Legogal

Thanks for the helpful review! love this set so much that I bought one to build and then two more last year when Barnes and Noble had a buy one, get half off on the second set, which was a good deal with the 10 per cent discount members get. So the other two are not built and probably will be used for parts. The part assortment of this set is wonderful with so many windows, roof tiles, etc. My built model is lovely. The only problem is that it lacks certain rooms as noted above, most likely due to trying to keep it relatively small and affordable. It should be easy to extend the house by half and add a bedroom and bath without buying another set. Combining two sets definitely will create a nice mansion. It is great that LEGO sells a Creator set with such a wonderful exterior design. I like most of the other Creator houses as well.

Modulex is for the young crowd...too small for most older folks to see and put together. But you can make some very cool things in great detail with them due to their tiny size. And they are quite expensive to make anything large enough to really see. I still like them even though I can't build with them. Hopefully this will lower their high prices.

Kumpelkante, Good point! Yes, their themes were quite similar for many years. And it would seem that many families bought products from both companies. PM is still much more popular in Europe than in the US, where it is mainly found in TRU and a few smaller, independent toy stores. It is admirable that both companies still make such lovely, high quality products as at least 95 per cent of the products offered in US stores are pure junk these days. While clone brands such as MB and Kreo have some wonderful designs, my very limited personal experience with them is that they just do not have the quality of LEGO. They mostly have infiltrated our home in boxes of "LEGO" purchased off of eBay, and quickly find themselves dumped off at charity reception bins. But I could be wrong about their newer sets.

While not personally into clone LEGO, I do collect both LEGO and Playmobil because of their higher quality and outstanding designs. And each brand has its advantages. PM has better dollhouses than system LEGO, and PM figures are quite well designed and built. However, the rare Duplo playhouses are somewhat competitive with the PM dollhouses. PM seems to be better for just playing with rather than building because the large parts (like wall pieces of which I have a ton) are quite expensive. (As an avid gardener, PM makes it easier to build detailed gardens and parks with so many different kinds of flowers, etc.) LEGO are more of a building toy with so many small generic parts and the ease of making anything your want. So generally if I want to build something, LEGO tend to be more attractive. If I feel like playing with something, PM get my attention. It will be interesting to see which brand my infant granddaughter prefers as she grows up. I view these two product lines as being quite different but also as complementary because they both are building toys.

The added trees, bus stand and flower stall really pop as this place comes to life! Congrats on such a fine buildout of an already fantastic MOC.

Thanks to folks for pointing out this thread, which appeared before I joined EB. I have often wondered about the avatar with the guy falling out of the wheelchair! Now it makes sense. Most of us will face physical disabilities as we age, so learning about how to deal with them in a positive way before they arrive on our doorsteps is a big help. When my knees and feet made it difficult for me to walk around much in 2008, I began looking for hobbies that could be done sitting down. Activities such as beading, building LEGO, reading and listening to music have become more important over time. One aspect of getting into LEGO as an adult is that most adults are better able to afford to buy more toys than children can. So it is easier for us to expand our collections. I would like to add my thanks for sharing of your story, grum64. We all need to be thankful for the things we can do and appreciate how difficult it is for some folks to do what we feel are the simplest things. Sometimes we forget how hard life is for many folks, and that is how we lose our human-ness. And it helps us remember how little effort it requires of us to help those in need with everyday errands and activities. In long periods of recovery after multiple surgeries, it made my day when strangers in the store would offer to reach something out of my range while riding in a cart to shop. Now I try to remember to ask folks if I can grab something for them. They say that the givers receive more than the recipients of ones kind acts. On another note, it is wonderful seeing the benefits of playing with LEGO to combat depression and other illnesses. It certainly beats being doped up with strong meds for long periods of time. So if you have a friend recovering from surgery or depression, you might want to try taking a few LEGO over and seeing if you can build something together.

Skalldyr, Hope you make it to FanWelt! Then you can win all of the speed building and memory building contests! Can you get someone to video you doing this so we can enjoying watching you do your miracle builds again? It was just too much fun watching you build at EB 2014. OMG!!! (Could we keep this our little secret so I can be on YOUR team next year?) :laugh:

Great review! Glad that nothing "sploded" as that really could have messed up things. it is hysterical reading a non-car person reviewing cars and trying to decide what to call various parts! (Please don't tell us that you are a 80 year old great grandmother who does not drive and never has had a license to do so.) The yellow one is my favorite, too. I know that many race cars and Ferraris are red, but seriously, they need to try another color for the next century or so. Add a little class with any of the sand colors and other zippity do dah shades of azure, teal, turquoise, etc. While you are at it, do a few versions in the various pink and magenta shades as well. That would attract a lot more of us bimbos, oooops, I mean ladies, to these events. I was in Singapore just after the F1 race last year....because hotel rooms were all sold out and cost a fortune during the race. The course looked very cool, and it is easy to imagine how popular these sets are now with it being race time again. Please keep vrooooooomin' away, and yeah, those stickers do suck!

