Bob De Quatre

review REVIEW: 21034 London

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Introduction

Hi fellow EB members! After the release of #21028 New York, #21027 Berlin and #21026 Venice, the Lego Architecture skylines series will expand in January with three new set: #21032 Sydney, #21033 Chicago and #21034 London. I was given the chance to review the later, so let's take a tour in London!

Thanks to EB LUG Ambassador CopMike and the LEGO CEE Team and Designers for giving me the opportunity to review this set!

 

Set information

Name: 21034 London
Theme: LEGO Model Making / Architecture
Year: 2017 (Available now only at the Leicester's Square London Lego Store)
Pieces: 468
Price: USD NA, GBP NA, EURO NA
Resources: Brickset, BrickLink

 

Packaging

The box comes in the usual LEGO Architecture 's black livery. The front shows the full set, proudly standing on blueprints against the black background. On the upper left corner is a rather big LEGO Architecture logo and just under is the name of set and its location in the world... Nothing fancy here, just the good old Architecture box!

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The back of the box has a front shot of the set with pictures of each of the real buildings and a short comment on London in a few languages. Size of the set is also indicated: 285mm wide and 150mm tall.

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Content of the box

The box contains the instructions booklet, 4 unnumbered bags but no brick separator. There are also 4 lose white 24L rigid hoses.

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Instructions booklet

The 119 pages instructions booklet is, as always with Architecture sets, very well done and good looking with the classic black background. Of course about the monuments you're about to build.

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The instructions are easy to follow and thanks to the black background, it's very unlikely that you'll mistake a color for another.

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Build

I'll skip lots of steps to reach the point where the base is completely done. You can clearly see that the buildings aren't all aligned, but the London Eye (and the National Gallery) will be positioned behind the others monuments. Lego choose the trans-clear color for the river Thames, which may or may not be very accurate! Now let's add some buildings on it! (Note that I'll review each monuments  in an order that is not the building order)

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Let's start building with the Tower Bridge, the biggest and most complex build in this set. It is nicely created, with a good amount of details. One thing that bothers me is that it seems distorted, taller than it should... If the use of tan color is discutable, the medium blue is spot on!

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The London Eye is next! The build is really well thought, using flex tubes for the wheel and new white wishbones for the center structure. I'm not fond of the two gray technic pins used to join the flex tubes, but I can't think of a better part to use, except if we had white technic pins! The base of the wheel could have used a few less white parts to be more accurate.

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The National Gallery and Nelson"s column may be the tiniest builds of the set, together they make a really nice Trafalgar Square

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The last building in this set is Big Ben, along with a part of the Palace of Westminster. First let's just talk about the look of the monument. It's pretty nicely designed, the textures are nice (ok, I turned Big Ben sideway, my bad) and proportions look good. A nice detail is the printed 2x2 brick with a printed clock pattern, too bad it's only printed on one side.

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Now let's see why I'm disappointed in this building... It may be the 5th or 6th rendition of Big Ben in Lego form, so I'm assuming Lego designer know pretty well the structure of the Palace of Westminster! When looking at the back of the box, we clearly see that the Lego build is almost exactly what we see in the picture of the real building:

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Now take a look at Westminster's plan and try to find what part of the Palace is represented by the Lego build... Big Ben is the "clock tower" on the far right, and the tower present in the build is the one over the "library", at the bottom right of the plan... To resume, the small build  should be the #10253 Big Ben Creator set scaled down, so there's a big proportions problem!

 

Going back to the review with the completed set. I must say it looks nice, despite being a bit too crowded on the left side, with the Eye keeping falling on the National Gallery! The boat on the Thames is a simple but nice detail!

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As always there is some spare parts.

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Interesting parts

The set comes with a handful of 1x2 trans-clear tiles and 1x2 tan log bricks. There are also some of the new 1x1 quarter round tiles in light bluish gray and two white trophy statuettes. Exclusive parts include the printed London 1x8 black tile and the clock 2x2 tan brick, but also two white Technic wishbone suspension arm, the four 24L hose in white, the four medium blue 32580 hose 7M, and the new 23443 Bar Holder with Handle in medium blue.

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Conclusion

Design: 7/10 - Nice, but some innacuracies that bother me... I hope it's only me!

Parts: 8/10 - There are some great parts in this set, and a nice variety for an Architecture set.

Build: 7/10 - Nice builds but with no advanced techniques.

Price: --/10 - The retail prices aren't published as I write this review. I'll update that score when they are.

Overall: 22/30 (73%) - A nice LEGO Architecture set, continuing an interesting sub-theme. Some minor flaws that won't decourage the Architecture's fans to get this set!

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I haven't bought any of the Architecture sets yet, but this one is fantastic and makes me want to collect them all! Quick question is it hard to get the spacings Of the "carriages" right? Looks like the eye could be fiddly?

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Just now, AusMinifig said:

I haven't bought any of the Architecture sets yet, but this one is fantastic and makes me want to collect them all! Quick question is it hard to get the spacings Of the "carriages" right? Looks like the eye could be fiddly?

 

There is a 1:1 scale drawing of the hoses and the "carriages", so pretty easy to get the spacing right :wink:

The eye is attached with a technic pin, so it may rotate on one side or the other. When it rotate toward the Tower Bridge that's no big deal, but when it rotate toward the National Gallery, it looks bad!

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Thanks for the review Bob! I won't buy the set, but it's always nice to see a good review of something.

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Thank you Bob. I love this Architecture set very much, as it filled with all of the iconic London attractions which I have visited and pretty fond of. I look forward to get this set, somewhere somehow and this will make an amazing piece of display in my collection. Appreciate for your timely reviewing input for this awesome set. 

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Great review for a great set. I think this could be my new favorite skyline set :)

 

It's been a few years since my last London visit, but isn't there a single red pod on the London Eye?

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Great review Bob!

I like the set, it seems it has great parts but probalbly won't buy it.

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After some amazing depictions of classic, historical US buildings, I had high hopes for a London Skyline.

But no, it's rubbish.  Just like the Buck Palace set - only worse.

Come on!  London is way closer to Denmark than America - why do you depict some of the most iconic buildings in the world so badly?  Why does Lego hate London in minature form?

Sorry.  This set is terrible

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Thanks for a wonderful review! The individual monuments/buildings look fine standing alone, but are too crowded on the plates supplied. I would add a couple  more plates and spread out the monuments so that they were each visible and not lumped together. This should be easy to do, and allows you to focus on one element at a time rather than trying to separate one view into several monuments. I like the spread out look of the other city sets in this theme. This ones gives me a bit of claustrophobia like it is about to explode or something due to the lack of space and crowding as designed. 

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Just got to say it with huge excitement: "I finally get to own this, including the snowglobe and it just arrived today" :wub: 

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I really like this review, who knows it might be my first architecture set?.....if it comes out at a fair price (£50 would be nice!)

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Don't know where else to put it, but has somebody modded the eye to actually spin? I mean, we do have the spinning center so it shouldn't be too hard to mount the the wheel on that rather than the base. 

If I find an elegant way, I will post it here ;)

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