Heartlake City Tower – LEGO Friends, Heartlake City Community Center (41748) and Heartlake City Community Kitchen (41747)

As you may have noticed, this year I’ve been focusing a bit more on bigger sets. Not just because they’re large and keep me busy while building, but also because they’re genuinely interesting and/ or good. The Downtown Flower and Design Stores (41732) were a good start and the Heartlake City Community Center (41748) and Heartlake City Community Kitchen (41747) are following in its footsteps – or so you may think. Let’s see where the truth lies.

Price and Contents

While there’s a reason I’ve lumped the two packages together for one article, they must be purchased individually. As you can imagine, this makes the whole venture a potentially costly one right off the bat because even the combined accrued discounts for both sets can never compete with a potential super sale of a single package. The Heartlake Community Center (41748) therefore can set you back 150 Euro for 1513 pieces if you buy it for the recommended full price. Thankfully the set is on permanent discounts, so you can get it for around 110 Euro easily. I took my chances when it was even cheaper and got it for 98 Euro. That’s still quite a bit, but at least affordable if you scrape together enough pennies, in a manner of speaking. At the very least it fulfills all requirements/ established standards with that price per piece thing and you’re really getting a large building out of it.

The Heartlake Community Kitchen (41747) is a slightly different story. At 695 pieces for 70 Euro it is notably more expensive even when considering the base price. This is reinforced by the price per piece and when you figure in perceptive factors such as the size of the elements and thus the constituting volume as well as the resulting size of the model. Compared to the community center it really feels like the worse deal, all bias notwithstanding. Starting out at such a high MSRP of course inevitably means that you can only do so much with discounts and as a result this set is firmly stuck around the 50 Euro mark most of the time. That is in direct terms not even half the pieces of the bigger set for half the price and that kind of stings.

Figures and Animals

The Friends sets never have been overflowing with minidolls and arguably LEGO are skimping on that here as well. Six figures and a single dog really isn’t that much for a four story building, come to think of it. That’s even more the case when you consider what activities the community center offers with its roof garden, balcony slide, the karaoke club and a few other areas. For all intents and purposes, this could be stuffed to the brim with around fifteen figures and still not feel overcrowded.

The community kitchen similarly feels understaffed and lacking in actual customers. you can of course spin this as the occupants of the community center coming in for lunch and then things get quite crammed, but on its own it really doesn’t live up to the expectations. Grandma Abuelita would be pretty lonely in her kitchen most of the time!

The Community Center

The appeal of the community center lies in its flamboyant appearance that somehow still manages to feel realistic in architectural terms. That alone can be seen as an achievement, but the devil (or in this case the magic) is all in the details. 

The model is built onto a foundation frame that will come into play again later. As you can see, the house itself is L-shaped and this feels a bit odd at first, as it also causes the construction of the base level to be somewhat involved and complicated. You end up assembling a lot of thin strips and a few bricks to build the sidewalk and supporting walls of the building with the interior left hollowed out. While this makes for a very lightweight construction, it feels a bit unnecessary, as just creating a consistent layer of bricks or plates would have worked the same without changing any functionality.

Unlike some other Friends sets this one doesn’t have any extra side builds for landscapes and greenery, so the few bits and pieces are integrated into the base. The most notable one is of course the tree with the red leaves, providing a nice contrast to the other colors in the building. Aside from the red leaves it also has a few more of those sexy Dark Red plant stems introduced with the Botanical Garden (41757). As someone who has dabbled in virtual plant creation quite a bit my only complaint would be that it’s really a bit too straight. Throwing in some curved elements would have made it look more organic.

The front facade has some stairs leading up to the door of the karaoke club with a lamppost nearby. The latter tends to come off quite easily, as the curved plate it is attached to only is attached by a bunch of studs with no extra fixation. The lamp’s upper part is built from Trans Yellow curved slopes, so it looks for all intents and purposes a bit fat.

A quick glance at the back side reveals how the individual levels are pretty much built in the same style and the fact that inside White is the predominant color. It’s one of the things that I find regrettable about this model, as e.g. just coloring the door frames on the sides would have enlivened this further. Also of course once more the absence of floor tiling/ carpeting is even more noticeable due to the strong contrast.

The floor sections are are completely modular, meaning you can quickly rearrange their stacking order in whatever manner you prefer. They are built onto the new L-shaped “brick” plates (which isn’t exactly a fitting categorization, as they’re only two plates thick, not a full brick height). The advantage is that it’s very stable right out of the gate and this benefits my way of “free float” building where I hold the model in my hands or only have a partial or soft underground and you don’t have to worry about things falling apart and being wobbly. The downside to that is that a) the plates are very visible and b) you have to accept a few design limitations and repetitive steps like filling in the connection recesses every time. The number of White 1 x 4 plates in this set just for the latter thing is remarkable!

