Westeros

While I’m still a fan of comics in general, I stopped collecting years ago. But back in the day, I remember some particular moments from those days (we’re talking—gulp—25 years ago now), as a kid in middle school trading comics with friends (we’d gather on a hillside besides the athletic field and swap comics around; got to the point that a teacher volunteered to run an after-school comics club), going to Adventure Comics in Monterey (right near the Monterey Bay Aquarium!) with my brother and father to get the weekly fix. One significant name in that time, among many significant creators who I admired, was Todd McFarlane. His fame initially came from his artwork, especially on Spider-Man. Then he was a founder of Image comics, championing creator-owned mainstream comics (and, eventually, non-mainstream stuff, giving a home to, most notably, The Walking Dead).

McFarlane would go on to diversify his interests, and one of those would be McFarlane Toys. When word came out earlier this year that McFarlane’s company had received a license to produce Game of Thrones products, it was not a surprise: McFarlane Toys has often been on the cutting edge of pop culture properties; the aforementioned The Walking Dead has been a big success for them, by all accounts. Dark Horse and Funko and threeZero hold licenses for various figures… but McFarlane Toys has had real success with its construction sets, basically thematic “LEGO for adults” that helps fans recreate in miniature places and scenes from their favorite shows.

This is all a long-winded way to saying that courtesy of McFarlane Toys, we received a copy of the Iron Throne Room Construction Set, and below we’ll be discussing some of its particulars!

Like most people, we’ve played with LEGOs as children, but the Iron Throne set goes rather beyond it by cleverly combining blocks with facade-like items that can fit into the forms the blocks make. On top of that, the construction sets are then embellished with 3-inch tall painted miniatures—this set, of course, includes the late King Joffrey seated upon the Iron Throne, and a knight of the Kingsguard.

The instructions and the packaging of the bricks were all very clear, and this was a straightforward process. There isn’t that much room for creativity, as far as it goes—LEGOs may come with instructions, but everyone knows the beauty of them is you can construct just abotu anything—but it’s satisfying work seeing the room start to take shape. I’m quite impressed by how well it all fits together, and the brick/stone facade behind the throne was especially pleasing take shape.

As far as quality goes, the truth is that the box art and advertising images are a little misleading: those were clearly hand-painted with much more care than the set we received, a prototype to show just how good it could be but in reality isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with this—though it was a bit disconcerting to find our Joffrey didn’t actually have eyes! The truth is that it’s the nature of the business for things to look just a bit better than they do in actuality: not only are they photographing carefully prepared prototypes or showcase figures, they have studio lighting and photographers, professionals handling digital editing and tweaking, and so on. And given the level of quality of what you actually have—hundreds of tiny blocks that fit together perfectly, 3-inch figures that wouldn’t shame a miniature collector to have on their shelf—and combine it with the very reasonable price, I think this makes a fine gift for the fans out there. After spending a couple of hours putting it together, I like the look of ours so much that I’ve found a place to display it.

The construction set is already available in stores and on-line retailers. More sets are coming, and fans can already start augmenting their sets by purchasing blind bags with a selection of a dozen additional characters and creatures. And that’s just the first series—a week ago McFarlane Toys gave a sneak peek of on-going work preparing a second series of figures.