Over the last year or so Mega Construx has made a big push into the South African market with one of its biggest licenses being Pokémon. Thankfully for fans there’s a cheap way to get a taste of these products in the form of the Pokémon Power Packs.
These packs come in various flavours – more on that later – but the one Mega Construx parent company Mattel has sent us is that of Sirfetch’d. For those only familiar with the early generations of Pokémon, Sirfetch’d is an evolution of the first generation Farfetch’d that was introduced in Sword and Shield back in 2019.
This Power Pack comes with 84 pieces and, in South Africa, sells for R209.90.
The big boy in the construction toy market is LEGO where the general price per piece is around 10 US cents, or around R1.64. Even if we’re generous and assign a value of R2 per piece, this Power Pack still seems rather pricey, so is it worth a purchase?
The packaging, quality of the plastic and overall experience with the build process is right on par with LEGO. The instructions are easy to follow and there’s even a little surprise in the box in the form of a “pin” of an Ultra Ball. It doesn’t have an actual metal needle to work as a real pin but a small plastic peg so you can only attach this to something with an existing hole.
The finished build is… a bit weird. The Sirfetch’d has some concessions to facilitate the brick building system, such as large gaps in the head which looks odd. These are hidden from the front view – see below – so there are some angles which are more camera friendly than others.
The small platform here is so basic and has no real play functionality other than a spinning orange blade. The instructions give you no impetus to use this aside from spinning the Pokémon around and the base is so barren it feels like an afterthought.
We would have liked a better base that either looked better for display purposes or had more play functionality for the kids.
That being said we’re still quite happy with the overall package here. Sirfetch’d is the star of the show and it’s relatively well realised making it a decent action figure for the younger audience and a fun desk toy for adults.
We’re still not sure about that price but to make up for it there are no stickers in the box with all the decorations here done with more expensive prints, which we always like to see.
As one of the cheapest ways to try out Mega Construx Pokémon in South Africa it’s decent but you may be better served hunting out sales on some of the larger sets.
More Mega Construx
As mentioned at the top the Pokémon Power Pack is available in several other variants but, in South Africa, it seems only two options are available: the Sirfetch’d we reviewed and another featuring Ivysaur (pictured above) with the pair sold in the same lot and distributed randomly from Toy Kingdom.
The random nature of any purchase is annoying and we’re not sure why our local market is missing several options with overseas stores listing Pontya, Kadabra, Galarian Ponyta and more.
The Mega Construx range is growing in South Africa so hopefully more options become available as time goes on.
For more Mega Construx available locally see our reviews on two much larger sets in the form of the Tesla Cybertruck and the He-Man Havoc Staff.
