When it comes to LEGO from what I have seen from friends and family, it is the large kits that really spark the kids interest. Before Christmas, I spoke to a lot of parents who had said that their kids either wanted the Deathstar, The Ewok village or one of the large Technics kits like the Porsche or the Bucket Wheel Excavator. In the past when the boys have wanted larger kits we have always sat down and built own custom versions but when it comes to Technics we just don't have the parts. When Seth was younger, like lots of kids at that age he LOVED tractors and the one Tractor make that always stuck out for him was the Claas tractors. He would get so excited if we were out for a walk and he spotted one while in his pushchair. So when LEGO released the Technic Claas Xerion 5000 Trac VC it was a no brainer.
A friend of mine had bought the kit for his own son and although I had not seen it built it looked really impressive on the box. All my friend simply said was "It is Huge"! and "It took my son 4 days to build". So the prospect of the boys building it was pretty daunting. When we first Opened the box and sorted the bags we were really confused by the amount of bag 1's and bag 2's and as we started to build the kit it was clear why the kit had taken my friends son 4 days to build.
With the age range being slightly older on the Technic kits, you can see why. A kit like this takes a completely different kind of building, there is a lot more strategy involved to make the build run smoothly. So we spent a fair bit of time separating all the parts into their own piles, which helped a lot! Seth really wanted to get into building the kit but because of his muscle condition he finds it really difficult to connect the parts, so it was all down to me. That was of course after I stopped being distracted by those awesome giant wheels (I'm going to have so custom fun with those).
The build really did take some time but what I loved about it was that with each step you could see the ins and outs of how each of the power functions was going to work and it was really quite fascinating. I'm not sure what the estimated building time on this kit was but I spent 4 hours on it the one evening, I confidently started it at 10pm, thinking that a master builder like myself would have it done before bed (how wrong was I), when in fact I slipped into a LEGO building meditative state and was completely engrossed until I had finally finished the main tractor part at 2am (oops).
The following morning I couldn't wait to complete the crane while the boys wheeled the Tractor around the house. The crane took me just over an hour to put together and although 5 hours seems a long time to be building a LEGO kit, it was worth every single minute, This kit is a sheer masterpiece. The was that sinking feeling in my stomach when I put the batteries in a and the power functions didn't work but after going back through the impressively huge manual I realised that it was on something minor and was easily fixed.
All that was left to do was to take the Technic Claas Xerion 5000 Trac VC out where its supposed to be played with, out into the garden to roll over the rockery and plough through the grass. The boys had fun extending the outriggers and controlling the crane and being able to rotate the main cab was a great extra. This is definitely going to be a fun summer garden toy and the boys love it, it was just a shame that they couldn't join in with the build. I guess I got all the fun this time.
If I haven't made it completely clear in this post yet, this kit is a dream for any Technic lover, it has now got me looking at the Bucket Wheel Excavator even more.
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