The Best Lego Play Features...

In this video, I'm going to be testing the best LEGO play features from over a dozen different LEGO sets to see just how clever LEGO designers can be, ranging from things like transformations, combinations, and decimations. Let's get started. Okay, so the first round of LEGO play features will be from these five sets, starting with this old LEGO Batcave. Basically, you put Bruce Wayne on the top of this tower, and when he gets a call about a villain he needs to stop, you just pull this pin out from the back and boom, he transforms into Batman. It's gotta be one of the fastest suit ups I've ever seen. Now in real life, it's just swapping two different minifigures, so you could transform him into different Batman suits if you have them. But what if you were to transform a non-Batman minifigure? Oh. Here's a Star Wars ship that's currently in its landed position. But when you're ready to fly it, you just pick it up by the middle wing and the rest of the ship automatically transforms into flight mode. It even retracts the landing skids at the same time since everything is synchronized with gears. But if spaceships aren't your thing, how about this blue Ninjago fighter jet, that when you push on this lever, the wings swing open for attack. Once again, another really clever mechanism, this time using hinge pieces and string to pull the wings apart. Looks far more dangerous and aggressive this way. Believe it or not, but this battle mech set from Galaxy Squad has the ability to take out two enemies at the exact same time. This is because you can eject the driver's seat and fold down its wings to become its own spacecraft. Meanwhile, the rest of the mech can transform and reveal a backup pilot to remain operational. But that doesn't even hold a candle to this wolf combat layer set from Chima. It's a giant battle vehicle and at the very front are these deployable claw bikes. The wheels in the back can detach and rotate to transform into a motorcycle. This middle section can be removed as a jail cell to hold prisoners. And this top bit lifts off to become a helicopter. And just like that, you've got five different builds from just one single set. Like I said though, this was just the first round of play features. And if you were paying close attention, you may have noticed that the features on these sets were all transformations, which is just one of the five categories of play features we'll be looking at in this video, with the next one being Destruction. I feel like this one's pretty self-explanatory, so I only bought one set to demonstrate, being this Spider-Man vs Hulk Clash set. Pretty much anytime LEGO makes a set to recreate a scene with some kind of damage or explosion, they'll intentionally design that set with a handful of fragile connection points, like the windows on this building. I always found this type of feature ironic, since LEGO is all about building and creating stuff, but now we're intentionally destroying it. To be fair though, it does look like Hulk is busting through the building, so it gets the idea across. And it's pretty satisfying too. You just push this button on the back and it knocks out the bottom window, causing the rest to fall with it. And since they break apart in chunks, it's pretty easy to set it back up. Although I always found it a little annoying when you use this kind of feature and some of the chunks don't fully separate. But, eh. Now as I was organizing this list, I realized some play features can only be found on vehicles, so I decided to just make that the next category, starting with this Skull Truck from Ninjago that has some of the bounciest suspension I've ever seen on a LEGO set, thanks to these yellow spring pieces. This is borderline therapeutic. It can drive over road bumps no problem, and I especially like how it makes the mouth on the front chomp up and down. Another vehicle feature that comes to mind is on this Ninjago Samurai car. Unlike the Skull Truck, it has zero suspension. Instead, you turn the center canopy and it angles the wheels as you drive it. This is because the wheels are actually connected with turntables that are pushed side to side by the chassis. It's pretty subtle, but it gets the job done. Now to prove that Ninjago isn't the only theme with cool vehicle features, let me show you this. A massive alien crawler from Galaxy Squad. Now typically, LEGO vehicles with legs are kind of meh to play with, because you either have to move each leg separately, or do one of these. But this alien crawler was specifically designed so you don't have to do either. Yup, its legs move automatically as you push it forward. Not only is it way more fun to play with, but it really makes the model feel alive. And the design is so brilliant. There's these wheels on the bottom that are linked to the front and back legs, while the leg in the middle just rests on top, getting pushed up and down with gravity. So because the legs move in sync with the wheels, the faster you push it, the faster the legs will move. Now if you've been enjoying the video so far, and want to see more like it, then don't forget to click subscribe. Did you click it? Okay bet. Now to be honest, these next three sets have play features that are so creative, yet so random, they didn't exactly fit in the last two categories coming up. So I decided to make a bonus category just for them. You'll see what I mean. First up is this claw catcher from Power Miners. The premise here is that the miners have to defeat these lava monsters by submerging them in water, and these claws are the perfect tools for the job. This is one of the most fun and addictive play features I've ever tried. You just pull this piece back, and the arms grab the lava monster and toss him into the water. A lot of LEGO sets nowadays have these spring loaded shooter pieces, where you press on the back to launch them. But I've never seen a more brilliant use for them than on this Ninjago Boulder Blaster set. It's got 8 of them loaded into this front barrel, and when you turn this knob, it rotates the barrel and launches them all off. When you rotate the barrel with that knob, this little bit in the front pushes down on the shooter. And to wrap up this category, this is a LEGO Hero Factory action figure. You can move and pose them in all sorts of ways, and they used to come packaged in these plastic canisters that you could store them in after you build them. Don't worry, that's not actually the cool play feature. The play feature I'm talking about is found on this LEGO action figure vehicle made out of and it's called the Drop Ship. There's a handle at the bottom, and when you pull this trigger, the wings raise up, and these arms at the bottom fold together. Now, remember those canisters I told you about? Well these arms are actually meant to grab the canisters and fly off with them to drop the heroes into battle. I can't think of another time when a LEGO set has incorporated the packaging in a play feature like this. It's just too bad though, since a lot of people threw these canisters away, and I'm guilty of the same honestly. I mean, you really only need one to use this feature, but it's always a good idea to deploy multiple heroes, especially if you have the right combination. That's right, our next category of play features is set combinations, where in this case you can use the parts from a specific pair of heroes to combine them together into one larger figure. It's a really cool idea and all, but it's at the cost of some annoying caveats, like how you can only find the instructions online, they leave behind extra pieces, and after a while, it gets pretty tedious having to disassemble and reassemble them each time you want the figures in a specific form. When it comes to combining LEGO sets, I feel like these Ninjago mechs do a much better job implementing this feature, because instead of taking them apart brick by brick, you separate them into chunks which you can mix and match onto different mechs. So I guess you're not really combining them per se, more so just interchanging their parts. But hey, some of these part swaps look pretty cool, while others… I can't really say the same. In my opinion though, one of the best LEGO set combos of all time has to be Jabba's Palace plus the Rancor Pit from Star Wars. See, the Jabba's Palace set is a really nice display piece by itself, and you can even place a minifigure in the middle of the palace and pretend to drop them into the Rancor Pit below. Oh, but you don't have to pretend much longer, because the Rancor Pit was actually designed and sold as its own separate set intended to be combined with Jabba's Palace. See those little triangle bits on the very top? Yeah, well they actually line up perfectly with these holes on the bottom of Jabba's Palace, so you can literally just plop it on top. This is my favorite LEGO set combo because not only does it enhance the display of each set, but it also enhances the play features since you can actually drop a minifigure into the Rancor Pit this way. Now after talking about that Jabba's Palace set, it reminded me of one last play feature category, LEGO Bases. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch to call this a play feature, I don't know, but personally I always enjoyed having one large set with lots of room to place minifigures and imagine different scenarios and stories. A particularly good example being this Ninjago Samurai Cave set, a secret layer beneath the desert where the ninja designed new vehicles. Well, at least it was a secret until their enemies just discovered it.