Distinctions - LEGO Minecraft The Creeper Ambush 21177 comes equipped with everything you need for the full Minecraft experience, a spyglass and a sword provide the arsenal for an adventure, with a chicken and a sheep as companions, and finally a creeper for an antagonist. Vibrant colors evoke the landscape of Minecraft in a familiar way while also remaining cohesive.

Criticisms - The greatest weakness of the set as a whole is the heavy reliance on the square aesthetic. Base plates are not particularly sturdy for play, better suited to display applications.

Distinctions - LEGO provides typically great build creativity across the whole and precise tolerances on the individual pieces. Prints for Minecraft items and molds are no exception, with visually appealing decals and color choices that remain clear and vivid even with extended use.

Criticisms - Build structure on the LEGO Minecraft The Creeper Ambush 21177 focuses on the square, block aesthetic of Minecraft heavily, and lacks reinforcement in back to keep the diorama together unless placed on a rigid flat surface. Steve’s design, which will likely bear the most of the wear, happens to have some of the poorest aging colors and prints.

Distinctions - LEGO and Minecraft are a match made in heaven, with simple color choice on the base/landscape panels perfectly encapsulating a familiar look without stooping to reuse-limiting overtly printed textures.

Criticisms - Steve’s colors in the LEGO Minecraft The Creeper Ambush 21177, while true to the original model in actual color, are particularly flat and luster-less despite his prominence in the set and branding. The choice for the creeper to be red and yellow to indicate explosion over the iconic green pattern will require more explanation to the intended audience.

Distinctions - LEGO is, as ever, strong in reuse and recyclability. The LEGO Minecraft The Creeper Ambush 21177 does not overdo bespoke or limited use special pieces, ensuring that every piece is easily usable with the rest of LEGO’s system. Fully plastic designs are easily recyclable if desired, though freedom of LEGO assembly allows for continued use in as many contexts as can be conceptualized.

Criticisms - As always, the criticism to be had with LEGO products is their plastic base, as well as traditionally recyclable, but still disposable paper instructions and ink-heavy retail packaging. Reuse, quality and longevity of LEGO pieces offsets the plastic cost, but considering the over-sized nature of the box versus the contents, reductions are possible.

Distinctions - The LEGO Minecraft The Creeper Ambush 21177 features all of the recognizable Minecraft characters and tools collectors will look for in a display or play set. As always, hard to find a larger catalogue of products that are still legacy compatible with new sets like this one.

Criticisms - Less than stellar stability for play functions. The largest gripe with Minecraft as a line is that some of the sets, like this one, are environment centric rather than functional builds, so they function more as set pieces than actual toys in-and-of themselves, especially when compared to other lines that feature vehicles, mechs or buildings with play functions. LEGO’s major complaint with aficionados is the gradual price inflation and decrease of set sizes. While other competitors compensate for poorer tolerances and less thoughtful designs with larger size, LEGO has maintained quality at the gradual expense of physical footprint and MSRP. This particular set, with its size and piece count, had comparable peers at two-thirds of the price from LEGO within the last decade.