Whoa! Nice lines! I have fond memories of this car from around 1965 when a German family, the Sperbergs, brought one to Odessa, Texas, which is at the end do the world on most scales. We oohed and aahed every time it purred around a corner unlike the Ford and Chevy pickups complete with full gun racks of loaded rifles in their rear windows and ten gallon hatted, boot wearing "cowboys" at the wheel as they roared around the corner. What most men drove in our desolate town. This car looked to us like a spaceship that aliens would arrive in from outer space. The one time they gave us a ride home from swim practice, I became dizzy enclosed in such an exotic work of art. I loved the design then and still do! Congrats on a fine build!

Hahaha! Can't decide what I like best, but the Airstream trailer is first class! Had one of those parked in my driveway for a full year before selling it because I could not figure how to attach it to the station wagon it came with. At least I got what I paid for it!!! The broken stair truck brings back fond memories of my job cleaning out airplanes in Alaska during a uni summer. Back then they did not have many fork lifts, so we had to load cases of pop and whatever was needed by hand and foot up those )IY%$#@#%*&)+(&%# stairs at least a hundred times a day. The really fun part of the job was the day my coworker forget to connect the garden hose to the water tank, and the passengers had no early morning coffee between Fairbanks and Anchorage. Glad I was not on that plane! The busted, down and out town concept seems to be a real hit! It looks like much of America these days. Pretty darn ugly, but so true. We have the Wal-Marts, Home Depots, and Lowe's all over to thank for putting hundreds of thousands of small businesses out of business. And now it seems that all those stores sell is pure junk, except for a few LEGO. Is this progress or what? Anyway you have captured whatever it is quite well....way to go!

Wonderful details like both doors, the lovely grounds, the way the chimney from the fire below heats the room above, the notice board, the roof and wall tile patterns, ... Loaded with cool features. The flower stems without the flowers is a different look, and the walkway appears inviting....let's take a stroll by this quaint place! Congratulations!

Wow! LEGO needs to add this to the Architecture series because it offers so few Asian buildings and this is just outstanding in every way. And one of the most memorable buildings anywhere in the world. The first time I saw the real building, my mouth dropped. I.M. Pei has such incredible vision. Congratulations!

Correct. It would be worth your time to drive down to the Charlotte LEGO store or over to Raleigh's Crabtree store to get the exclusives because that is the only place they usually are sold in NC. Check to see which is closer to your location there and do avoid rush hours of 7-9AM and 5-7PM to save time. You will not find much selection in Greensboro.

I share much of your feelings about Windsor LL. Miniland definitely needs sprucing up so that things work in it. A car needs wheels to look real... And the food is quite dreadful along with high priced. Take your own food to get a better meal at less expense. And arrive early to beat the huge crowds. Also the public bus seemed to take forever from Slough, and returning to Slough was much worse because of the crowds at the bus stop at LL. DO get in line at the bus stop and hour before or an hour after closing time because the lines can be atrociously long. And the buses are few and far apart. It helps if your expectations are low before your arrive.

If you missed this at BrickFair VA 2014 in Chantilly, VA, USA, here is an update on what is happening in Duploville... https://www.flickr.com/photos/75868658@N06/15038546655/in/set-72157646873029565

I love the summer banner! Thanks for putting it up. Can't imagine how that one could offend anyone, seriously. And pink flowers look good almost anywhere anytime. Hubby likes them, too. Especially with a few purple and white ones in the bouquet for a little contrast. It seems to me that it takes a real man to wear a pink shirt, and I am all for it as a lady. (Bring on those pastels and maybe men will be less aggressive. Could we change Army uniforms to pink camo? Ooops, that might make them even better targets. Scratch that thought and just bring them home...period. No more camo clothing, no more wars.)

