LEGO® Icons review + MOC: 10328 Bouquet of Roses

The Botanical Collection is a subtheme of LEGO® Icons that features relatively affordable sets. In reality, similar life-size botanical subjects have found their way to other LEGO themes, too, including LEGO® Creator and, surprisingly, LEGO® Disney Princess sets. For me, these sets appeal as beautiful models. However, I'm foremost a MOC maker, and they are very good material for own creations – they include usually many of the same pieces, often in bright colours and sleek, organic shapes. 

The Botanical Collection often features many species, with differing colours, but set 10328 Bouquet of Roses focuses on strong red romanticism. How does it score with a MOC builder like me, and what did its pieces inspire me to build?

Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
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10328 Bouquet of Roses
US$59.99/ £54.99/ 59.99€/ AU$99.99
822 parts
1 January 2024

• Buy pieces from set 10328 on LEGO Pick a Brick
• Buy set 10328 on LEGO.com

Interesting pieces 

Recolours

• 4x Equipment Whip [Coiled] in Red / Bright Red (6464071 | 61975)

The first recolour that caught my eye in this set is Indiana Jones's whip in old good red. It looks great for small details on clothing. Lots of pieces here are red, but I never foresaw this piece coming in that colour.

• 32x Wheel Arch, Mudguard 2 x 3 x 1 1/3 in Red / Bright Red (6464072 | 49097)

This set recycles one rose type from 10314 Dried Flower Centerpiece (as featured in our Flowerfest) which included one in Nougat. It, and another rose types, use four of these "light" mudguards for their inner petals, resulting in 32 being included. That's a lot of mudguards. In our Flowerfest I used two as Sontaran ears – how will these red ones be used? Red ears maybe!

• 8x Windscreen 6 x 4 x 1 Hexagonal with Handle in Dark Green / Earth Green (6465521 | 27262)

I'm surprised that the windscreen hasn't appeared in Dark Green before, but its previous Botanical Collection appearances were in fact in regular Green.

• 16x Bar 6L with Stop Ring in Sand Green (6474602 | 28921)

If you have keen eyes, you'll notice that the picture has 18 Sand Green bars instead of 16. This seems to be a common "error" in the set; normally this piece doesn't get an extra, but mine had two, and according to Rebrickable I'm not the only one. A surprise, but a pleasant one.

• 16x Weapon Hilt Symmetric in Sand Green (6474604 | 66909)
• 8x Animal Body Part, Barb / Claw / Tooth / Talon / Horn, Small in Dark Red (6469392 | 88513) - with 3 extra
  

The barb, traditionally called a "Viking horn" despite the historical inaccuracy of the term, has appeared in many colours It's great to finally have them in the beautiful colour Dark Red. 

Sand Green Monkey King hilts seem useful for architecture builds – specifically, building patinated copper domes with their little columns in historicist architecture.

Rare parts

• 24x Large Figure Shoulder Cover, Armor, Round, Smooth with Bar in Red / Bright Red (6391203 | 1686) - in 3 other sets

24 is a great number for a piece that is bound to look great when layered in multitude. This is the close relative to Large Figure Shoulder Cover, Armor, Round, Smooth [Plain] (21560) which has two CCBS-style pins inside the dome instead of the open-ended bar on the other end. Both have their uses and I don't have a preferred version; I'm happy that both of them exist. This end-handle version requires more infrastructure to connect, but is easier to layer because you don't have to put anything under it. I'll get back onto this with the MOC.

• 16x Slope Curved 4 x 5 x 1 2/3 in Red / Bright Red (6469252 | 85834, 4898) - also in 71799 NINJAGO City Markets

Rebrickable categorise this as a curved slope, which feels a bit weird to me; like BrickLink I think of it as a large figure part, because it was originally introduced as the face plate for 76206 Iron Man Figure (reviewed by Thomas). I'm surprised to see its only other appearance in red is in 71799 NINJAGO City Markets (reviewed by Elspeth) – but then, that set is a treasure trove of cool part usages.

I must confess that this piece feels rather clumsy compared to the previous shoulder armour. Its different connection points makes it worthwhile, though; especially the axle hole enables nice, sturdy connections.

• 8x Tile 45° Cut 2 x 2 in Dark Green / Earth Green (6390053 | 35787) - in 3 other sets

This triangular tile has less room for technical expertise, but is a welcome part anyway; good for some old-fashioned ceramic stoves.

Those are the new and rare pieces in this set. However, it has other goodies too. 

As the build is very repetitive - everything is built four times - there's often 16 or 32 of each piece. It feels like when you make a bulk purchase, and is very useful for MOC purposes because several of the same piece enables interesting patterns. For example, there are 108 of Technic Driving Ring Connector Smooth (42195) – not an amount to be frowned upon, especially when combined with those from other Botanical Collection sets!

Elements from Bouquet of Roses are available on LEGO Pick a Brick

The completed set

This model is designed to be displayed in a vase (not included in the set) as a chaotic mass of different red roses with gypsophila (baby's breath) thrown in for variety and contrast. 

Everything comes in fours: four gypsophila, four small pointed roses, four medium round roses and four large robust roses. Brace for a repetitive build. 

