[REVIEW] 41682 - Heartlake City School

[Bob De Quatre]

Set information

Set Name: Heartlake City School

Set Number: 41682

Number of Pieces: 605

Theme: Friends

Year Release: 06/2021

Prices: £59.99 / $59.99 / €64.99 (Euro prices may vary)

#41682 on Brickset

#41682 on Rebrickable

Quote

Let kids recreate their perfect school day at the Heartlake City School (41682). Within the beautifully styled building, kids can recreate the school day, hang out with friends, attend their favourite lessons and play the teacher.

Like a real school in miniature
Over this model’s 2 floors are a science lab with a microscope and a ladybug to study, as well as art, drama and music classrooms, the latter containing a chest of creative dress-up kit and a selection of instruments. Kids can hang with friends in a canteen that comes with tables and food accessories. There’s even a hallway with lockers and a trophy display.

Cool toys for kids who love real-life role play
The playset comes with 2 LEGO® Friends characters and a teacher figure, allowing kids to use their creativity to take lessons their way. Or they can look after the new boy Julian and show him around. LEGO Friends sets deliver an exciting build-and-play experience that lets kids act out their own real-life situations.

• Attractive 2-story Heartlake City School (41682) is brimming with creative details so kids can enjoy hours of fun recreating their perfect school day with LEGO® Friends Olivia.
• It comes 3 mini-doll figures to play with, including new boy Julian and a teacher figure. The model also has 3 classrooms to build and explore, as well as a canteen, lockers, restroom and school yard.
• This extensive LEGO® Friends playset offers hours of make-believe school fun. Packed with play starters, it’s great for solo building or for enjoying with family and friends.
• This 605-piece school gift delivers a rewarding building experience for kids aged 6+, making it the perfect Christmas or birthday present for youngsters who love to play out real-life stories.
• Measures over 6 in. (17 cm) high, 9 in. (25 cm) wide and 3 in. (9 cm) deep, and sits on a sturdy baseplate, making it an impressive stand-alone display.
• This LEGO® Friends set packs in lots of pretend school toys such as creative drama dress-up props, musical instruments, a ladybug to study under the microscope, plus brushes, paints and an easel.
• The dining table is hinged so that it swings out of the canteen, allowing kids to easily play out friendship stories during lunch recess.
• Introduce youngsters to the world of Heartlake City toys. They’ll find cool vehicles, realistic buildings and everyday heroes – perfect for kids who love to role-play the real world.
• New LEGO® toys meet stringent industry standards to ensure they are consistent, compatible and connect and pull apart consistently every time – it’s been that way since 1958.
• LEGO® kids’ toys are tested to the max to make sure they meet stringent global standards, ensuring a safe and happy play experience.

 

Box and content

The box contains 7 numbered bags, an instructions booklet and a loose stickers sheet. For set of this size, and a stickers sheet of this size (20 stickers!), I'd prefered it to come in a thicker plastic bag.

The box front shows the facade of the buildings, while the back features the inside and all the activities that can be done.

 

The build

The build is pretty straightforward, with no difficulties. With each bag, you build each individual room, starting from the bottom left to the top right : the canteen, the school hall, the drama and music classroom, the art classroom, the bathroom (the mandatory toilets are included) and the lab.

Bag one contais the 3 minidolls, the bike, the basketball panel and the canteen table that can be attached next to the canteen or used as an outside table.

 

The completed build looks really good from both sides. The facade is especially very nice, with the colonnades, the dark orange brick bricks and multitude of windows.

There is a lot to do in this school, and each room is greatly detailed (with the use of lots of stickers). My favorite classroom is the drama and music one, with all its accessories and its two glow in the dark shields!

The sandwiches in the canteen are also cleverly done.

There is no roof over the second floor rooms, so you can easily play with the minidolls. But the second floor don't detach, so the first floor rooms are maybe less playable..

 

Minidolls 

The set comes with 3 minidolls:

 - Olivia

 - Marisa - who makes her debuts as a Friends minidoll

 - Julian - Only appeared in set 41448: Heartlake City Movie Theatre

There are sadly no animals on the school grounds.

 

Conclusion

Design: 7/10 - A simple build but very nice looking, especially the facade

Parts: 6/10 - The part selection is average, nothing too fancy in this set, excepts if you really love windows.