The different levels each have their own theme and as already mentioned multiple times, the first one represents a karaoke club or another type of musical venue like a practicing studio if you want to interpret it this way. Except for the stage and piano it looks a bit barren and one would wish they’d at least stuffed it to the brim with musical instruments. I wouldn’t expect them to “burn” the exclusivity of the contra bass/ cello from the Jazz Club (10312) just yet, but even without that there are so many to chose from, given the number of new molds they’ve done in recent years. even just throwing in a leftover keytar from VIDIYO would have worked wonders.

The second floor has a social media and streaming studio with all the trimmings like an editing/ recording computer, a small make-up corner and a seating arrangement for the host and guests. The background is built from more purple-ish tiles with some Magenta thrown in. in light of no carpets that’s at least something.

The third level is a gaming with a huge screen in the corner and the game controllers making an appearance. The green thing in the right corner is some unspecified tabletop game. At least I couldn’t quite make sense of what it is supposed to represent. This floor also has a balcony with a slide leading down to it from the floor above as a little fun item.

The topmost floor houses a small tailor/ needlework workshop alongside a more generic painting studio. This very apparently is also meant to directly relate to the large poster hanging outside and is obscuring the two large windows in terms of how it may have been made. An interesting detail here is that this is the first model to give us the 1 x 2 masonry brick in Light Nougat, i.e. in skin color.

The rooftop is home to a small greenhouse garden and has some of the usual utilities and appliances you would expect such as the water tank. The fixed window cleaning crane and platform on the other hand feels rather overblown and unrealistic.

The reason they put it there is of course once again the graffiti poster on the outside even though it’s still not very plausible. It’s like they couldn’t make up their mind on whether it was painted inside the atelier or directly sprayed on a blank canvas on the outside. In any case, the poster itself is a fully printed 16 x 8 tile, which in itself is worth mentioning. In another universe LEGO would have just dumped another large sticker for this in the package, so it’s a definite improvement and makes it so much easier . 

The Community Kitchen

Initially I wasn’t too keen on getting the Heartlake Community Kitchen (41747). it had a few interesting aspects, but not enough to warrant the high price. That changed when I kept studying the digital building instructions (as I always do before making a purchase decision) and of course the set being advertised as an extension to the community center therein. The more I kept thinking about it, the more it swayed my opinion and then of course my completionist urges kicked in as well. So eventually I couldn’t help but commit to it, after all.

One of the reasons I wasn’t too convinced at first is that the set poorly disguises its nature as an add on for another set and thus feels incomplete. The serving area on the top feels like the rest of the building was forcibly capped off and they only needed to have something there to not make their intentions too obvious. Based on that of course the model follows the structure of the community center to a T and it even uses the same L-shaped brick plate on top, just in Medium Lavender this time.

The corner door adds interest, but I also found this to be the most problematic area. For some reason that I couldn’t quite figure out there is too much tension in this area and as a result you get notable gaps. This does not only extend to the 4 x 4 tile on top, but also affects the side walls. I rebuilt this part of the model at least three times, looking for what i may have done wrong, but no matter how carefully I put everything in place the issue persisted. It’s minimized once the weight of the roof presses everything down, but it never goes away completely.

The roof itself feels a bit cheap. The trees feel like those fake plastic plants and don’t do anything to make the whole thing more cozy and atmospheric. This is clearly a case where a second tree similar to the one on the big building would have worked ten times better. It could have had a nice large overhanging canopy and even could have been a bit gnarly.

The interior of the kitchen is adequate, but as mentioned in the figures section would be seriously lacking personnel to actually do the work. You’d need at least three people here to make the scenario believable.

The Full Tower

Finally getting to the big reveal, let’s see how the combined result of the two packages turns out. How this works is not hard to guess during the build already, as you already see where those Technic bricks with the pin holes are just like the build pattern of the kitchen’s upper edge will look all too familiar if you built the community center beforehand.

The foundation of the latter is converted to the new base for the dining area. However, this comes at the cost of mostly breaking any logic in terms of how this section would be accessed by customers. You’d have to implement quite a few changes to make this plausible. When doing so one would likely also cover up the gap and in doing so also expand the seating space. This would be particularly relevant if you put it up permanently in your LEGO city.

Combining the two models turns an already large building into an even bigger one and it becomes somewhat unwieldy and difficult to handle even for an adult. If it wasn’t for the possibility to separate the various sections it would be difficult to transport. I had to learn that the hard way when I was trying to juggle it as a whole and the top level smashed to bits on my kitchen floor and I had to rebuild it.

