Roger_Smith

My GE was fine, but my Pet Shop has a very noticeable variation in the color of its light blue bricks.

That looks really nice, if I ever find the time and will to do something like that, I may go that way aswell, or maybe look for another nice color that has all the elements at reasonable prices.

OK, I'm sold. This looks amazing.

Great build! A very coherent and thought-through building, nice details all around. Looks very realistic.

Yep, it was. Bummer on them not seizing this opportunity.

I'm wondering what set number Benny's spaceship! Spaceship! Spaceship! :) will get. I know Lego switched to a 5-digit numbering system, and 3-digit set numbers were abandoned long ago, but I don't think there ever was a set #929 - at least I found no info on a set with that number... And they often sneak in the set number on the set itself, most notably on the classic LL918, LL924 and LL928 ships, 929s ancestors, so it would be really cool if they did that here, aswell. Or at least chose something like 10929

What's important to me is how a building looks and feels, and how much fun I have building it. I already love the exterior and interior PR just from the pictures and you can tell there's a lot of details and some interesting building techniques used. I honestly couldn't care less wether one modular looks a bit bigger or smaller in size than another even though it has rouhgly the same piece count. I want exterior and interior details and usage of nice building techniques, things that make me go 'wow, cool' both when building and when looking at it. If I wanted big empty boxes, I can just go and pretty much build them myself. I only built three modulars so far (with Palace Cinema waiting to be opened), and out of the three I had great fun building the Fire Brigade and Pet Shop. I couldn't really decide which set out of those two I like better, they're both great. My only criticism is that the interior of the red building from Pet Shop is done in a 'just moving in/just renovating'-style, which felt a bit like they were trying to save some pieces. Grand Emporium, the third modular I have, was quite another story. Neither exterior nor interior have much appeal to me, yet building still could've been fun. The ground floor was ok, though nothing too great, and once you got past that, it morphed into a mindnumbingly boring build. Two walls, a load of dark green windows, some arches with supports, cop-out-interior details, mostly flat roof, done. Meh. I've been trying to create a more interesting MOC out of it for quite some time now, unfortunately this proves to be quite hard (I'm trying to use only the pieces that came with the set).

Definite buys: - Parisian Restaurant - Town Hall - Haunted House - Lego Movie Classic Spaceship All because they're awesome and I want them :D Possible buys: - Duplicates of the two modulars and a second Pet Shop - Simpsons House - Mars Rover Curiosity Does anyone know if the Haunted House will be retired soon? I definetely don't want to miss out on that.

I have mixed feelings about this. They stayed pretty true to the look of the 'real' Simpsons house. Unfortunately, what basically is a bland and barely interesting house in 2D cartoons still looks bland and barely interesting in 3D / Lego bricks. We can hope for some nice interior details to make it worthwhile, but as a display piece it's mainly interesting because it is the Simpsons house, and not because it's an interesting building in itself.

Getting lots like that is fun. As clone brands apparently aren't as common in Europe/Germany, the biggest worry is dirty/non Lego parts. I take care of the dirt by putting everything through the washing machine at least once. One lot I scored last year for only about 90€ including shipping was a real treasure trove. It included heaps of complete or almost complete sets from the late eighties and early nineties...Blacktron, SP1, M-Tron, Futuron, Ice Planet 2002, Spirius. Some of these I already had identified from the pictures, but others were real surprises. There also were a lot of town sets and a few technic bits in there, though I only ended up building 6395 Victory Lap Raceway (which was 98% complete) and a technic bike out of those.

