nanoblock Saint Basil's Cathedral Review

Photo & Review By: Wendy Lim
Text By: Christopher Tan

Difficulty : Level 3
Time to Complete: 60 minutes
No of Blocks : 491+
Item code: NBH-051

Front of the box

The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat or Pokrovsky Cathedral are official names for a Russian Orthodox church in Red Square in Moscow. The church is also called the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, anglicized as Saint Basil's Cathedral. It was built from 1555–61 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. More info on Wikipedia.

This nanoblock miniature of this popular landmark comes in a fairly small box. In the box, you will find an instruction sheet and around 490+ pieces of bricks as shown below. A nice improvement in this new nanoblock set (compared to most of the older sets) is that the instruction sheet now lists the bricks used in each step. This makes it easier to understand and less likely to use the wrong brick during construction.

All the bricks in the set

Building this set is fairly easy. The only thing that needs some care and attention is in step 19. Take note of the position and direction when placing the roof. 

The extra bricks included with this set

Here are more photos of the completed nanoblock Saint Basil's Cathedral. I like this nanoblock set because it is very colourful and this is a popular tourist attraction in Russia.

Top view

Note: This nanoblock set is available in Plamoya and Amazon.

nanoblock Manta Ray Review

Difficulty: Level 2

Time to Complete: 20 minutes

No of Blocks: 150+

Item Code: NBC-083

Manta rays are large eagle rays belonging to the genus Manta. The larger species reaches 7 m (23 ft) in width. They have triangular pectoral fins, horn-shaped cephalic fins and large, forward-facing mouths. Mantas can be found in temperate, subtropical and tropical waters.  More information can be found in Wikipedia.

The nanoblock Manta Ray is a small set consisting of 150+ pieces of bricks and a piece of instruction sheet as shown below.

What I found interesting about this set is the number of 1x4 rounded edge bricks in white and black. You can see them in the photos below. There are a few pieces of black 1x3 rounded edge bricks too. If you are looking for these bricks for your own custom projects, this would be a good set to grab.

This nanoblock set is quite straight forward to build. There is nothing really tricky here. Below are photos of the build process.

The extra bricks included with this set

The completed Manta Ray is mounted on a stand made of clear bricks. Personally, I wish they had designed a smaller stand so that it does not stand out as much. The design of the Manta Ray itself is nice. Use of rounded-edge bricks in the design allows the wing-like fins to curve. 

You can find this item in Plamoya and Amazon.

nanoblock Disneyland Castle Review

Photo & Review By: Mike Wong
Text By: Christopher Tan

Time to Complete: 30 minutes
Item Code : Not Available

Front of the box

Back of the box 

The nanoblock Disneyland Castle is a Tokyo Disney Resort exclusive and generally available to the rest of the world only through third party resellers who gets them at retail from Tokyo Disney Resort, so the price tends to be somewhat higher than other regular nanoblock sets of similar size.

In the box, you will find an instruction sheet and estimated around 400+ pieces of bricks as shown below. There are a lot of the smaller bricks like 1x1, 1x2 and 2x2 bricks in this set. 

Building this set was fairly easy and it only took me around 30 minutes to complete it. What I love about this set is the colour combinations. Here are some photos of the build process.

The extra bricks included with this set

The completed Disneyland Castle is about 3 inches tall. Here are some photos of the finished built.

Note: You can find this in Amazon over here.