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Concluding Thoughts

Overall this certainly is a nice combo. The buildings look and feel “real” and wouldn’t look too shabby even next to some Modular Building, give or take the necessary modifications to fill in some open spaces, create logical accessibility and tone down a few all too crazy colors. At the same time there can be no denying that this is quite an investment and this may disqualify it from being an option for some. After all, the actual price difference compared to a genuine Modular Building isn’t that big and those Euros add up. For that same reason I feel that this would also be hard to justify as a play set for your children. Even for a special occasion like Christmas this could probably only be rationalized if you have two kids or more playing with it. Certainly LEGO have moved past that level where these things could be picked up as a spontaneous purchase on the spot.

With all that in mind it’s hard to give a definitive recommendation in either direction. I sure liked and enjoyed my time with these two sets, but it’s easy to see that some people may be deterred from committing to them. It’s still Friends and while the sets have become more “realistic” and grounded in recent years, it’s still not for everyone. In addition implementing a few changes could incur further extra cost if you don’t have the parts in your stock, which is also something to consider. The same goes of course if you were to buy two or three sets to create an even bigger tower or expand the footprint. Point in case: There are some good ideas here, but they come at a price.

Designers Delight? – LEGO Friends, Downtown Flower and Design Stores (41732)

One of the reasons LEGO as a hobby has become a bit of a hamster wheel is the constant race to keep up due to the combination of constantly new products coming out, their prices sometimes being high and their life cycles short. You draw up elaborate schedules for when to buy which sets, but then all your plans go to waste and you reshuffle your purchase list once a new set comes out. This is particularly true if you are on a very limited budget and you really have to make up your mind whether to buy set A or B when the time comes. In combination with the hunt for god discounts this can become quite a stress factor in its own right. The Downtown Flower and Design Stores (41732) from the LEGO Friends series is one such story as after being merely introduced at the beginning of this year it is already marked for retirement by the end of the year. So in order to give you a chance to make up your mind here’s a sort of last minute review in case you want to buy it.

Price and Contents

Friends sets have been getting bigger and bigger in the last few years and at 2010 pieces this is the biggest one to date. Not only is the sheer number of elements staggering, but also the dimensions once it has been completed. That means you can see where a good chunk of the parts went, which is something you should expect from a 160 Euro set that is basically on the level of a proper Modular Building. At the same time, however, you can easily see that there is just as well a large number of small elements like the 2 x 2 triangular tiles used on the facade of one of the buildings. So effectively it’s not quite the same thing as those aforementioned houses that provide more mass due to foregoing cheatery and simplifications like 6 x 6 panels in favor of using actual bricks. Still, it’s good value, regardless.

In absolute terms the price is still too much for me with many of the factors mentioned figuring into the equation, so I’m just as glad there are discounts. On a random day outside of the typical promotions like Prime Day I saw this offered for under 100 Euro and that was too good an opportunity to miss. Those 98 Euro could be considered one of the better investments I ever made. If you’re not quite that lucky you can get it for around 110 Euro most of the time, which is still a massive savings. Perhaps you may even be able to beat my numbers come Black Friday and Amazon clearing their stock…

Figures and Animals

The package comes with nine minidolls, most of which are standard fare. the ones that stand out are Riley, the street musician with the green hat, and Isabella, the police officer. The latter would no doubt wonderfully fit many traffic-based scenarios in Heartlake City with so many people driving around on their kick rollers and bicycles. The others are mostly fillers to populate the scene, but of course just nine figures is not anywhere enough to even make the central market/ park section look busy. This could and probably should easily have had twice the number of characters.

The animals are exclusive to this set, which could be another major reason to get this package. In particular the red-furred baby kitten is cute, but there are just as many reasons to love the Golden Retriever, mundane as it may be. It’s in fact quite odd that this dog isn’t used more widely throughout other sets.

 

 

The Center Section

As already stated, the central section is sort of a small park/ marketplace/ town square as you would find it in many cities. It has a small bridge that connects the two other buildings (in a somewhat implausible fashion, no less) with some stairs leading up to what would be the open air seating of an adjacent pizza parlor or the like. It’s all not very logical due to the buildings having no doorways for the bridge nor the bridge itself having an actual restaurant facility. It’s also visually not very attractive due to the many visible holes of the Technic bricks and the odd open space under the bridge. Definitely my least favorite part.

When the bridge is connected to the buildings, there’s a traverse light chain, anchored to two jumper plates on the buildings themselves. This had me shocked and baffled when I first saw it since LEGO are replacing the good old string elements made from actual yarn with ones made entirely from plastic. I totally understand why they do it. It facilitates production and simplifies the process because nobody needs to fiddle with the yarn and it can’t get caught in the machine just as it increases flexibility because they can more easily create the element in different colors without having to procure matching yarn. However, just as much there are major downsides. Due to the rigidity of the material it no longer can be wrapped around other elements to control the length and of course it simply won’t bend down as nicely due to the resistance getting in the way of gravity. So for me it’s definitely a step down, especially in this usage scenario. It may work better for plant vines and towing cables, though.

