10243 (Paris Restaurant) or 10260 (Diner)?

[ks6349]

If your budget and playing time (I am an adult) is for one set only and their prices are the same here, which one will you pick? I have been thinking and hesitating for weeks and can't make up my mind. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by ks6349

[Agent 86]

The tried and true recommendation is to always go with the "oldest" set (i.e. the Parisian Restaurant) as it *should* (but no guarantee) be the first to retire and therefore the first to potentially escalate in price on the secondary market.

But, if you really don't care, then just pick whichever appeals to you more as a stand-alone "display" piece. A more European / traditional restaurant or an American-styled diner?

[deraven]

I definitely agree that the Parisian Restaurant is the one to get if you think, ultimately, you'll buy both.  If that one doesn't interest you as much and you're not worried about it being unavailable later, then the Diner is certainly a nice set as well.  

[ks6349]

Thx all, I decide to purchase the Paris Resturant first

[paul_delahaye]

Definately, Parisian Restaurant  - first set to include printed pieces ;-)

[paupadros]

I have the Parisian Restaurant and bought it over the Diner for the exact same reasons others have mentioned. That said, you can definitely tell that PR is an old build; there's a lot of moments where you go "they would have done this so differently now", but it's nonetheless a great display piece!

[ks6349]

On 7/11/2019 at 12:45 AM, paul_delahaye said:

Definately, Parisian Restaurant  - first set to include printed pieces ;-)

First set to include printed pieces? What does that mean?

[PickleManDan]

21 hours ago, ks6349 said:

First set to include printed pieces? What does that mean?

I want to say he means it's the first modular building to have printed pieces (besides minifigs). But thats not true because the Palace Cinema released a year earlier had printed star tiles.

[paul_delahaye]

yes, you are correct, I meant all printed pieces, NO Stickers ;-)

[Rockstaremcee]

I started off the same way.  Solid advice above suggesting going with the older set.  I purchased the Parisian Restaurant first, simply because the Brick Bank was discontinued just before I could buy my first modular.  I recently got a deal on the Diner and must say I personally enjoy it a bit more then the restaurant.  The gym and music studio on the upper floors are just more to my interests then the apartments above the restaurant.  Regardless I have enjoyed incorporating them into my city. 

[ReplicaOfLife]

20 hours ago, paul_delahaye said:

yes, you are correct, I meant all printed pieces, NO Stickers ;-)

Still wrong, as there were printed pieces in most of the previous modulars. Palace Cinema was the only modular ever to come with a dreaded sticker sheet.

Parisian Restaurant also wasn't the first to contain exclusive printed pieces, i.e. pieces that were made specifically for that set. That honour goes to Town Hall, I think, which had at least two exclusive printed pieces (the clockface and the shield - the latter still is exclusive to that set, while the clockface made a second appearance in a Winter Village set a few years later).

[ks6349]

10 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

Still wrong, as there were printed pieces in most of the previous modulars. Palace Cinema was the only modular ever to come with a dreaded sticker sheet.

Parisian Restaurant also wasn't the first to contain exclusive printed pieces, i.e. pieces that were made specifically for that set. That honour goes to Town Hall, I think, which had at least two exclusive printed pieces (the clockface and the shield - the latter still is exclusive to that set, while the clockface made a second appearance in a Winter Village set a few years later).

I love the design of Palace Cinema but I hate that stickers are important part of it. That's why I skipped it. Probably exclusive printed pieces are higher costs

[ReplicaOfLife]

6 hours ago, ks6349 said:

I love the design of Palace Cinema but I hate that stickers are important part of it. That's why I skipped it. Probably exclusive printed pieces are higher costs

Of course, including stickers is a pure cost-cutting measure. Which is absolutely ridiculous if applied to any set that retails for way over 100€. I'm very glad that Palace Cinema is the only modular with stickers, but just look at what they're doing in the other lines - 370€ for a 3600 piece Bugatti that, though labeled as Technic, pretty much is a pure display piece - and it comes with megablocking stickers??!!? Seriously? For that price you could expect each piece to be painted by hand and it would STILL be ridiculously overpriced. Same goes for the Aston Martin. And pretty much all of the big Star Wars sets. And so on...

