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Hope you will all forgive another Town Plan review, given that there is one here, but I wanted to review the set in comparison to Café Green Street – feel free to skip down to the end if you don’t want to sit through the review…
Name:Town Plan
Number:10184
Pieces:1981
Price:£90 (extra penny at Brighton Lego Store)
Year:2008
Brickset
I’ve been taking pictures of the various Lego sets stashed around my house (Brickset)
and came upon a bunch of MISBs that I’ve had hanging around over the last few months
The town plan has been under my bed for months, mainly to annoy my wife who is getting increasingly frustrated that I would buy it and not build it! She has now tempted me by promising to buy me Lego if I do build it (this cool way of getting new Lego may not work on your wife / husband / girlfriend etc, and it may nor work again for me, but I may try ).
So, on to the review, here’s the front of the box:
And the back
The document up the top right isn’t actually a certificate like the one in the UCS MF, its just a page in the instruction booklet – very nice to have none the less.
Here’s all the pieces in their baggies - the box was not a stuffed full as the Taj Mahal, but still plenty of lovely pieces.
Closing in on the baggie, you can see that they are all numbered - this made the build quite quick (relatively speaking), but I prefer the unnumbered bag approach for really big sets – feels more of a challenge, and there’s more of a “where will that end up” factor.
The DSS was perhaps unfortunately inevitable, but it’s still a real shame that Lego couldn’t have stretched to more printing (there are some printed tiles) for the anniversary set. I will not stick stickers on Lego, so they get to go in my unused sticker stash.
Moving on to the instruction leaflets (x2) we have the part list, spread across 4 pages. The variety of parts is fantastic, as are the colours.
The instructions themselves are nice and clear, with colour distinction being pretty good
As I said above, the letter from Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen is in here too (in multiple languages):
Some nice minifigs in this set, especially the bride and groom – my wife vetoed my idea for sticking these on our wedding cake back in June. Pity.
I started with the garage first – all its 2x2 bricks have the slit in their side that takes the roller door construction, despite not all of them being needed for this purpose – result=lots of these bricks to use elsewhere that we wouldn’t otherwise have, which =nice.
The main feature of the garage is the lovely lovely curving window, which is just demaning to be made into an Edwward Hopper bar scene like this – anyone spotted this in MOC form?
Hope you can see the cooler in the middle of the floor, complete with croissant, banana and apple, mmmm.
The carwash is fun, and the bristles feel surprisingly nice if you roll them on your skin, but I digress…
Here’s the finished article:
There are some great details like this gas cylinder contraption
And some more questionable ones, like this tree, with its glowing alien branch core…
The garage is hinged which allows it to work on different corners on your streets
it also gives a different shape to the interior, either you can have three rooms (car port, office and car wash, see the pic above), or just an office and an integrated vehicle bay and carwash:
The second set of baggies include the all important gold bricks (and some silver dishes too). They aren’t chrome gold or silver (think of the chrome in Roaring Roadsters or the gold crown in the smaller recent Castle chess set), but have a duller appearance – I assume this is much cheaper given what I’ve read on these boards before.
Anyway, the bricks form part of the fountain
Which is very nice, especially the 8x8 trans light blue (I think that’s the colour) plate at its base. The discs are part of the petrol (or gas if you are so inclined) pumps
The two vehicles are very nice, and have a suitable retro feel to them, first the car
And secondly the petrol (gas) truck:
Have a close look at the truck – there are no less than 4 old style doors on there – if Lego can do it here and make it work, why oh why can’t they do it on the otherwise fantastic vehicles they’ve brought out in the last two years (yes Mr. recycle truck and Ms. concrete mixer, I’m talking about you).
The truck also has a neat hose at the back, which I think is worth a quick look
Don’t spend too long gazing at it though, because we are on to the cinema!
I love the tiley goodness on the floor – as others have said, does this make it part of Café Green Street? Well you’ll get my opinion in a bit.
The Cinema has two rooms, an open plan foyer and a screen room through a door – the popcorn looks tasty!
Here’s one of those printed tiles, although how a poor minifig can get up there to change the movie is anyone’s guess.
Here’s a close up of the screen room – due to my hatred of stickers, its currently showing The Polar Express – Extreme Blizzard Edition.
The advertising boards and lights are great, shame about the stickers (again). One nice touch was the use of chunky light grey bricks in the roof, which gives it that “built out of huge amounts of concrete and painted brightly feel” that is so true of many modern cinemas (which I think this is despite the art deco bits on the roof – clearly its trying hard, but this ain’t no art house picture palace, baby).
Speaking of art deco, here’s the decoration above the roof on the finished building – it is nice
Next stop, town hall, and my flash became a bit temperamental about now, so watch out for the changing light balance…
Foundations:
First floor (from the back):
Second floor….
…but there isn’t one – a little office behind the clock tower wouldn’t have hurt too much?
All done:
Extra pieces in the mandatory fruit bowl. As with my Taj Mahal review there are loads of extra pieces – I think I’m getting careless in my old age, but I can’t work out where I missed them off (especially that plate …).
And the town plan all together:
My main reason for posting this was to compare it to Café Green Street in all its glory, so here we go with Lego’s most desirable street
Across the road we have the result of some retro looking town planning, which while very nice, looks a bit pathetic compared to the rather more substantial addresses just a stone throw’s away.
Have a look from above and down the street – the two sets of buildings don’t go at all – they are on a completely different scale. How many cinemas are smaller than a café, or town houses smaller than an apartment block above a green grocer’s shop?
The garage is perhaps the exception – I expect it to be only one storey, and it does sort of work. Its by far my favourite of the three town plan buildings.
To complete the comparison, here’s the front and back of town plan
And the front and back of Café Green Street
I know which side of the road I want to live on, although it looks like some unsavoury characters have recently arrived
There is of course the small matter of price… The town plan is a little more than 1/3rd of the cost of Café Green Street when all three buildings are together, but are they 3 times better than the town plan?
YES!
Town plan scores:
Pieces 5/5 – an incredibly varied selection
Build 4/5 – fun but perhaps a little too easy, some lovely touches in the cinema and garage construction.
Playability 4.5/5 – perhaps a little harsh, but my minifigs want to go upstairs occasionally
Price 4/5 – I always think of this in conjunction with the parts, and its as good as any set for variety, but loses a little on the quantity side
Swooshability 1/5 – it gets one point as its actually fairly easy (I assume) to swoosh its individual buildings, whereas the Taj Mahal isn’t easy to swoosh at all. I haven't swooshed the town plan. Neither is the MF or the ISD, when you come to think of it…
Overall – 4.5 /5 would have been 5/5 but for the stickers and the fact that this was the anniversary set – it needed more WOW factor
Hope you like the review,
Bye
timbutnice