The Furniture Store

The furniture store is designed in a very modernist fashion, but ultimately not “timeless”. This is exactly the kind of look that would be good for a few years, but later down the line everyone wonders “How could they?” and the building gets demolished and replaced by another, a major face lift or remains empty and unused for forever. We all know these types of buildings in a city near us, if not in our own hometown. 

From the LEGO point of view it is still an achievement due to its irregular shape and the angled style. Of course it makes heavy use of the triangular tiles and this set was the first to introduce them in Dark Purple, Medium Lavender and Lavender. They have appeared in other sets since, but not quite as many. They are used quite in numbers and are complemented by an equally large amount of black triangle tiles. I think even LEGO ART sets don’t have such a generous usage of this particular tile type. If DOTS wasn’t defunct, we might have seen them appear there, though.

In the front of the building is a rather wide sidewalk, that unfortunately doesn’t get used much. It has some jumper plates for placing the figures, but is missing a few extras like a bicycle stand with at least two bikes or some other extra that would enliven the scene. It literally feels like a lot of dead space. The “cold” colors don’t help, even though the fiery tree somewhat mitigates that issue. In any case, it still looks odd.

Unfortunately the illusion of the facade doesn’t really hold up once you turn to the back side. Most notably there is no extra space extending backwards and possibly providing opportunity for another facade at a 90 degree angle to turn this into a full corner building. For all intents and purposes, this really should be L-shaped and have some fully decked out sales floors like a real furniture store. The other oddity is the very church-like overall appearance with the tall tower and no extra floors inserted there.

Since the store is more or less just a storage facility with the actual furniture items to be used elsewhere, it feels a bit chaotic and quite unrealistic. Beds hanging off walls may not be impossible, but it’s certainly not very common, either.

The middle floor mostly contains decorative items which is continued on what I will call the 2.5 floor with a selection of lamps/ vases and the “glass” (acrylic) chairs on the outside. There’s a futon bed as well as a small cabinet.

The bottom floor contains more seats and sofas and also houses the check-out cash register. in any case, neither of those areas feels like you would want to spend too much time there and to me they are reminiscent of small furniture stores I remember from my childhood where everything was packed so tightly you barely had room to move and explore. Certainly something you would try and avoid today.

The Flower Store

In an interesting twist and by design, not by coincidence, the real attraction of the set is the flower store and the flat above it. This has to do with the latter being the actual room where the furniture is meant to be used and you are supposed to mix & match the items from the big store to your own taste. More on that a bit further down.

From the outside the model is gorgeous and its style and color scheme are evocative of Southern European buildings as you would find them in the Mediterranean regions. it just looks like it’s bathed in sun light, not just because of the yellow color. Regrettably it’s just a Friends sets or else it wouldn’t be as shallow. we have to be glad it’s actually eight studs deep and not just six, but somehow I still can’t help but feel that this would have deserved to be an (almost) Modular Building like creation where instead of accessing the levels from behind you can separate them. This would have looked a lot better and allowed some playing with the placement of the lateral door and window(s) plus it would have provided more area for placing the furniture.

The details of the front facade are rich and elaborate with many small details and the color pattern being achieved with creative sideways building techniques as well as SNOT bricks and brackets. The downside to that is that it all feels very flimsy during assembly and without all those tiles attached it looks pretty terrible and the illusion falls apart. Still, it captures this feeling perfectly and you expect someone to pop out of the flower store any minute with someone on the second flaw watering the flowers in the window just like in a stereotypical movie scene.

The interior is sparse, with the top room being depicted in its default “renovation underway” state. This brings us back to the furniture problem. You can barely fit the bed and a chair into this very small room, much less anything more complex, which underlines my point about the shallow depth/ lack of floor area. You can do the math pretty much yourself based on counting the visible studs. If you place the rather chunky bed in there you barely have room left for anything else. The bottom level is much better and works as a small mom & pop flower shop. Similar to the Botanical Garden (41757) of course I would have loved to see this stuffed to the brim with different varieties of flowers.

The roof has a small garden and recreational are, though I’m not sure how well having a drink near a beehive/ insect hotel would go down, no matter how cozy it looks. The Trans Purple umbrella is a rare item, as it has only been done once and that was 15 years ago.

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Concluding Thoughts

As so often, this set is a two-fold story. It looks pretty decent (minus the center piece perhaps) and provides enough fodder for people mostly interested in building like me, but ultimately falls short of being truly perfect for a number of reasons.