If your home has many details, this is incredibly hard to do in LEGO because the pieces are so limited. Sixteen years ago when we were designing our home (because all the architects around here were too busy at the time to do it for us,) we ended up building a LEGO version of the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design we wanted. I took this model to several contractors to see if they would be interested enough to give us a quote. Most just laughed at my face. And our subdivision's homeowner architectural committee voted down the design as being to modern to fit in here. So we dumped that design and came up with another more traditional one after many sessions of scouring homebuilding magazines in B&n and Borders, which was our second living room at the time. I have not built our home in LEGO yet, but hope to one day. Scale does not bother me. It will be as large as is required to make it look like our home and have decent interiors. It will not sit next to the Modulars because they are on a narrow shelf. And our LEGO home will have a decent front and back yard because that is what makes our delightful home even greater. And we built the entire yard with six enormous curved retaining walls of block by hand and wheelbarrow. Why spend a lot of time and effort building your home if you can't use a scale that allows you to show some details? Looking forward to this project after we have completed our renovations and moved the LEGO room to a larger space without windows... back downstairs. Ugh. It seems a shame to totally cover windows with gorgeous views because there are LEGO that will fade in a room. Good luck with building your own homes/ apartments/condos/tents/RV's or whatever. I have lived in all of those and look forward to building them as well.

Yup, when I remember EB 2014 in Billund, cold rain is the first thing that always comes to my mind. Once I returned home, at night I even dreamed that my new yellow castle would float away in the rain. I think I stopped counting each day after it had rained ten different times, and sometimes that was before noon. And it was a very cold rain for May. I shivered through at least two nights in our unheated cabin wearing all the clothes I could get into at one time. I blame the freezing nights on hubby's not being able to attend; next time I may have to take an electric blanket or stay in some place with real heat... as in a thermostat that goes up to at least 70 degrees F. (And a real tub with hot water to end the chills.) The day we were in the Park, it seemed like I ended up shivering for the next 24 hours or so. If it has to rain so much, could they at least make it warm rain a la Singapore? WhiteFang and Kim must have frozen to death coming from the tropics. ( I do recall being that cold and wet in 1991 while waiting in line to ride the Pirate Ships at Paris Disxxx. My three year old son was sitting on my shoulders, and he was drenched, too, as there were no dry areas to wait for rides. Maybe that is one reason I am not big on theme parks.) Choc, Glad you finally got to build your remake of the yellow castle. Did it dry out before you put it together? I did not hear your teeth chattering in the bunk above me, so I guess you are used to cold rain... being Danish. The morning I left for the airport at 3.45 am, I was worried that our cabin had floated away after it rained all night, too. Phew!

It does not sound as if any of KKK's three children will be as involved as their dad in the company, which may be too large now to rely on family management any way. It is very cool how much they have managed to stay out of the international limelight considering how wealthy they are. It also appears that in Denmark it is not cool to flaunt extreme wealth. That is refreshing to hear after seeing how much trouble incredibly wealthy third and fourth generation family members have in many other countries. It was nice seeing KKK's mom Edith in the Lego House dedication event photos. Wonder if she ever played with LEGO, too? Wish she had been my grandma!!!

Many folks may be interested in investing in extra LEGO sets but just don't have the space to store them inside their homes. I had to choose between buying spare sets or getting things I want to build because my closets are full. Now I am just picking up what I want to build. And rarely a spare unless it seems it will look better in a larger version. It seems that too many people are seriously investing in LEGO and that the bubble has to pop at some point. What if they all decide to sell their spares in the next ten years as they retire? If those who merely invest in LEGO... and don't build or play with it...leave the market because something else like tulip bulbs becomes more attractive, it looks like the bubble will bust. So I choose not to buy sets as an investment. Maybe I will trade a few sets I am tired of, but buying more than one of something is less satisfying than it used to be. And there are enough bricks sorted by color in my LEGO room to build almost anything I want. So there is no reason to buy sets that do little for me. I do hope that LEGO investing does die down so prices become lower for most sets and more folks can afford them.

Yup. The PR is just outstanding in every way! And combining two of them offers so many cool possibilities. It is great seeing folks doing that so skillfully. I have bought a spare to expand the stock one already built. It has so many nice details and features both inside and outside that it is a joy to build and look at. Modulars can be quite satisfying because so many things can be happening in the neighborhood with just a few mods. By changing the figs out front, the whole block of buildings changes. Same with cars parked out front. It does not take many changes to get a totally different look. Plants add another whole dimension of interest to the fronts, backs and tops of the modulars.

Very, very cool! I love nature scenes, and this is just so calming to see. Plants make everything better! Way to go!

It is great to see how so many hard to use parts actually got used here. And bright light yellow was the baseplate color for several of the Duplo playhouses, I think. That means I have a lot of it! And I do like that color and the original light yellow. Both look fantastic in houses with white trim. Congrats on your winning color scheme!

Wonderful greenery, especially the plant wall. What a cool concept!

The eyes are boring a hole in my head they stare so intently! Incredible angles in the design, and the pose is out of this world. What an amazing design. Congratulations!