Review: Mighty World Emergency Theme Sets
Posted by Lindsay

Yay, more Mighty World! 

Today I'm looking at the Hazardous Materials Unit, the River Rescue Unit, and the Fire Brigade.  These three sets are all “Emergency” themed.  Last time, the sets were "Construction" and "Town Life", and we've also looked at a single figure from the "Military" themes. 

The first Mighty World set we bought was "Adventure" theme, and we have a few more of those to get to.

Mighty World sets are characterized by a surprising amount of detail for their size, and a surprising number of accessories for their price point.  I'm probably not going to be displaying these guys, but their gizmos will come in handy.

Appearance and Construction:

Hazardous Materials Unit: 8/10
River Rescue Unit: 8/10
Fire Brigade: 8/10

As per usual, I'll mostly look at the figures for this section.  The two Haz-Mat guys' outfits are well designed, with very little paint slop, but their heads are a bit smudged from their hats.  Their full face masks actually work well, and allow you to easily play as rescuers, space aliens or scientists.

Two guys also come with the River Rescue Unit, one scuba guy and one boat pilot.  They both have very nice sculpts and decent paint jobs, although the pilot has a few chips in his paint.
The open design of his helmet is very interesting, and I like the combined mask/rebreather on the other.

One of the Fire Brigade troop is a repaint from Haz-mat, but they all have nice detailed sculpts.  I really like the hats and the color schemes, but the center guy there has a nasty paint spill on his leg.

They are all pretty study, and stand easily, even though some have uneven feet.

All these guys continue to have the ugly-bald-hole-in-the-head-if-you-take-off-the-hat problem, but I'm expecting that by now.

Packaging and Accessories:

Hazardous Materials Unit: +2
River Rescue Unit: +2
Fire Brigade: +3

The boxes are the same as the last set.  It does help to have the pictures, they show how some of the pieces go together.  I do like that these sets actually have fairly little packaging, except for the fact that the boxes themselves are much larger than they need to be.  Inside the box is a cardboard tray supporting the pieces in a few small plastic bags.

The Haz-Mat team comes with this neat vehicle.  The six wheels are on floating axles, so it can traverse difficult terrain.  The small red lights on the front are moveable, and come off.  The tank on the back is removable, and it attaches to the nozzle with a flexible plastic tube.  The arm that the nozzle is on is quite nice as well, with 5 hinge joints and two swivels, aim it anywhere you like.

They also come with 4 traffic cones, a selection of tools, a walkie-talkie and a hand-held extinguisher, which attaches to a nozzle by another tube.  All these small pieces are well made and well painted.

The big piece that the River Rescue set includes is the boat. Many of the other small pieces snap onto it, like the bar that holds up that round silver thing... not sure what that is.

Two motors snap onto the back, although one of mine came out of the box with a broken propeller.  The oars snap into the rungs on the sides.

They also have two axes, a bag, a large air tank, a cooler for storing hazardous material, a fire extinguisher, a grappling hook, a boogie board, a radio phone and a life preserver.

The life preserver is especially nice, although the small phone could use a spot of paint.

The Fire Brigade doesn't come with a focal vehicle, but they more than make up for it with a ludicrous number of small and medium sized pieces.

There's some repeated pieces here, but there's also a hand-held stop sign, a megaphone, three axes, three walkie-talkies, a fire-hydrant (that can plug into that hand nozzle via the tube), two warning barriers, an extendable ladder, and a handheld buzzsaw which turns.

Oh, and that red thing above?  It's for catching people leaping out of windows.  Cool, huh?

Play and Display:

Hazardous Materials Unit: --
River Rescue Unit: --
Fire Brigade: --

With the Haz-Mat team, the gray-suited one's hands feel like a slightly more rigid plastic, so he has trouble holding some of the accessories, but they all work with the fire-fighter.  However, the fire-fighter's left wrist joint is stuck.

Similarly, the pilot on the River Rescue squad takes a little more gentle pressure to take hold of his accessories than his pal.  Between them they can hold everything it makes sense to hold, though.

As I said in the last review, one of the most fun things about these sets isn't intrinsic to them.  Many, though not all, of the accessories work visually with a range of figures.

It took a bit of trial and error, but the Fire Brigadiers can hold their person-catcher (trampoline?), as well as everything else.  However, the wrists on the main guy are loose and again it's a matter of gentle pressure to figure out who can hold what.

Price Tag and Final Analysis:

Hazardous Materials Unit: 10/10
River Rescue Unit: 10/10
Fire Brigade: 10+/10

We got insanely good deals on these sets, and they really are pretty awesome, hence why we picked up so many.

The Hazardous Materials Unit, retail price: $15.99.  We paid $5.99
River Rescue Unit, retail price $15.99.  We paid $3.74!
Fire Brigade, retail price $24.99.  We paid $5.99!!

When you have a lucky day, FAO Schwartz is a great place to shop.

Keep scrolling for some more pictures!

Need something else to occupy your time now?  You could peruse the archive at The Blue Fairy's Workshop, where I occasionally post custom toy projects, or the current articles at The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf, where I blog about what I'm reading.
Or if you'd prefer something a bit more mobile, you could buy Erin's novel, for your Kindle or in an exciting dead tree edition!