Playability: 8/10 - With 6 different rooms and the beginning, lots of accessories, of an exterior playground,  the set offers a great playability.

Minidolls: 6/10 - The 3 minidolls are nice, but one more for a set of this size would have been better. And no animals..

Price: 4/10 - With a high ppp of 0,107€ and 3 minidolls, this set is overpriced.

Overall: 31/50 (62%) - A nice looking set that would make a great addition to any Friends display, but the price is too high for what the set offers.

 

[Aanchir]

Good review! I really like this design. The color scheme is somewhat reminiscent of the Heartlake High set from 2013, but with understated Medium Nougat bricks as the main material of the walls rather than the brighter Cool Yellow stucco in the original set. This set also opts for an architectural style with considerable Neo-Palladian influences, as exemplified by the white columns and decorative triangular pediment bearing the city's initials. It's yet another example of how sets since the theme's 2018 reboot have embraced more specific and authentic architectural styles than many earlier sets which featured a more generalized "Heartlake City" aesthetic.

One especially interesting change in this set compared to earlier school sets is the inclusion of school uniforms for both boys and girls. At the same time, the dress code is clearly flexible enough to allow for trousers or skirts that reflect the individual characters' usual preferred colors and fashions — which is a nice way of ensuring that future mini-dolls in school uniforms will still be about as individualized as we've come to expect. Although it might be unlikely for cost reasons, it'd be interesting if future sets included a variant of the boys' uniform with a blazer and a variant of the girls' uniform without one, much like the many variations in Hogwarts uniforms that we've seen in recent Harry Potter sets.

Besides the differences in architectural style, the interior and exterior features of this set and its predecessor are very similar. I am pleased that this set does a better job separating the cafeteria from the main hallway and lockers than the original Heartlake High, especially since that creates more room for even more lockers, as well as a water fountain and a display area for academic and athletic trophies! It's also neat that the large table in this set table is designed so it can be either used as a picnic table outside or attached inside to function as an ordinary cafeteria table. This set also one-ups the original by having separate classrooms for the visual arts and performing arts, although science and math classes still have to share a classroom unless you choose to modify the set with additional classrooms, and there are no history or language classrooms included either set.

As with the new Heartlake Grand Hotel, I can't help but feel a bit bummed out about the lack of a modular design for this set, since that made it very simple to expand the original Heartlake High set to include more classrooms. However, I suppose that the consistent architectural style between rooms and floors still makes it fairly simple for people to customize this set like that if they choose to do so — it just might make it trickier to re-arrange the classrooms once they're assembled.

The price of this set is somewhat higher than the original, but the difference in price is a lot less than I might have expected based on this set's size and the aforementioned improvements/expansions to its interior and the considerably higher piece count! All in all, I think the "grade" you gave it on its price is a little harsh, especially when compared to the price-per-piece of other 6+ sets in themes like Friends, City, and Disney. It would definitely be fairly underwhelming if this were a 7+ or 8+ set in a theme like Ninjago or Elves, but this seems quite impressive when compared to sets and themes with a similar building level. All in all, it's a very impressive set IMO, and a great addition to a Heartlake City layout!

[Jack Sassy]

One of the better looking Lego schools lately in general. I'm not much of a fan Friends theme (owning 3 sets from the theme) but this school really fits pretty much anywhere, which is a good enough of a reason for anyone to buy it. That said I doubt I'll buy this set at any point. I have no interest of building a school and besides, there's enough sets this year to buy already. 

 

Good review! 

[Klaus-Dieter]

Thank you very much for this great review, @Bob De Quatre!

I really like this set and already pre-ordered it. Imo the outer facade is stunning. The interior is quite nice although imo not as good as in the school several years ago. Like you, I like the music / theatre room the most, too.

[Redhead1982]

Thanks for a nice review.

As this is the second (or even third) school in Hearlake district, a comparison to the others would be interesting. I really liked the 41005 Heartlake high, admittingly for the bright light yellow color. In comparison to Heartlake City School, Heartlake High was more open to play with modular floors. I like that a completely different facade was created for the new school building, and it fits well for a formal building. Schools should have large windows with lots of light, so it is kind of realistic. The non-removable floors might be a limiting factor for play, but I think that small fingers wouldn't have that problem. Still, adding a few tiles instead of plates would add a whole new level of playability. In addition to featuring only 3 minidolls I also feel the price is high for what it offers.