The Lego City Harbor Set 4645 comes on the heels of 2009’s popular City Harbor set (7994) which now sells for a small fortune on secondary markets.The previous harbor set was larger but a little impersonal and this latest release manages to capture the essence of the Lego City theme very well and a whole heap of playability is squeezed into the set’s 551 pieces.

Lego city harbors are fun. Not only do you get a beautiful ship and a truck but you also have the interactivity of a crane and a conveyor belt to transport goods from the dock to the ship, to the truck and back again.

This latest Lego City Harbor has a farm emphasis, and fits in well with the rest of the Lego Farm theme sets.

Kids can “grow” their own Lego crops and then transport them to the docks via the truck and then ship it overseas.

The whole theme has a beautiful feel about it –  kids naturally want to know more about food, where it comes from and how it gets to their plate.

Sets like this within the City theme let kids explore such integral facets of their everyday life and much as I love the Firefighter and Police sets I feel the Farm theme and it’s related sets are a wonderful balance to those “more exciting” themes.

There is nothing more essential to our lives than food creation and distribution and even though it might not seem all that exciting it can really get a child’s imagination growing.

Lego City Harbor: A Closer Look

At first glance the box is beautiful, fitting in well with other City themed sets with background coloring in light blue and featuring an idyllic scene of a day at the Lego City wharves, complete with a bright yellow crane loading grain onto a green cargo ship and a red truck being filled with grain from a conveyer belt.

Of course no harbor scene would be complete without a few fish and a fisherman trying his luck at the end of a pier.

The box is larger than other sets of the same piece count, presumably  to hold the ship’s hull which comes in one large piece.

Having ships with large one or two-piece hulls is a tradition in Lego City sets.

As a child I vividly remember playing with a Lego ship in the bath. Bath time is so much more of an adventure with Lego boats and is worth keeping in mind in the case of sets like this, which can broaden the play opportunities for Lego collections.

The ship floats and can be played with on a floor or in a bath or outdoor water area, which means kids can enlarge the scope of their play dramatically.

The pier/wharf/dock is fairly simple and is at the same level as the ship. Unlike the previous Lego City Harbor set which had a raised wharf, Lego have opted for more simple baseplate pieces which simply sit flat on the floor.

Given the boat also sits flat on the floor they are at the same height which would make for a flooded wharf – a strange decision but I guess that is what imagination is for :0)

The interactive elements are wonderful:

• The ship floats
• The Truck’s bed raises like a dump truck
• The conveyor belt can be operated by a knob on the side to load the truck
• The crane can be raised and lowered as well as moved left to right to load either the truck or the ship.