1 Review: 30029 Pudsey Bear

Hello, and welcome to this review of 30029 Pudsey Bear. First, a bit of background:
Pudsey was a Creator set released in late October/early November 2011 by LEGO, to support BBC's Children In Need, and was only ever available in England. To coincide with Children In Need this year, it has been re-released.
It consists a model of the Children In Need mascot, Pudsey Bear (as you might guess from the name...), and originally cost £4.00.
Today, in honor of Children In Need, I'm presenting a full pictorial review of this scarce little set.

The set comes in a bright little polybag, pictured below (Yes, the top is snipped off. Sorry about that)

As you can see, the package is quite vibrant, and has fairly unobtrusive (well, if you ignore the massive swaths of polka-dots) Children In Need branding. I approve. It's worth noting that the polybag is made of a much softer plastic than LEGO usually uses, closer to the texture of a ziploc bag than the usual crinkly ploybag plastic.

The instructions are an impressive feat. Folding out from this unobtrusive little rectangle...

To this massive, double-sided sheet (sorry about the awkwardness of the photo, but it really is too large to fit in my studio!)
The blue background provides nice contrast for the yellow parts, and the overall effect is quite bright and cheerful.

Here we have the parts, out of the bag. That's a whole lot of yellow...
And while we're on the subject of parts, what interesting ones does Pudsey have to offer us?  Well, if you want yellow bricks, this is certainly the place to go. As they aren't all that common, just about every piece here is at least moderately interesting.
However, what really steals the show is the exclusive (!!) bandage part. 

While unique to this set, it certainly has limited use outside of Children In Need related MOCs. Still, it looks great, and, as you'll see later, fulfills its purpose admirably.

Now then, let's move on to the build, shall we?

The very first step of the instructions. Really starting out challenging, this one is. :P

Here we've gotten fully underway on construction of the lower torso.

Those legs are a bit stubby- I can't imagine any real bear moving around on those. Still, Pudsey isn't supposed to look exactly like your average bear...

There we go. The lower torso is just about complete.

Pudsey's arms don't seem to fair any better than his legs. Oh well.
Once we attach the arms, we can move on to building the head.

As you can see, the head will be three studs deep once finished, a fairly unusual size in many models.

Here we've given Pudsey eyes. He looks a bit zombie-like without pupils, I must say.

Ah, much better.

Now, with an interesting technique, we attach the ears by means of a clip, and use the slanted front of the head to disguise it.

And here are the ears themselves.

As you can see, they fit admirably. And now the head is almost complete....

We've just got to add on a clip at the top, and ta-da! We can now attach it to the body. As you can see, the three-stud deep head gives Pudsey a slightly hunchbacked look, but it's  better than the flatness a two-stud deep one would dictate.
Only one last part to go...

And finally Pudsey is complete. The first thing that strikes me about the full model is that it really is increduibly cute. It's really not an accurate representation of the original Pudsey, but, thanks mostly to the bandage, he certainly gets the job done.
The model is designed pretty well, and looks nice, even if the resemblance to Pudsey is minimal.
I've had this since last December, and have kept it assembled on a shelf all that time (except for this review), so I can vouch for the fact he makes a great decoration.
Even if, unlike me, the model just doesn't do it for you, it makes a lovely parts pack; yellow bricks aren't that common, after all.
Overall, I'd definitely recommend this one, and, as it is currently available on LEGO.com once again, all the money you spend goes to charity....