a thread to ask/share our despair/frustration with most klickies having unprinted backs and here's another good example? (am I right to guess that the skirt is only printed on the front?) :hmm:
Yes, the figure is only printed on the front. I was going to take a picture of the back, but since there was nothing special I didn't bother...
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This is a great set. The kitchen contents look great with steck!
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Hi
Thanks for a great review of a neat little add on
Rasputin "The Mad Monk"
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This is a great set. The kitchen contents look great with steck!
I agree! ;) This kitchen set is in the downstairs of our tavern
(http://)