The JMBricklayer 70002 Puppet Show Building Block Set Review!

Hey brick fans! We are back with another cool building block set review.   Today's set is the new for 2023 Fantastic Idea Puppet Show with approx 1900 pieces and it was kindly provided by JMBricklayer for this review.

Here's the direct product link on the JMBricklayer website.  See below for the special promo pricing!

As always, we will unbox it and look at the contents, then build it following the provided instruction guide book.  Afterwards, we will look at the features of the set and see if there were any issues during the construction phases.  As an unbiased review we will make recommendations or suggestions where I think the set could be further improved.

Ok, let's get into it!   

Unboxing

The Puppet Show building set came in a rather large box.  On the box, the appearance of both the JMBricklayer and the Wekki brand logos look like they are cooperating on this set.

The box is packed to the brim with parts bags, so we will take a look at what's inside.   We've got the mandatory instruction booklet, a crumpled sticker sheet and something new.

The bonus item is a  cardboard sleeve that comes with two finger socks, a discount coupon and a product booklet showing a huge assortment of the JMBricklayer block sets.

There are several bags of parts of which I counted a total of 11 bags.   Some have numbering from 1 thru 5 and you'd be correct in assuming that they correspond to the building stages in the manual.  One of the bags contains preformed parts for the face, hands and cap and another bag contains a LED light brick.

The instruction manual looks to be clear and concise and is broken down into 5 stages of construction. 

1.  The display base and part of the treasure chest

2.  The treasure chest and accessories

3.  The puppet's torso

4.  The puppet's appendages and head

5.  The puppet's hair and features and optional control stick

1. Building the display

Here we have all of the parts bags for step 1.

Along with the other parts I found some printed pieces and a brick separator.

After you have built the display, there will also be a drawer that slides in and out. Not sure what it's used for, but nice to have this special feature.

The inside of the treasure chest is a little stage with some props like a clock, a work shelf, a bench and a cat.  There will also be a small puppet boy which I will feature later.   The led light will be attached to the underside of the treasure chest to light the stage. It can be controlled by a small switch to the left of the drawer.

As you can tell, there are already a lot of cool details and we've only just finished step 1.

2. Finish the treasure chest and add some accessories

Here we are starting step 2 with these two bags of parts.

Here's the finished stage!  Check out the nicely printed drapery pieces and the printed Pinocchio sign above the stage.   We've added a puppet boy and a goldfish bowl to the stage as well.  Some buckets and urns hold some of the paint brushes.   Looks very nice with the lighting effect.

We're not done yet!  Here we've assembled some of the accessories that will adorn the front of the display.  Many will have stickers which I will attach a bit later.  There's a open book with a candle, a blue bound pinocchio book, some paint brushes and jar.

I forgot to mention that I also finished the lid of the chest in this step, comes with a very realistic looking lock.  This is where the completed puppet boy will sit.

On the right side of the chest, there's a cuckoo clock and a stop watch which I will sticker later.

Adding the stickers makes the accessories much more realistic I think.  My pinocchio book cover sticker got a bit damaged during transit, but still looks usable.

Just one more shot of the back side of the treasure chest before we move on to Pinocchio the puppet boy.

3. Building the puppet torso

Here's bag #3 that corresponds to the step to build the torso.

The torso came together easily and you can see a lot of the printed pieces that were used for the pants and suspender details.  I didn't realize it at the time when I took these pics but I had the knee joints backwards, oops.

4. Build the appendages and head block

Pinocchio's feet, the laces are printed.

One of the un-numbered bags contained all of the molded parts for the face, hat, hands and shoulders.  And the nose, I forgot about the nose (actually, noses!)

Puppet boy's arms and legs have been attached. Now it's just a matter of assembling the head and mounting it to the body.

Pinocchio is almost there!

All of the parts need to complete Pinocchio, the puppet boy are contained in step 5.

So I found that Pinocchio's head is quite heavy, too heavy that the body will not stand up on it's own.  Cute face though!

It's ok for me to lay him down, but standing is definitely a problem, as his knee and waist joints move too freely.

He's ok to take on this rather embarassing position though, lol.

Here's Pinocchio in a less compromising position.

There are some black tile pieces which the bottom of the feet are supposed to attach.

Care must be taken when you attach puppet boy to the treasure chest.  It's only a small hinge piece that connects Pinocchio's butt to the indent in the chest.  I discovered it's a lot easier to remove the head first because of the weight. 

Gallery

The set dimensions of the Pinocchio Puppet Show set are as follows:

approx 12.5 inches high, 8.25 inches wide and 6.25 inches deep.

Once attached to the chest, Pinocchio is on pretty good.  I moved him to my display shelf and the building set held together well.  As I mentioned earlier, you can display the puppet boy with either a longer nose or a short nose.  Here he is with the short nose.

Here he is with his longer nose.  Hey I was just wondering, if Donald Trump had a wooden nose, how long do you think it would be?  Sorry, I couldn't resist the jab!

There were no missing parts in this set, and I actually ended up with quite a few spare parts as you can see above.  Wonder what's with the blue wand? 

One last thing before I give you my final thoughts, is that the puppet boy comes with a control arm which you get to assemble in step 5.  There are strings that you attach to the controls and the puppet arms and legs to make him dance or move.  I didn't attach them as I preferred to keep Pinocchio in the seated position for display purposes.

Final thoughts

I built the JMBricklayer 70002 Puppet Show over the course of about a week off and on.  Everything was smooth sailing until trying to attach the heavy head to the body.

There was a few occasions where the head did not want to stay on the body, mostly because of the weight.

The head is kept in place by a long technic pin which is attached to a square brick in the body.  The square brick is kept in place in the torso by the front chest plate and a small 2x4 tile configuration.  The weight of the head is such that it forces the small tiles to pop off, then resulting in front chest failure.  

I don't think it's so much of a clutch issue than a design issue from my perspective.  I believe that there should have been a perpendicular technic pin used to secure the square block at right  angles to the head pin to brace it.  The best location would be between the two upright turquoise blocks.   By doing this there is less chance that the head will want to shear off the body.

This was also another reason why I chose not to put the puppet on the control arms because I think, inevitably the head would have come off during puppet movement.

Ok, other than that minor nit, I think that Pinocchio, the puppet boy displays really well.  I really like all of the small and big accessories that come with the set.  The stage built into the base of the treasure chest is a novel idea.

Brick quality and clutch is decent and the finish of the bricks used reminded me of the quality of the bricks used in the JMBricklayer 30001 Remarkable Ancient Machine building block set.  You can find my review for that set here, btw.

The set came with a variety of both printed pieces and stickers, but the stickers were pretty good despite being a bit crumpled.  While the free finger socks were a nice touch, I'm not sure that I will have much use for them.  

Other than the constructed puppet inside the stage, there are no other minifigures included with the set.

Thanks once again to JMBricklayer for giving me the opportunity to do an early review of the Pinocchio Puppet Boy set.  

Here are the special discounts effective right now!

For US Amazon, the website link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB434FPM, the coupon code XHNARY15 for US Amazon applies only to the non-discounted Puppet Show 70002 and is valid for one month, offering a 15% discount.  

In addition, as for the online store,the website link https://www.jmbricklayer.com/product/the-puppet-show-70002/, the coupon code VIPLEGS15 applies to all non-discounted products and offers a 15% discount. The code is valid until December 31, 2023. 

Thanks for visiting and see you in my next review!  Bye!