JMBricklayer Fantastic Idea Rainbow Unicorn (70008) Review

Hi everyone, welcome to another alternative review. Today we bring you the JMBricklayer Fantastic Idea Rainbow Unicorn (70008) set which comprises of 1,492 pieces. I’m not going to lie here, when The Brick Post boss man said do I want to review this? I jumped at the opportunity. I instantly thought my kid would love to see this one built and displayed eventually among her favourite brick builds after I had done the review!

While we are extremely thankful to JMBricklayer for sending us this set we must do this right and give an honest review and tell you what is good and what is bad with the set.

Where to buy:

Affiliate – JMBricklayer online store:
https://www.jmbricklayer.com/product/rainbow-unicorn-70008/
15% off code: JMBTBP15 (valid for all non-sale items

I’ll start with a very positive note. JMBricklayer have removed stickers it seems, yes, another brand who listens to feedback and gets rid of the stickers altogether. In the past JMBricklayer had a habit of spanning multiple pieces with their stickers and I wrote expressively in a previous review why this is bad. They listened to feedback and I salute them for this, kudos.

By now we are beginning to see instruction manuals are getting to a very high standard, printing is clear & easy to follow and well presented. This set ticks all those boxes so I won’t dwell here.

Bags are numbered and easy to follow and somewhat well sorted within, some might say this even makes the build too easy but that may be over critical. Personally I just dump them out in size order so this type of thing doesn’t bother me, each to their own and all that. Want more of a challenge? Open up all 7 bags and dig in!

The first two bags of this build are purely on the base of the model which you then set aside and don’t look at again until right near the end. Good to get the filler out of the way first but this comes with it’s own issues, let me elaborate. The base is well built up at first but then you decorate it with way too many single stud pieces and it becomes overly fragile very, very quickly. When you first build it this doesn’t become apparent right away but then you remember you have to connect a massive Unicorn to the top of it and you see right there this could become a challenge. More on this later in the review, you’ll know when we get back to this.

Then you start to build the body of the horse and honestly I couldn’t complain at the build here it’s solid for the main body and some great techniques and it builds up rather quick so you feel it come together well. One thing is it being a Unicorn it doesn’t sit well on a surface so in a way once you start you don’t stop this build until completion. This isn’t really an issue though by any means because you have used a lot of the 1,492 pcs in the first two bags on the base alone. 

It becomes apparent after a while that this Unicorn is some sort of Robot Unicorn in the way older JMBricklayer sets have been modelled around mechanical style animals. I guess a good way to explain some of the robotic looks easily. While this doesn’t bother me it could have easily got away with not having that robot look, as the techniques and look of the unicorn are actually good enough without the robot aesthetic.

Once you have built the body and the head it’s time for the back legs so setting it down is now becoming a little on the tricky side and you are fully invested into securing it to the base now. All the while in this set you have to install lights.

The lights are easy enough to install but because it is a Unicorn body the wires have nowhere to hide at all. This I feel makes it look a little messy. See on pictures in this post you can see what I mean and these are hidden as well as I can. I have build well over 25+ sets now with lights and aftermarket lights so I should have got the hang of hiding cables by now.

Don’t get me wrong the small number of lights this set has when finished really pop and look great, but in the day those trailing cables will stand out.

Finishing details are coming after the front legs and you are in the home stretch, or furlong if you want a horse joke. So you have your base which is rammed full of considerably loose decoration and a majestic unicorn also full of movable parts (which aren’t really supposed to move once in place), with decorations of it’s own. There is now a step you face in the instructions that states “this step is difficult please be patient here”! Straight away at this point I could see I would possibly going into Hulk mode in the next few minutes with this warning!

This warning was not lying it was an absolute pain in the butt to install. It was falling over constantly with the slightest movement and bits were falling off literally everywhere, almost like it was pointless building any of the base in the beginning. Parts falling from the Unicorn because they were too tight to go on the base then put the pieces on where they fell off. Unicorn falls over, repeat several times, until you come to the conclusion it’s not worth the 3 pieces missing in the middle and life must move on!

Seriously, to say that step was hard, was the biggest understatement of the century, it was just downright horrible. After 30 mins on one step, (yes, it really took that long) it finally stayed together. Success, I had won!

It looks positively badass complete, if you get to the end of course. But it is really, really fragile, don’t leave a window open as a gust of wind could easily make this break and bye bye Horsie.

*there is one other thing that JMBricklayer still put in their sets with regards to pieces and I personally would love to see them removed and that is the flexible rods. These do not sit well and they help dislodge too many pieces. They aren’t good, so I hope they reduce if not remove them totally from future sets. I left most of mine off the horse as they say cut to required length (what length?). I cut mine down a mm at a time and the pieces flung off further with each cut so that was rubbish and I threw all of them out apart from a few that didn’t cause issues. The set doesn’t need them to look good. Don’t bother with them it’s not worth the hassle they provide.

Now it’s time to rate the JMBricklayer Fantastic Idea Rainbow Unicorn (70008) set:

• Build quality 5/10
• Look of the model 10/10
• Instructions and presentation 9/10
• Prints and or stickers 8/10
• Lights 6/10
• Difficulty rating – off the chart

In conclusion this had so much potential, while it looks good it shouldn’t require being put together by some 8 armed human with the patience of a literal saint.
I give this a 6.5 out of 10. Too many hindrances in the build but if you can cope it’s an ace looking set when complete. If it was a model out of the box and not a kit it would be a 10/10 model.

Once you build it and it survives being thrown out the window and you get it to a shelf, leave it there! That is now its permanent home, or Kragle (glue) it just incase.

Where to buy:

Affiliate – JMBricklayer online store:
https://www.jmbricklayer.com/product/rainbow-unicorn-70008/
15% off code: JMBTBP15 (valid for all non-sale items

Non-affiliate – Amazon: https://amzn.to/3C9wXWn
15% discount code: JMBTBP15 (valid for one month from date of article publication)