[ks6349]

22 minutes ago, RogerSmith said:

Of course, including stickers is a pure cost-cutting measure. Which is absolutely ridiculous if applied to any set that retails for way over 100€. I'm very glad that Palace Cinema is the only modular with stickers, but just look at what they're doing in the other lines - 370€ for a 3600 piece Bugatti that, though labeled as Technic, pretty much is a pure display piece - and it comes with megablocking stickers??!!? Seriously? For that price you could expect each piece to be painted by hand and it would STILL be ridiculously overpriced. Same goes for the Aston Martin. And pretty much all of the big Star Wars sets. And so on...

Stickers are really ridiculous, not only because they are hard to keep them in good condition, but also very ugly IMO.  I started playing Lego again in 2007 with my first set which is a Lego Ferrari car bought in 2007 that I forget the model number and I remember it was plenty of stickers and I felt bad and lost interest for another 10 years until 2017. Lego saving up this little cost while at the end of day losing more. I had good impression with Palace Cinema but when I noticed that there were many stickers I skipped it quickly without any hesitation

[Aanchir]

On 7/10/2019 at 12:45 PM, paul_delahaye said:

Definately, Parisian Restaurant  - first set to include printed pieces ;-)

Not quite! Don't forget, the Town Hall had a uniquely printed shield resembling Billund's coat-of-arms, and Pet Shop had the cat and dog with what were at that time brand-new colors and printed patterns for those molds. The Pet Shop's dog and cat prints were subsequently reused in other sets, but the Town Hall's shield print has remained unique to that set.

7 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

Of course, including stickers is a pure cost-cutting measure. Which is absolutely ridiculous if applied to any set that retails for way over 100€. I'm very glad that Palace Cinema is the only modular with stickers [snip]

I don't think it's strictly about price or cost-cutting in Palace Cinema's case. I think it had more to do with wanting to be able to print details that they wouldn't be able to print directly on the parts themselves.

LEGO prints their actual bricks using pad printing, a lithographic technique. Their printing machines print in twelve stages. One stage = one coat of one color on one surface. Shades, tints, tones, and intermediate colors each need to be printed as a separate stage, hence why printed parts in the early 2000s featuring gradients or intermediate colors often had to rely on unsightly stipple effects (e.g. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0348 or https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0326c01).

As far as I know, LEGO prints their sticker sheets via laser printing, which means they have no more restrictions in the number of tints, tones, shades, or hues they can print than you would on a home computer printer. That allows for stuff like the detailed shading, gradients, and old-timey film grain effects on the Palace Cinema's movie posters and movie screen.

That's not to say there's no cost benefit, but when there is it's mostly from an inventory standpoint — LEGO has to store each printed piece in a set as a separate element, whereas a sticker sheet can apply patterns to numerous pieces while only introducing one new element. In many big, expensive sets, the reason for using a sticker sheet is if the entire budget the designers were given for new elements in that set is already being used for new molds, recolors, and even other printed parts (especially minifigure parts — a lot of people don't think about the sheer number of those when they accuse LEGO of being too "cheap" to print as many parts as they used to).

In these cases, only using printed pieces wouldn't mean turning all the stickered patterns into printed bricks, but omitting those patterns entirely. And at that point, customers who dislike stickers can get the same effect the designers would be able to achieve by buying the set (sticker sheet and all) and just choosing not to apply the stickers at all. But I don't think this was what happened in Palace Cinema's case, since its stickers only include seven different patterns — a far lower number than how many new elements appear in other modular buildings and Creator Expert sets.

[ks6349]

7 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Not quite! Don't forget, the Town Hall had a uniquely printed shield resembling Billund's coat-of-arms, and Pet Shop had the cat and dog with what were at that time brand-new colors and printed patterns for those molds. The Pet Shop's dog and cat prints were subsequently reused in other sets, but the Town Hall's shield print has remained unique to that set.

I don't think it's strictly about price or cost-cutting in Palace Cinema's case. I think it had more to do with wanting to be able to print details that they wouldn't be able to print directly on the parts themselves.

LEGO prints their actual bricks using pad printing, a lithographic technique. Their printing machines print in twelve stages. One stage = one coat of one color on one surface. Shades, tints, tones, and intermediate colors each need to be printed as a separate stage, hence why printed parts in the early 2000s featuring gradients or intermediate colors often had to rely on unsightly stipple effects (e.g. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0348 or https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0326c01).

As far as I know, LEGO prints their sticker sheets via laser printing, which means they have no more restrictions in the number of tints, tones, shades, or hues they can print than you would on a home computer printer. That allows for stuff like the detailed shading, gradients, and old-timey film grain effects on the Palace Cinema's movie posters and movie screen.

