Went into Watford on Friday to pick up some christmas presents + other crap (spray-stratch!). Before getting the other stuff we decided to go and look around the LEGO store first, as it was the closest thing. It's basically just 2 long walls of Lego products which is staffed by 16 year olds. I RESISTED buying anything, because I am strong.
Went around the rest of the shops and bought the other stuff we needed and, on the way back to the car-park, just happened to go by the LEGO shop 10 minutes or so before it was closing, where I had second look. Just a look.
Anyway I've built my new purchases. The
Winter Cottage and the
Pet Shop!. I've wanted one of those modular buildings for quite a while now.
I built the snowy cottage on Friday night/Saturday morning. It's a really attractive little Scando style house -- a really nice scene overall. Lots of pretty blue bricks to add to the collection
The house has a nicely designed chimney that puts the 'brickwork-effect' brick to good use as a feature-brick to make the chimney seem like a nice stone/brick thing. The IKEA style kitchen has a really cool checkerboard floor that I spent more time than necessary on to ensure that it was all the 1x1 smooth bricks were properly aligned to stop each one from being rotated slightly and giving an overall non-uniform appearance. I doubt anyone can tell
It's a pity the roof doesn't pivot open and the top floor detach, though the roof detaches easy enough. I really wanted the top floor to pop off, even before making the modular buildings, as its presence makes the kitchen quite gloomy. (I can see how to modify it quite easily. Maybe even make it so that the entire 'roof' pops off at once?). There's a nice fire in the living room that has an light-brick inside it. You can light up the whole house with it when the light from the brick cascades through the yellow and orange transparent bricks and gives grandapa, the chandelier and the geometric rug a nice 'fireside glow'
Still, the set has a major draw back: THE FRONT DOOR DOESN'T FUCKING OPEN WHEN THE ROOF IS ON?! I don't think it's too hard to work around -- just notch out the roof (though that'll prevent using the spaceship piece to get the sloping edge that touches the other roof), but I can't be arsed doing it. Also it's a 12+ set so it includes some zany faces, and is probably the reason for the non-house bits.
Did the modular house today (was at a work's Xmas party thing on Saturady night. TAKING UP PRECIOUS BUILDING TIME). Before starting the set I was really excited to do it and thought the pet shop was the most interesting bit with the red town house appearing dull. HOW WRONG I WAS. The red house is WAY better, if empty.
The majorly exciting thing about the left house is the technique used on the bay window thingies. You can download the manual and look if you want, but it uses two headlamp pieces to invert the LEGO bricks and then clips in two upside down white dome pieces onto this to create the lower dome under the window. The height of the sideways-upside down headlamp is 3/2 of a brick or something and can be topped off by a stud to bring it back into normal height. The window arc itself that the window-bricks sit on is created by 4 alternating hinge pieces that fit so incredibly snugly around two upside-down tow-bar pieces (that themselves get inverted back into normal stud orientation via some lightsabres to create a table for a vase) that it makes me wonder if they thought of that all the way back in the 80s or whenever those pieces first came around. MEGA COOL.
Both baywindows are exciting things to make, but the bottom one is best due to the studs-not-on-top (SNOT!) stuff. I've not experimented much with SNOT in my own LEGO creations, usually only using the L shaped adapters to create some sideways smooth bits, but this set definitely shows some of the basic techniques. There's also some nice techniques to learn from the set for building your own railings rather than relying on the jail-bar pieces.
Anyway, the left house also has some nice dark red slops to add to the collection along with some nice orange smooth plates to act as feature bricks on the outside. Along with a million flowers it makes the house look very housey. Also some nice opening french doors on the top floor. The lower floors have a sexy looking spiral staircase, a cute little toilet and a phone + sofa. The front door has a cool SNOT thing to use minifig skis to create a porch ornament! Very cool
There's also a fully featured basement with doors, but you can't see into it. It'd be very easy to make the ground floor lift off of the basement as the other floors do from each other. I'm surprised they didn't do this -- NEGATIVE POINTS FOR THIS. The upper floors feel really empty, but this is 'explained' away by the guy painting using the paint-roller and the cardboard boxes. "They've obviously just moved in!" etc, but it feels like an excuse. Couldn't LEGO corp provide another few minifigs or like, 20 more pieces to fill out the space? Also negative points for the absurdly tall hat rack.
Even with those negative points the town house is the best, as there's lots of interesting things to learn when building it. Also, it's 16+, so no zany grins, just good old yellow ':)' all the way, and you even get some of those new fangled child-legs they use to make Children, Gimli and Hobbits.
On the otherside, the blue Pet Shop is a bit of a disappointment. I was initially excited because, y'know, it's GOT A CAT! Unfortunately, apart from the sign (that I think is OK/a bit shit), there's not much interesting in it. It's very sparse in the shop with what feels like lots of wasted floor space, though I do like the design of the animal pens. The apartment has a nice red kitchen and a fireplace, but it also feels empty. Outside it looks nice: It's got a sign, some nice slate-style sloping thingies and some attractive upper windows. But there's no feature bricks or anything to break up the front wall, apart from a bunch of divets on the front windows so the entire building feels like a big block of blue, with the residents of the apartment having the misfortune of having half a blue wall and half a black wall near the top
The 'PETS' sign is the most interesting part building wise, though it looks quite ugly close up. It's an interesting design as it's full of 1x1 bricks all stacked aside each other or stacked sideways etc, but all those 1x1s are prone to twisting and warping and not having exact alignment, so it looks a bit crap. (You can even see this on the box).
It's a really cool building and makes we want MORE MODULARS (and also makes me wish I'd bought the Cafe/Greengrocer in 2008, as they're on ebay for £500 or so). But I feel like there should have been a bit more stuff in there to make it better value. Even just like 10 more bricks for some more furniture. The same goes for the big Harrod's style shop. I was thinking of getting that, but it looked even emptier
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