Each type of rose has a different instruction book, so this can be built simultaneously by four builders. I recommend to switch the instructions between builders for variety - or challenge oneself by making the first one with instructions and the rest from memory. I did!

The repetition of the same flower types might make the build less enjoyable, but the balance between variation and repetition looks perfect in the finished model. You wouldn't expect every blossom in a real bouquet to look distinctly different; and that would lead into a very chaotic model.

For its price of US$59.99/ £54.99/ 59.99€/ AU$99.99, this set has plenty of bulk and glamour.

Red roses have a natural inbuilt complimentary colour contrast with their green leaves and stems. The gypsophila add some extra fluff to tone down the redness from becoming overwhelming.

Eero's MOC

The bright red colour directed me towards something synthetic, while the round shapes – and naturally, my passion as a character builder – suggested more organic themes. 

I ended up building a character in a futuristic suit of armour: something elegant but also sturdy and plausible. 

I began with the legs. LEGO® NINJAGO® EVO armour pieces (7989), which were reviewed by Aron and included in the smallest rose type, made nice shoes. I managed to make a bulging knee armour with two of the older rounded armour plates.

This model didn't really have an initial concept. I had some ideas about Samurai themes, which I have explored in my builds several times. I wondered if the red whips could be used as a part of Samurai attire, as knotted ropes tying armour together. However, I felt they would work better with a more down-to-earth colour scheme, whereas the set directed me heavily towards All Red. The shoulder armour retain some of this Samurai influence, though.

Because the concept was unfocused as best, I let the spontaneous building process direct me. With these red shell-like armour pieces, the character ended up wearing futuristic power armour. But I still do not know what this armour is for. 

I didn't feel like building any weapons – not every character build, even when donning a suit of armour, needs one. A futuristic gun would have taken it in a too-militaristic direction. Maybe she does face other kinds of dangers: a high-speed pilot, probably, or a miner, or a firefighter of the future... red would be fitting for that! Build first, think later.

Building techniques

Now for some building tricks in my model that use the interesting parts in this set.

I used 9 mudguards in this model: four on the shoes, four below the knees and one in the torso armour. The ones in the shoes form a rim on the shoe. Two mudguards with their points touching have room for 4 plates in-between, so I had to make a 4-plate stud-to-stud SNOT including the ankle joint, which was to be a "Mixels" small ball joint. 

A Mixels socket, seen above in grey, is positioned vertically in the middle of the plate, meaning that I could not centre it on the shoe; this wasn't an issue though, as the ankle needed only inwards movement and not much outwards. 

The SNOT construction uses both old and newer pieces: the bracket 2 x 2 - 2 x 2 (3956, 35262) from 1979 forms the framework; vertical clip plates and T-bars bind the sides together; and a D-SNOT (3386), hero of the modern age, adds some extra strength to the baggage. The T-bar also enables the angled connection of the shoe tip EVO armour piece.

I wanted the round shoulder armour to close around the knee joints – just like petals do. However, knee armour can't be too wide, otherwise they bump into each other. Fortunately, the bar connection of these knee joints can be connected to adjacent hollow studs in a way that leaves enough room for a 3.18 mm bar in-between. This bar connects the knee joint to the rest of the lower leg.

The shoulder pads use four shells each, meaning that the bar connections are where the character's upper arm bone would be. They also fill the space where the shoulder joint should be. This was a problem. 

I had to move the shoulder joint one module inwards towards the spine, making the upper torso block only 4 modules wide. Ideally it would be 6 or even 7. 

In this design, the upper arm is shaped like a number 7 or an upturned L. With this trick, the proportions looked decent, but the area between the bust and the shoulders looked weird. There was no room for construction without crippling the shoulder movement, so I placed two minifigure capes to hide the gap. It felt natural to have a bit of fabric in the suit, and the capes adapt to the movement of the arms.

Now, back to the finished model.

Under the helmet

Although the MOC's concept was light, it was clear that there'd be a human being inside the armour. I generally find building humans to be more inspiring than robots, because humans are interesting and sometimes even likeable.

I also wanted the human inside to be relatively mundane, with big hair but no edgy sci-fi knick-knacks going on.

I showed this to a friend, who commented that she looks like Samus Aran from the video game series Metroid. But there is no ponytail, though (and as we know, people can only have one hairstyle). 

I also think that this power armour is more realistic than Samus's in terms of proportions. Despite its relatively large size, it has relatively good mobility; definitely better than on my 2016 MOC of Samus. I also managed to construct the limbs in a way that there are no points that are easily broken. That made the model a pleasure to photograph.

Conclusion

My MOC building process was fast and heated, which means that 10328 Bouquet of Roses was an inspiring piece of MOC-fodder. 

Before my creative session, the completed set waited on my dinner table for a couple of months, proving to be worthy display piece. Whereas I still can't completely lose the nagging feeling that plastic flower replicas are silly replacements of the real ones, I can wholeheartedly appreciate this successful design. 

As a parts pack it's excellent, and the ratio of US$59.99/ £54.99/ 59.99€/AU$99.99 for 822 parts is great, especially as there are plenty of substantially sized, interesting, rare and vibrant pieces included.

• Buy pieces from set 10328 on LEGO Pick a Brick
• Buy set 10328 on LEGO.com

READ MORE: Review of the Jules Verne Gift with Purchase available until 30 June 2024

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