That's not to say there's no cost benefit, but when there is it's mostly from an inventory standpoint — LEGO has to store each printed piece in a set as a separate element, whereas a sticker sheet can apply patterns to numerous pieces while only introducing one new element. In many big, expensive sets, the reason for using a sticker sheet is if the entire budget the designers were given for new elements in that set is already being used for new molds, recolors, and even other printed parts (especially minifigure parts — a lot of people don't think about the sheer number of those when they accuse LEGO of being too "cheap" to print as many parts as they used to).

 In these cases, only using printed pieces wouldn't mean turning all the stickered patterns into printed bricks, but omitting those patterns entirely. And at that point, customers who dislike stickers can get the same effect the designers would be able to achieve by buying the set (sticker sheet and all) and just choosing not to apply the stickers at all. But I don't think this was what happened in Palace Cinema's case, since its stickers only include seven different patterns — a far lower number than how many new elements appear in other modular buildings and Creator Expert sets.

No excuses.

Fact is Nobody likes stickers. It's purely because of cost concern. Only a few pieces of stickers replaced by printed piece shouldn't raise the cost of production so much. If cost will really rise up so much and they are worried about sales, Lego should avoid any stickers, Lego can certainly survive well without stickers.

IMO, in a conclusion, stickers are just stupid.

[Aanchir]

18 minutes ago, ks6349 said:

No excuses.

Fact is Nobody likes stickers.\

I mean, I like stickers, so you're kinda showing your own ignorance and narrow-mindedness right from the get-go.

Back when I was a kid, my dad preferred to apply them for me since my dexterity wasn't the greatest, and also because back then a lot of them were STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces). I will fully agree STAMPs are awful since they limit rebuilding potential (unless, like my dad, you're particularly skillful with a hobby knife).

But at the same time, stickers often also added fascinating play value and visual appeal that prints could not, like the hologram stickers in Exploriens sets, or the mirror-finish stickers in Paradisa sets, or the heat-sensitive stickers in UFO sets, or the magnetic stickers in Insectoids sets. My dad even used his digital label maker to create custom stickers for my brother and me to put our names on the back of our two Cabin Cruiser sets.

By 2006, when I was 15, I felt confident enough to apply the stickers to my Exo-Force sets on my own (by this point, I'd already started collecting Beyblades, a toy which comes with lots of stickers that are WAY more fiddly to apply). It was like a rite of passage and it made me feel really proud and "grown-up". It also added a different sort of challenge to spice up the building experience I'd become used to, almost like being introduced to a new move in a video game or a new yo-yo or skateboard trick.

Nowadays, I get downright excited when building a set and getting to a step where I get to add a sticker. It's an opportunity to sharpen a different sort of skill that requires careful attention and patience. From what the set designers I've met have told me, stickers are genuinely pretty popular with kids as well, and sometimes I'm pretty impressed to see posts from other AFOLs on social media whose kids are great at applying stickers even at a much younger age than I was when I first felt ready to take on that challenge!

29 minutes ago, ks6349 said:

If cost will really rise up so much and they are worried about sales, Lego should avoid any stickers, Lego can certainly survive well without stickers.

If you're willing to go without stickers whether or not LEGO can afford to replace them with prints, can't you just… not apply them? I mean, what difference does it make if you'd be willing to accept the same bricks without patterns anyhow?

It's not like this is at all a new phenomenon. Stickers have been in LEGO sets for even longer than minifigures have. Set 375/6075, literally the first Castle set ever came with a sheet of 45 stickers — back then it was the norm for stickers to be used to decorate minifigures' torsos, shields, and armor/clothing! Many classic train sets had huge sticker sheets with authentic branding for various European railways. Suffice to say, stickers have been a part of LEGO for longer than I've been a LEGO fan.

Even LEGO club memberships in the 1980s and LEGO idea books in the 80s and 90s, despite having no bricks to decorate, offered LEGO sticker sheets as an actual perk/selling point… and you're suggesting LEGO went to this effort they had no need to, just to offer something "nobody likes"?

[ks6349]

40 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

I mean, I like stickers, so you're kinda showing your own ignorance and narrow-mindedness right from the get-go.

Back when I was a kid, my dad preferred to apply them for me since my dexterity wasn't the greatest, and also because back then a lot of them were STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces). I will fully agree STAMPs are awful since they limit rebuilding potential (unless, like my dad, you're particularly skillful with a hobby knife).