For one, the whole concept of basically using one building as a storage facility for the other doesn’t make too much sense in the first place and even if that could be accepted, it would be much better if you substituted existing furniture rather than filling up an empty room. Along the same lines this also means that the design/ furniture store is utterly wasted as a play area. You can do nothing with it when it’s stuffed with the furniture items, but you can also do nothing with it when it’s empty. The absence of any extended area to at least reenact the typical shopping walk in such a store where you zig-zag through rows of nicely arranged chairs, tables and sofas is also not helping the matter.

All of this would have been easily fixable with just investing that bit more effort and perhaps foregoing the center section while allotting its pieces allowance to the other two buildings to enhance them further. Likewise, the overly wide side walks could have been omitted to free up of the parts budget. Once you start to think about it, you really get ideas and see where perhaps the designers went astray.

On the other hand I’m still giddy for the flower store and the artsy interpretation of the design store as a whole. If I had my own permanent LEGO city I would most definitely consider enhancing the yellow building even if it means buying some extra pieces and just the same I might convert the furniture store into a full corner building for a shopping mall. Point in case: The underlying idea ain’t that bad at all, the set just suffers from the execution and limitations. Even without major work e.g.the flower store could look pretty decent next to the toy store from a few years ago.

If your thinking is anywhere near my line of reasoning you should definitely get the set before it disappears from the market. For all others it won’t quite live up to expectations. It’s also far from the best option for kids due to the inadequate play functions. Your children will get bored pretty quickly with the repetitive furniture arrangement and the low number of minidolls preventing the scenery from looking like a bustling city. For lack of a better term, other sets offer better “density” and I think this is ultimately the downfall of this set. It feels grand, but empty.

Tiny, but cosy – LEGO Friends, Mobile Tiny House (41735)

As so often, one desires most what one can’t have and so the thought of having a tiny house somewhere near a nice piece of forest at a lake has a very strong appeal when you’re living for rent in a relatively small flat in a concrete block. It’s not that I’m unhappy with the way things are, but maybe one day this dream could become true. Being pre-conditioned in such a way the LEGO Friends Mobile Tiny House (41735) struck a nerve and it would be a given that I would try to get it. Took me a while because the set isn’t cheap, but here we are at it. Comparisons to the Camper Van (31108) are inevitable, but I hope I won’t go off on a tangent too much and not just ramble on. 

Price and Contents

Wanting something and actually getting it are still two different things and in the LEGO world the question of prices always dangles over our heads, whether we want to or not. At 785 pieces for 65 Euro thing on first glance don’t look so bad. It’s below the magical 10 Cent/ piece ratio even without discounts and in theory already makes this a good deal. However, what I shall call the “Reality Adjustment Factor” strikes again, meaning we have to consider not just the number of pieces but also their size and value. in that regard it quickly becomes clear that a) the model is relatively small overall and b) is made up from mostly small elements as well. This can be deduced from the box art already by comparing the size of the door and windows with the rest.

With that in mind the calculation becomes a different one and it feels expensive. Not as expensive as the previously referenced camper van, that’s for sure, but still costly. When it sits in front of you it really has that 50 Euro aura and that would have been a good price. 55 Euro would still have been okay, but 65 Euro really feels like a stretch. I ultimately got my package on Prime Day for 43 Euro. I still wish it would have been more affordable in the first place. You know, I’m a patient person, but even so biding your time and checking prices almost daily feels like time I could have spent more productively with other things.

Figures and Animals

The minidolls in this set are all familiar names with Paisley, Liann and Leo being present. thankfully we get new prints for the part of the clothes again instead of just full on repeats of the same designs, so there’s enough potential here to create your own customized version when mixing with other sets.

For the animals the boringness that has crept into Friends is painfully visible with just the billionth rabbit, another fat cat (Churro), a squirrel whose new print is barely noticeable and the little salamander. It’s like they’re not even trying to make this interesting and of course it’s an open question whether Friends actually needs its own versions of animals. The City squirrels look much better and I said similar stuff about the recent otters. Likewise, the bunnies and hares would fit much better, be it just scale wise. I’ll only defend the grumpy cat, but even here it wouldn’t hurt if they gave us another version. It stands to reason that soon enough we’ll all have buckets of Churros, but no black or brown companions for him.

Camp Fire Scene

The set comes with a small bit of extra scenery, that being a camp fire. It’s done well enough, but nothing to get exited over, either. In particular it feels very crammed and cut off. It would have benefited from using the larger 10 x 10 “tongue” plate just for that extra space. that and of course I always prefer more elaborate, more realistic trees. On the bright side you get a nice guitar in the “realistic” version with prints and all.

