Shark and Friends

I set out in search of #60011 Surfer Rescue, but picked up with a few more smaller sets on top of that.  The main draw of Surfer Rescue is the shark, which I love.  I ended up with #79106 Cavalry Builder for the horse and #41017 Squirrel's Tree House, which I had been trying to give as a Christmas gift last year, but could not find.  Since it was on sale, I picked it up.  Buying this for $3.48 entitled me to a $4.99 Friends set  (#30106) for free, which seemed odd, but OH WELL MORE BRICKS.

He may not be the most fearsome of all my fish, but I quite like him

Enjoying a popsicle with Friend Emma

I chose #79106 Cavalry Builder despite my disdain for the whole Lone Ranger disaster for the new style white horse and the 3 distinct faces on the minifigures.  It's a good price for 4 sets of minifig parts and the horse, plus a cannon and a white cowboy hat might see some use. 

This picture is so awful.  Literally, I bought more lamps after this, in order to prevent this level of impossible blur from happening again.

The newest horses have a wider range of poses, more details, and more realistic shapes

Like the 2012 bears, these horses can rear up

White horses: Old VS New

One major difference between old and new is the nose of the horses

Others have written at length about the Friends line, so I won't get into it here. This is the first set I've ever owned, so I will say that the scale isn't as off as it seemed like it would be.  The legs-torso  and the torso-head connections are non-standard, but the Friends' hair is interchangeable with any other head gear.  It's rubbery rather than hard plastic.