This set came out last week and I thought it would be suitable for review in this platform. The German name is
Gladiatorenkampf, and I don't know whether the above will be used as its English name.
Set 6868 is one of the so-called Starter Sets, which, according to the company's spokesperson, are "a little play world of their own and thus a good start to the entire PLAYMOBIL play world" (source: PCC) − not too different from the SuperSets, therefore, and no promise for a resumption of the Roman theme. Nevertheless, it is the first Roman set to be released since 2008 or thereabouts, so some reason for joy!
I will spare you photographs of the box art, and start with the box contents, consisting of the base plate and three bags of parts:
Moving straight on to the finished model:
Assembly requires handling a fair amount of stickers:
The three klickies include two familiar faces:
The gladiator in the middle is a reissue of Special 4653 of 2006, and the character on the right has been seen many times before, albeit with different headwear and featuring among knights. We'll come back to the guy on the left in a little bit.
Moving on to the exciting new bits, the dark chariot comes first:
The black-and-gold colour scheme works very well with the charioteer, and this makes a for a surprisingly nice 'barbarian' contender to the race. The bull face on the front fixture is borrowed from the Bull Knights of the mid-2000s (set 4435 etc.). I have no idea what the "17" is about. Scythe blades in black are new, as is the mounting for a single horse, with no pole but two shafts instead. The chariot body is of the same mould as the earlier chariots, with two round projections for fastening klicky feet.
The chariot has the same cream colour as the base plate:
Moving to the second novelty − the landscape, the box art shows that the walls simply slide over four squares of the base plate:
The good news is that the walls can therefore stand on their own, and be extended to create a full-size median wall for a hippodrome. Great!
The wall is made using these parts:
Their colour is different from the arena building of 4270. There are two types of square bases, one with one slit for holding a wall, the other with two slits. They are smaller than the statue bases of 4270:
The bases have a fixed top, and I have not tried whether they can accommodate any other superstructure than the obelisks that are supplied with the set. The obelisks support fire bowls, which unfortunately cannot be substituted with the bowls from the arena set 4270 and the Roman emperor 4277: the holes in the obelisks are too large to hold the other bowls.
The sticker design derives from set 4270. Unfortunately, Geobra did not update the inscription for the new release, and the year "2006" is still featuring:
The friezes too are taken from 4270:
Lastly, the single new character in the set needs to be compared with the two red gladiators previously produced by Geobra:
The new version is a pale comparison to his predecessors. The chest bands and belt have been substituted by printing, and I'm at a loss to explain his legionary helmet, let alone the 'slave collar'. On the bright side, at least he did have a chance to shave!
In sum, I think this is a fun set, and to my mind worth the money. It is not without its flaws, though. Geobra could have been a little more innovative in the sticker design, and the red gladiator is a dud, in my opinion. Small beer, nonetheless, as we finally have a chariot to which other animals than horses can be yoked. How neat is that?
StJohn
