Set Review ➟ 40413 Mindstorms Mini Robots
To promote the upcoming MINDSTORMS V4 51515 Robot Inventor set, LEGO will be releasing miniature versions of its five MINDSTORMS robot builds. Running from October 15-25, this GWP (Gift-With-Purchase) set will be available to those making a qualifying purchase of $99 / €100 / £100. HBM has been provided with an early copy for review, so let’s take a look at what we get.
The box itself is of the reusable, hinged-lid variety, which is very welcome. The front displays the five robot builds, while the back of the box advertises the 51515 set, showing how each mini-robot is based on its larger programmable twin. Contained within are five unnumbered bags plus the small (but thick!) instruction booklet (135x100mm). At 110 pages one wonders if LEGO could not save some trees, and perhaps provide a more educational build experience, by including a few more parts per step.
The set contains some 389 parts, including a mixture of Technic and System parts, in a colour scheme of white, teal, black, and grey. This is not a 5-in-1 set, where you have to choose which robot to build—you instead get all the parts to build all five robots at once. Without further information on the 51515 set I’m not quite sure what to call each one, so I’ll just have to go ahead and assign my own names as we go.[1]
The first build I hereby dub ‘Battle Bot’ as he is impressively armed with a spring-loaded shooter and defensive shield. (I guess gender makes little sense when speaking of robots, but if I’m making up their names then I will allow myself some license with pronouns too.) Battle Bot is based on the primary build in set 51515, occupying the central position in the box art for each respective set, and is the most humanoid in appearance. He has very satisfying poseability with head, hips, and shoulders, and the head is reminiscent of 1985’s blue cyclopean robot from set 6891. Compared to his 51515 big brother, the legs are a bit long and the head a bit small, plus he is missing the ankle-wheels. He is otherwise a pretty faithful rendition, and is my second favourite of the five.
Chonky Boi is the second build, and though he may have had a few too many digital doughnuts, he sure has a heart of gold—or rather a heart of pink, as revealed by his opening chest panel. (A second pink 1x1 heart is included in the spares.) This is a very nice feature, though you have to tilt his head back to make room. The head itself has an adjustable mandible, and attaches to the body by a ball joint. The small Technic balls for the front wheels are nice too, even if this differs from his 51515 big brother’s single front wheel. The weakest area here has to be the arms, which don’t really match the original in terms of colour, shape, or function.
The third build is a lovely robo-doggo I will call Good Boy, and appears to take strong inspiration from Boston Dynamic’s real world Spot robot. He has good poseability with his legs, and makes great use of bucket handles in framing the small head. Good Boy is my favourite of the set, and to my eye is the most robot-like, especially in its colour balance and level of greebly detail, though Battle Bot runs a close second.
The penultimate build is Bucket Bot, and features a click hinge connection between the two axles. This allows some added poseability, though I’m not sure to what purpose. The turntable-mounted extendable bucket-arm is okay, but doesn’t really look anything like the corresponding assembly on its 51515 counterpart. A great bonus though is the inclusion of an alternate forward attachment, replacing the bucket-arm with a pair of elevating and rotating stud-shooters. Also notable is the inclusion of a minifig-accessory radio as the rear antenna.
Our final mini-robot is Ball Boy, who appears to be a faithful representation of the programmable 51515 build, but is less successful here as a mini build. There is no friction in the hinge for the raising ball-catcher mechanism, so it cannot be posed in a raised position. The flat spot on the included red ball also means that it can fall out through the bottom or the back of this mechanism when lifting it up.
Overall, 40413 Mini Robots provides an appealing set of robots in a nice colour scheme. Are they the best, most detailed robots one could build at this scale? No. But they are faithful scaled-down renditions of the larger robots in the 51515 MINDSTORMS set, and will make for a great companion set displayed next to the much larger 51515 builds. And as a free GWP set this is quite a generous offering, allowing all five mini-robots to be built at once, and even including extras such as the alternate stud-shooter attachment on Bucket Bot. This set probably isn’t going to sway those on the fence about buying 51515, yet the colour palette and parts selection is great, and should make it possible to create some cool robots of your own—and also allow 51515 customers to make mini versions of their custom MINDSTORMS robotic creations.
We wish to thank LEGO for providing this set for review. The opinions in this review are not supported or endorsed by LEGO.
[1] After writing this review I’ve found the official 51515 robot names: (in the same order presented in this review) Blast (“stoic action hero”), Charlie (“quirky sidekick helper”), Gelo (“four-legged robot”), MVP (“Modular Vehicle Platform”), and Tricky (“sporty bot/ultimate athlete”).
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