It may be pricey, but LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover is the most aesthetically-pleasing entry from an already impressive year for LEGO Space.
Across multiple themes in 2024 LEGO Space has made a significant statement in design and story, offering an excellent revival of the subtheme across several sets and in various creative ways.
We’ve already spoken at depth about the multiple offerings in LEGO City, as well as taken a look at how the subject has been just as excellently tackled in Technic and Minifigures. And the same can very clearly be said of Friends, starting with 42602 Space Research Rover but also no doubt continuing with 42605 Mars Space Base and Rocket.
Although one of the pricier LEGO Space sets of 2024, LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover clearly stands out for its unique style and design that offers not only a special twist for LEGO Friends fans, but also its own entry into LEGO Space this year.
Release: April 1, 2024 Price: £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 Pieces: 514 Mini-dolls: 5 LEGO:
Bang for your buck
Before we head into everything that does work for LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover, it is important to acknowledge that of all the LEGO Space sets this does not offer the very best value for money. A glance across at most of the LEGO City offerings, or even LEGO Technic’s 42178 Surface Space Loader, which offers a smaller piece count but a bigger and just-as-impressive final model at two-thirds of the price is all you need to confirm that.
Yet 42602 Space Research Rover remains something special. It does enough of what it needs to do so well that even at a higher price, it can not only pull in LEGO Space fans beyond those ordinarily interested in Friends and mini-dolls, but actually deliver a set worth your investment in time and money.
Why is 42602 Space Research Rover so good, even at a relatively higher price? From both story and design you can clearly see how under the Friends moniker, the LEGO Group has taken the opportunity to take the cross-theme LEGO Space story into a new and very interesting direction.
Whilst some of the aesthetics and design points are shared with what we’ve built in LEGO City, and others are mirrored in what LEGO Technic has produced, there are a lot of characteristics unique to this vehicle and unique to LEGO Friends. That starts most obviously with the vibrant trans-purple canopy across the cockpit of this rover and the research lab that makes up the back end, and continues with its generally cleaner, more rounded appearance and structure.
Smooth operator
It is thanks to such an approach that against any of the LEGO City sets, LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover stands out as a smoother, sleeker model. It offers the same clever balance in play between travel, exploration and on-the-go interplanetary living as what we’ve built elsewhere this year, but in a way is just that little bit cooler and certainly more interesting.
Beyond the rounded edges of bodywork and those large, smoothed-out wheels, the steering mechanism of the rover is a good example of this, thanks to a design that is completely unnecessary but wholly unique. The body of the rover is locked together in one rigid piece (with the back end detachable with Technic pins and replaceable with any of the pods otherwise seen in LEGO City and Technic) to make up the top half of the model, whilst the wheelbase is able to steer rear-wheel and completely independently of it.
Turn the vehicle left or right and it’ll go that way, but with the effect of the back side wiggling the other way. As we say, completely unnecessary but wholly unique. And a lot of fun.
The blue planet
LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover delivers something just as interesting and involved in its interior too, and more so than can be said for anything in LEGO City or Technic. The cockpit and lab are detailed and fully fleshed out to contribute to the story of the two included astronauts and their adventures across this unknown world. The one-mini-doll cockpit is spacious and nicely features two stickered screens, while the lab includes not only a neat area for the space dog (complete in space dog suit) but also a transformational aspect realised through two switchable consoles, which in their upright position paint the room as a research lab and when turned down serve as sleeping bags for living quarters for the two astronauts.
The consideration for story also goes as far as to place 42602 Space Research Rover – with its slightly different aesthetic and colourings and with its mini-dolls – on to what is perhaps a different planet within the LEGO Space universe, or at least a very different part of the same planet. Every other set has exclusively focused on a red planet being explored and ventured across, but the landscape built within 42602 Space Research Rover is exclusively blue to the ground itself – is that water? Are those blue aliens in the plantlife related to the green ones in the other sets?
Just as unnecessary as all the other design elements that are different in the other LEGO Friends Space set, 42605 Mars Space Base and Rocket, it’s these details that really make 42602 Space Research Rover stand out as this unique entry into the wider LEGO Space story for 2024, and it’s entirely excellent as a result.
Which makes the fact that LEGO Friends 42602 Space Research Rover is scheduled to retire inside the same year it released all the more baffling. Go pick this up before it’s gone for good. Even if mini-dolls aren’t your thing you can switch them out for minifigures, and you won’t regret everything that this set brings to the wider story-telling and play that LEGO Space has offered this year.
This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
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Our honest opinion: Well-crafted and completely unique, this is a short-lived future classic that in its detail and design is able to justify the slightly higher price.
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