The Car

As written earlier the set feels kind of small(-ish) and a good part of the problem is the tiny car. It looks like a Mini Cooper or Fiat 500 and while that’s not impossible, neither are probably the best option to pull a reasonably heavy mobile home/ tiny house/ camping trailer let alone carry extra baggage and most importantly safely hold all passengers during the ride. Point in case: This probably should have been a medium class car like a Golf or a small SUV/ wagon at least.

The car is a bit so-so, with the main criticism next to the size being the lack of robustness. That in particular means that parts of the top section can be pulled off too easily when removing the roof and by the same token the roof itself relying way too much on the two bars and box for stabilization because there is no extra plate or such on the underside of the two wedges. It kind of works, but not in a very satisfying manner.

The Trailer

The main attraction is of course the trailer/ tiny house. A major point why I liked this set is because this little movable home looked plausible and logical, if a bit too condensed down in size to count as “realistic” – whatever this would mean in this case. Even the color scheme is tolerable in its colorfulness and would be credible if you assume that someone who builds such a house would be looking for the most cost-effective options and not worry too much whether he uses Medium Azure aluminium roof shingles or more expensive black ones. that same point is harder to argue for Lavender windows, but personally I wouldn’t care much, either, and just adapt my interior design.

The construction rests on tiny standard car wheals wheels as it would be in real life. That’s why during transport those tiny houses crawl along at 40 kph at most here in Germany so they don’t tip over. The model has a few even smaller support wheels, which on the genuine article would likely be actual supports that fold up when moving the vehicle. For more permanent installation all the wheels and supports would probably be removable to allow the building to rest on a custom frame or concrete poured foundation.

The model has a few options that allow the interior to be accessed like an actual door or a fold-out table, but of course you would open it up fully for the full play fantasy.

The roof holds the sleeping area for the three figures included and can easily be accessed by swiveling the two halves to the side. There’s not much else going on here, though, despite my romantic self having loved the inclusion of an observation platform to either watch the stars with a telescope or the wildlife.

The tow bar is attached with a clip mechanism and that is also its crux. It’s too weak for prolonged towing as eventually the weight of the trailer will make it spring open while the car pulls the house or you accidentally touch it during play. This is even more critical since it also doubles as the closing mechanism for the two halves of the house. This should really have some extra reinforcement or be secured with a pin.

The interior is lovely and I couldn’t help but giggle away at some of the details like the small bathroom or the ladder up to the roof. It’s really done well and with so many models these days omitting interior tiling it’s also good to see it present here in a way that makes sense with the doormat and in the kitchen and bathroom, respectively.

The only thing I would change is adding a few more details. Clearly there is some unused space behind the mailbox, even if it’s just for a small dresser. This wouldn’t conflict with the ladder even if it may look this way on first glance. Similarly, you’d likely have some extra stowage under the roof like nets being attached to the walls to stuff in clothes or some shelves with hinges. It’s a minor point, though, and there are no extra pieces to fill those areas, anyway.

Similarly, there would probably be something like a stack of crates with bottles in the unused area next to the fold-out table and most notably there is nothing hanging from the ceiling. From genuine shelves similar to an airline overhead luggage locker to just food and kitchen utilities dangling there I could imagine a number of things. In fact similar to my previous point it would have been nice if LEGO had included some 1 x 1 cylinders and cones for seasoning containers or similar or a small vase to be plugged onto the jumper plates in the windows. When you’re strapped for space you’d really use every crevice.

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Concluding Thoughts

This set is pretty neat. there are a few “brain farts” where the designers have not considered options and could have added a few more details, different animals or one more figure, but overall this is quite perfect in the sense of what I want LEGO to be. It not only looks excellent but also has superb play value with good access to everything and some nice ideas. The only things that bug me is the flimsiness of the towing mechanism (and by extension perhaps the all too small car) and of course the price.

Still, if you’re looking for a good Friends set with a broad appeal this could be it. It’s not terribly gender-biased to girls and it’s visual style isn’t in any way off-putting with colors that reflect the slightly chaotic nature of such a venture, but aren’t too crazy, either. I can wholeheartedly recommend this package if you have the cash for it.

Rescue me! – Sea Rescue Center (41736), Sea Rescue Plane (41752) and Beach Cleanup (30635)

As mentioned a few days ago, I was going to review the current “sea rescue” sub-theme in the LEGO Friends series eventually, and so here we are already sooner than I had planned. I simply moved this stuff to the front of the queue to not lose the momentum. That said, of course the theme itself isn’t anything new and some sort of animal rescue is always part of the annual line-up. In the last few years this was mostly land-based with cats, dogs, sloths, pandas and baby elephants taking center stage, but now we’re back to the aquatic variant. It’s been four years since I tackled the subject here on this blog with the Turtles Rescue Mission (41376) and Dolphins Rescue Mission (41378), so it has really been a minute or two. Since the sets aren’t really that big and obviously thematically connected/ related, I combined a few of them for this article, which also will make sense on another level, as you shall find out.

