The Smallest Lego Botanicals (Review)

Thank you LEGO for sending these sets for review. The LEGO Plum Blossom, together with the Chrysanthemum, are the smallest and cheapest LEGO botanicals done for the theme, which feels like a winning bet due to how wildly popular these kinds of products are. This one in particular is giving me some bonsai tree vibes, due to the little brown stand to support the sand blue vase. But contrary to the bonsai tree pot, which can be taken out of the base, the Plum Blossom one comes attached. The piece choices for the feet are really clever, and do make you wonder if this is even LEGO. Same goes for all of the round shapes used for the vase, which, by the way, were put together making use of great building techniques. And while as an avid LEGO builder, the lower portion of this set was definitely my favourite, the highlight here is, of course, the top side of it all, showing off the bright coloured flowers of this particular plant. There's three different stages of growth that can be seen, from small buds, to the initial flowering stage, using those cool broken eggshell elements in magenta, and finally, two types of full blossom flowers, these with five petals, so to speak, and these with the red claw pieces underneath. As with most botanicals, this displays beautifully, and out of the two sets at this price range, this is probably my favourite. At a distance it looks the real thing, it was actually fun to build and won't break the bank. At $30 this 327 piece set isn't a terrible deal, but together with the Chrysanthemum are the worst priced sets of the botanical range considering their price per piece ratios. It's probably easier to dilute the cost of production when the sets are bigger. With that said, I find the LEGO Plum Blossom to be an awesome product that is perfect for gift giving due to size, display potential and relative affordability. I've personally bought a few of these to give this Christmas season, but please don't tell my mom. The LEGO Chrysanthemum is another product of the botanical theme that does in fact pair really well with the Plum Blossom, due to how similar their display vases and stands are. The brown portion is a straight up copy which I honestly don't have a problem with, though the vase is slightly different and a superior build as far as the building techniques go. Parts of the whole thing are done upside down, studs not on top techniques being used in the core, and the seamless shapes up here at the neck of the vase are really outstanding. Like the Plum Blossom, the Chrysanthemum also has three different stages of the flowers, the small buds with an upside down LEGO minifigure cupcake piece, a mid flowering stage one, and then the full bloom, which upon a closer look was brilliantly done using LEGO banana pieces. Gotta praise LEGO for their out of context element uses, right? The bananas themselves, or petals in this case, are included in three different shades, for an almost seamless gradient you'd often find in the real life counterpart. Which, like most LEGO botanicals, does make you wonder if these are real plants or not from a distance, so the display value is unmatched. These stems feel less authentic than the ones from the Plum Blossom for instance, but I'm honestly not too bothered about it. The price however is still $30 like the other set, but has 50 less pieces, which isn't great. It does have bigger sized elements which could help understand it a little, though this is not the kind of price per piece ratio we've been used to seeing in these products. With that out of the way, I still think the LEGO Chrysanthemum is a nice product overall. I don't think it is as strong of a standalone model as the Plum Blossom, but does shine when put next to it for that collectability vibe they both have, and since they're both relatively affordable, if you're a fan of these types of products, chances are you'll eventually get them both. You can do so using the links below to support the channel, and as it turns out, a lot of the LEGO botanicals are on discount on Amazon US at the moment. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all on the next one.