Caitlin has two older brothers aged 5 and 7 and so is well-versed in the way of Lego.
Harry’s latest Lego craze is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so through the power of osmosis she is currently running around the house being ‘Mika-anjello’. This might sound like a Japanese dessert but is clearly a major Turtle when you see the speed of her hands as she hurtles towards you. Her embrace of her brothers’ Lego led us to believe that she might be more than happy to have her own.
Now Caitlin isn’t a girly-girl. She’s only 3, loves her ‘beebies’, lives for cuddles and will gladly blow kisses to anything above the level of a spider, of which she isn’t particularly fond. Despite this we were more than happy to try her with the new Friends Lego, a range that is squarely aimed at young girls. These have characters that are ostensibly and predominantly female and the sets appear (at first glance in any case) to have far less weaponry and/or deadly aliens or Wargs than others we have bought for Tom and Harry. It wasn’t that we wanted something more feminine, rather that we were interested to see how well a less character-based Lego would fare. Also, to be honest, we’ve pretty much got enough Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/Batman/Turtles/Star Wars Lego to open our own store.
What we finally opted for was the Lego Friends Dolphin Cruiser. This is a yacht that comes complete with three Lego Friends (two girls and a boy for a bit of balance) and a couple of dolphins to add a bit of spice. This is a solid toy and when constructed enables you to take the roof off the Cruiser so that your characters can access the inside of the boat. The detachable roof also doubles up as a sort of catamaran giving you two boats for the price of one! This is quite useful as Mia (the dark-haired character) can be a little stroppy according to Caitlin and occasionally needs some time on her own, a trait that I feel Mia has picked up from me during the summer holidays.
This is a really colourful toy, one that takes the initial idea of a boat and then builds it to a size large enough to resemble a toy house with a variety of rooms and activities. Bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, even a slide from the top of the boat into the water all give the Cruiser a sense of action so that Caitlin isn’t limited to just pushing the boat around the living room. Actually, in play she rarely moves it but seems content to have the Cruiser moored whilst the dolphins 
gamble happily around the boat and occasionally enter the living room for a nice sit down with Andrew.
The one thing we were immediately impressed with was the solidity of this set. After years of spaceships and motorized vehicles that seem to shed huge sections of themselves as they are transported through the rooms of our house we found that this maintained its shape remarkably well. It could be that Caitlin is a gentler creature than her brothers; it could be that the play this cruiser engenders doesn’t involve it smashing into walls or being flung down the stairs; or it could be that the accessories for this are largely stored inside the toy. Frankly, it’s probably a bit of all three, but either way this means that this toy can happily be left in Caitlin’s room and encourages return trips without the need for mum or dad to intervene and rebuild twice daily.
The Dolphin Cruiser, and perhaps much of the Lego Friends range, harks back to the earlier days of Lego when a fire station or a train was all you had to spark your imagination. The boy-orientated character range of Star Wars, Batman, Toy Story, LOTR etc comes with its own backstory and legends and the focus is squarely on the characters. The Dolphin Cruiser, by contrast, gives kids a chance to create their own worlds, not ones created by writers, 70s filmmakers or comics. In this colourful set we were pleased to see the focus is on real life and relationships, albeit existing in the ultra-rich environment of a personalized Cruiser. Perhaps in future Lego might have sets that encompass a Bromley Post Office queue or Brighton’s Churchill Centre, but until that time comes this is a marvelous, bright and fun substitute.
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