But at the same time, stickers often also added fascinating play value and visual appeal that prints could not, like the hologram stickers in Exploriens sets, or the mirror-finish stickers in Paradisa sets, or the heat-sensitive stickers in UFO sets, or the magnetic stickers in Insectoids sets. My dad even used his digital label maker to create custom stickers for my brother and me to put our names on the back of our two Cabin Cruiser sets.

By 2006, when I was 15, I felt confident enough to apply the stickers to my Exo-Force sets on my own (by this point, I'd already started collecting Beyblades, a toy which comes with lots of stickers that are WAY more fiddly to apply). It was like a rite of passage and it made me feel really proud and "grown-up". It also added a different sort of challenge to spice up the building experience I'd become used to, almost like being introduced to a new move in a video game or a new yo-yo or skateboard trick.

Nowadays, I get downright excited when building a set and getting to a step where I get to add a sticker. It's an opportunity to sharpen a different sort of skill that requires careful attention and patience. From what the set designers I've met have told me, stickers are genuinely pretty popular with kids as well, and sometimes I'm pretty impressed to see posts from other AFOLs on social media whose kids are great at applying stickers even at a much younger age than I was when I first felt ready to take on that challenge!

If you're willing to go without stickers whether or not LEGO can afford to replace them with prints, can't you just… not apply them? I mean, what difference does it make if you'd be willing to accept the same bricks without patterns anyhow?

It's not like this is at all a new phenomenon. Stickers have been in LEGO sets for even longer than minifigures have. Set 375/6075, literally the first Castle set ever came with a sheet of 45 stickers — back then it was the norm for stickers to be used to decorate minifigures' torsos, shields, and armor/clothing! Many classic train sets had huge sticker sheets with authentic branding for various European railways. Suffice to say, stickers have been a part of LEGO for longer than I've been a LEGO fan.

Even LEGO club memberships in the 1980s and LEGO idea books in the 80s and 90s, despite having no bricks to decorate, offered LEGO sticker sheets as an actual perk/selling point… and you're suggesting LEGO went to this effort they had no need to, just to offer something "nobody likes"?

Typing up 1000 words and making up 100 excuses won't hide your ignorance, narrow-mindedness and stupidity. You actually like stickers, you don't like Lego, you don't need to spend ten times or hundreds time more for Lego to pretend that you can afford something you can't actually afford. XD

[fordtruckin]

Well that escalated quickly

[The Brick Boss]

@Aanchir I love stickerstickers too. I wish Lego could release sticker packs. What if we needed some for a MOC?

[PickleManDan]

10 hours ago, pooda said:

@Aanchir I love stickerstickers too. I wish Lego could release sticker packs. What if we needed some for a MOC?

I'm pretty sure that LEGO has released a sticker pack under the Xtra line.

[The Brick Boss]

5 minutes ago, PickleManDan said:

I'm pretty sure that LEGO has released a sticker pack under the Xtra line.

I mean ONLY sticker sheets. No pieces! 

[TeriXeri]

58 minutes ago, pooda said:

I mean ONLY sticker sheets. No pieces! 

Xtra is the closest we got in recent times to official LEGO sticker sheets, the last official ideas books with stickers were over 20 years ago (1997 and 1990)

It only contains 12 LEGO parts and 5 sticker sheets, overall it's the best we have right now, sadly sold out for months now on European Shop@Home. (I hope they'll return)

I can fully understand why LEGO put a few parts into their sticker pack, as a starting point.

More of those "sets" are always welcome, and I hope the Xtra theme continues to expand.

https://rebrickable.com/sets/853921-1/brick-stickers/#parts

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by TeriXeri

[The Brick Boss]

28 minutes ago, TeriXeri said:

Xtra is the closest we got in recent times to official LEGO sticker sheets, the last official ideas books with stickers were over 20 years ago (1997 and 1990)

It only contains 12 LEGO parts and 5 sticker sheets, overall it's the best we have right now, sadly sold out for months now on European Shop@Home. (I hope they'll return)

I can fully understand why LEGO put a few parts into their sticker pack, as a starting point.

More of those "sets" are always welcome, and I hope the Xtra theme continues to expand.

https://rebrickable.com/sets/853921-1/brick-stickers/#parts

 

Now those are nice! I really hope that the CITY PIZZA stickers are easter eggs to a stationary pizzeria set. 

[PickleManDan]

3 hours ago, pooda said:

Now those are nice! I really hope that the CITY PIZZA stickers are easter eggs to a stationary pizzeria set. 

I think they're a reference to the pizza brand in LEGO City sets. Some examples are from the pizza van set from 2017, and the pizzeria from the 2013 town square set.