Price and Contents

For this article our focus is on the “big” base of operations, the Sea Rescue Center (41736) and it’s companion Sea Rescue Plane (41752). There’s also another utility vehicle to aid the cause, the Sea Rescue Boat (41734), but it’s a bit on the costly side and wasn’t a top priority for me, so maybe it’s the subject of a later article if I should ever actually buy it. I also complemented my setup with the Beach Cleanup (30635) polybag for reasons which will also become clear once you see it. All sets were released only in June, so they’re still quite fresh on the market.

Tiresome as those price discussions may be to some, we can’t really avoid them, even more so in these crazy times where we all have to be extra cost-conscious. Unfortunately we have to start with a downer. The rescue center comes in with a whopping 50 Euro for only 376 pieces, which is quite a discrepancy not only when applying the usual 10 Cent a piece logic but also in the grander scheme of things. It just doesn’t feel right even if you concede that in absolute terms 50 Euro would still be okay. I think a lot of this has to do with the very lofty construction and somehow the inevitable feeling of paying for a whole lot of nothing, that is air surrounded by a number of thin walls. It just doesn’t compute. Luckily I got my package noticeably cheaper right in the first week of release and at 33 Euro I thought this was certainly okay. This 35-ish Euro mark is more in line with what I think the set should cost right out of the gate and it appears that most retailers think so, too, with the street price having settled around that region.

The plane fares much better with a reasonable MSRP of 20 Euro for a 203 pieces. At the same time it further reinforces the disparity when comparing it to the station. This isn’t even smart from a marketing standpoint. Sets with a comparable number of elements and overall volume of content should also have a similar price. Things get even crazier when you figure in that the actual street price is somewhere in the 13.50 Euro region and that being the rule rather than the exception. It makes for a very affordable offering. The same could be said for the polybag. Around here they typically retail for 4 Euro and sometimes you can get them for 3 Euro. In this particular example it makes for an excellent deal, considering how much you get. More on that later.

Sea Rescue Center (41736)

The Sea Rescue Center is reminiscent of a building style you find quite a bit in the Mediterranean or for that matter other “flat” seas. It’s built in relatively shallow water or a flat sand beach, so it only needs a bunch of concrete columns to accommodate the tidal changes and raise the building from the ground and on top there’s a habitat or work area built from lightweight materials, which could be anything from used containers to just bits of scrap lying around. You know, that feeling of if Jaques Costeau were building a cheap research outpost on the Southern French coast to watch the dolphins.

The color scheme is of course much more flamboyant than it would be on the real thing and goes way beyond “a few daubs of warning colors” (to avoid ships bumping into the construct). This particular interpretation is plastered with Neon Yellow and my crappy camera completely blew out on it. It’s okay, though. In an odd way it still feels very harmonious and believable, which is always a good thing and even more so in the Friends universe where really garish color combinations are not unusual.

The minidolls feature Kayla, Leo and Autumn and extend that 1970s vibe with their clothing, some of which conspicuously looks like those neon-colored neoprene suits or gym wear of that era (technically it’s probably more the early 1980s). There’s not more to say than that. The figures are serviceable, but nothing really stands out.

A big attraction of every new cycle are new animal molds and for this year we’re getting otters at last after their siblings in the City series debuted earlier this year. Regrettably, those two sets of animals exist in parallel and stylistically are quite different, so no matter how you see it, it’s not the best use of LEGO‘s development resources.

In this particular case I really prefer the City ones due to the ones for Friends having turned out oddly. They appear very flat as if they were overrun by trucks and this is particularly obvious in the face that looks like a pancake with a print on. This makes me wish even more the two series would merge their efforts and come up with some middle ground solution that combines the best of both worlds. That way we could also have more variation in the poses – the regular walking otters plus those ones here swimming on their back. They could even keep it exclusive to specific products, just really make it more consistent in terms of appearance.

In addition to the otters you can see a new variant of the turtle, but it still kind of looks like way back then in Elves. there’s also a new version of the seahorse. I just forgot to include it in this separate overview shot, so more on that later.

The only side build in this set is the jet ski, apparently used to get on and off the research platform and retrieve animals and test materials from the sea. It’s the most basic build you can imagine, consisting only of an inverted wedge piece as the base whose studs have been covered up with the bare minimum of other pieces. Again serviceable, but nothing to write home about.