Great review, and big thanks for bringing the photos back! This is the set that brought me out of my Dark Ages exactly a year ago now. I had it, or rather the pieces of it, since I was a kid, but I had no instructions, so I never was able to build it as a kid, which frustrated me to no end (it was part of a huge box filled with Lego that our former neighbours gave to me :D). Around christmas 2012 I came across my old Lego boxes again, and saw the big panels of this base. Which got me thinking, and pretty much just one Google query later I had the instructions on my laptop. Needless to say I rushed down to get the boxes from the basement, cleaned all the bricks, sorted them, and this was the very first thing I built. And, boy, what a feeling that was... to have had that base for over 20 years and finally be able to build it. I had goosebumps all over. Only minor drag for me is that I'm missing the windshield piece of the small spaceship. I need to get that from someplace sometime. :) To this day, this remains my favorite space set ever, and I wholly agree with what you said about it feeling just a tad more complete and realistic than the other bases. And I just love that black and yellow color scheme. Call me nostalgic, but space never looked as good as during the Futuron/Blacktron I/SP I days. All three themes had nice, clear color schemes that just looked great. Later it all became a mess with odd neon colors and weird combinations that sometimes didn't really work, maybe with M-tron being the notable exception.

Um, don't bite down on them and don't give them to anyone who will (i.e. small children)? :D

A great review of an absolutely great product!

That's a really nicea nd neat little modular you created there. Congarts!

I haven't been able to access the S@H site at all since monday. Or any Lego site, for that matter. Anybody else having problems? So no PR for me for the time being. :( Luckily, I ordered Palace Cinema on Sunday, and it got here yesterday already. Perfect end-of-the-year gift to myself and now I have something to do until I have to go back to work next week :D

Wow, congrats on your room, that's a nice secluded space you have there :) Those built-in cupboards on the left side of the room surely are ideal to store all the boxes and sets. And the Haunted House looks great, I really need to get that set aswell.

This looks even better in real bricks than the drawing that was posted yesterday *drools*

One big MOC... one hell of a MOC! Great work! Having seen the insides of a car manufacturing plant myself, I can say you did a good job capturing the general atmosphere!

Ordered these from S@H today 10232 Palace Cinema 21103 DeLorean Palace Cinema was only 139.99€, was it always cheaper than the other modulars (they usually go for 150€), or was this some kind of special deal?

Holy... If this becomes a set I'll sure as hell get one :D

I'm not a fan of the front facade, the first first with that oddly shaped arch doesn't do it for me. However, I love the (more traditional) back facade with the small greenhouse on the ground floor, and the columns on the first floor. And the interior is great aswell, huge attention to details - you even thought to put in a roll of toilet paper :D. Considering that this is your first MOC in ages, this is really quite impressive! Be sure to post pictures of that thing as soon as the real life brick version is finished!

wow, cool, makes me want it :D

Correct me if I'm wrong (don't have all the modulars yet), but I think the back of each modular's box only shows that modular with its two predecessors. And afaik at least Fire Brigade is being discontinued as we speak, when the stock runs out, that was it. And GE will propably follow soon, at least I read somehwere that GE and FB would be retired together on account of FB having been around so long. Usually for every modular that gets released, the oldest one got retired.

Delightful build! The interior is really nice and well detailed and would work perfectly with a none-Friends approach in combination with the official modulars (but iirc you're partly building these for your daughters, so of course the minidolls are fine :)). You made good use of space covering all the essential bases, the only thing I'd change is putting in another door to separate the beauty parlor on thr ground floor from the private querters upstairs I also like the arcade's approach, coincidently I'm currently MOCing my Grand Emporium into a townhouse and it has smaller Arcades on the ground floor aswell.

That was my first association aswell. Apart from the general curviness and the hood/headlights of the VW beetle, one of the main recognizable features is the small window at the back. For the first couple of years, that window was really small, and divided in the middle. It got nicknamed 'Brezelfenster' (pretzel-window) in german due to its vague semblance to a pretzel. They enlarged it in later versions, but it still was small when compared to those of other cars. Your model has a very light back that consists solely of glass, which is not very much like the original VW bug (however, the Citroen 2CV had a lot of windows, giving it a very light look) But it's a real nice small car, keep going. If I had to compare it to any VW, it propably most looks like the 'New Beetle'.