As mentioned, the building looks a bit like a tin shed bashed together on the cheap and at the same time also has an air of what people envisioned the future to look like in movies from the 1960s and 1970s. There’s a distinct “It’s all just plexiglass and fake walls.” vibe here. it would all be a bit flimsy and you wouldn’t necessarily feel safe or comfortable. You’d be happy to disembark after your day’s work is done.

The “water” surface under and around the building is your standard affair pieced together from different Medium Azure plates held together with a few tiles and slopes. The latter ones include 1 x 2 curved slopes in Trans Light Blue, an almost revolutionary thing by LEGO‘s standards. Users have been begging for this for years and they just never committed to it until now. Two of those same transparent slopes were also hidden in the waterfall of the Botanical Garden (41757), by the way, and some other sets contain the piece in Trans Yellow. With a bunch of other elements also having been produced in transparent versions in the last two years it gets easier to build fancy water/ ice/ glass/ crystal stuff, but I doubt we’ll ever see huge transparent plates or similar like some of LEGO‘s competitors do.

The plates are kept to the bare minimum, which is a pity. Extending them beyond the actual boundaries of the model would have allowed to sculpt the landscape a bit like adding a small sandbar perhaps or the top of a coral reef. that would have made the placement of the plants a bit more believable. Not how the seahorse (in a new yellow variant) has hidden near the docking platform.

The lab itself isn’t anything special and the way it’s built with those removable appliances on individual blocks is very reminiscent of the mini builds you get when you buy those LEGO Friends magazines. It’s sufficient for this typical “otters at the vet’s office” situation, but nothing special, either. The only highlight is the new (for me, anyway) tile with the amoeba pattern under the microscope that apparently only was introduced last year.

On top of the tower there’s a small watch post/ surveillance lookout that can be swiveled around. It serves the play fantasy in that someone would be on post observing the surroundings and triggering an alert if an animal in need is detected. It’s a bit barebones, though, and also irritates me a bit since the designers opted for the most flimsy version of the turntable, so it feels wobbly and turns a bit too easily for my taste.

 

Sea Rescue Plane (41752)

The plane (along with the boat/ catamaran) is sneakily presented in the background of the rescue center box art, so your kids will no doubt pester you about it when they realize it’s not part of the base package. Planning ahead and getting it right away could prove to be a smart move and given the very, very reasonable price is almost a no-brainer.

The model itself is quite bulky, which further reinforces my point about this being good value for the money. This is of course not least at all owing to a few pretty large pieces, but you really could do worse. Some Star Wars fighter with the same number of parts would often look smaller.

The figures for Zac and Dia again have this 1970s/ 1980s retro vibe for some of their clothing, but in the grander scheme of things it’s consistent with the other set.

 

 

The whale/ Beluga is a new variant and just by the sheer virtue of it being white so much more useful than its Bright Light Pink predecessor. It even has some subtle scratch marks printed on. The little shallow spot where it stranded is just a standard build and doesn’t present much of a challenge. Some printed boards would at least have been nice.

The plane itself comes across as very “fat” and bulky due to its very wide fuselage and at the same time extremely short wings. This is compounded by the side-by-side seating design. This one is a bit of a bummer, though, as somehow it comes back to the old issue of nobody stopping for a minute to consider that minidolls cannot be seated immediately next to each other to their arms getting in the way. With that in mind this feels like an unnecessary design flub and a single seat plane or one with the two occupants placed behind each other would have been better.

Building the plane is simple and straightforward since your just constructing a basic trough from a few plates and bricks that then gets bulked up and rounded off with a few curved slopes. Same for the wings. They’re literally just two stud wide plates with the curved slopes thrown on and not even being secured extra from the underside. That’s why they may also come off easily during play, but at the same time are easy enough to fix again. Still, that doesn’t change my view that they should have been longer and wider. This can be seen very well in the top down view. They’re really stubby suckers and just inserting an extra segment of 2 x 2 slopes could have made a difference.

This set is the first regular set to make use of the new cone type introduced with The Mighty Bowser (71411), this time in Orange to mimic the large floats the plane lands on on the water surface. The aft section can also be tilted up to access a small cargo bay/ compartment, which aside from just swooshing around the model is the only extra feature.

 

Beach Cleanup (30635)

LEGO‘s polybags can be extremely frustrating due to the simple fact that their distribution plain and simply sucks. Vendor X only has this and that polybag, another vendor has other ones and some are exclusive. Chasing every release cycle’s current items can be considered a sport in its own right. To make matters worse you then get miffed when two years after their initial release even some “rare” bag is being sold at Lidl or another discounter as if there never was a supply shortage. All that being the case I guess I got really lucky having been able to obtain the beach cleanup so early.

The bag comes with Aliya and a number of little knick-knacks. Most are surprisingly useful such as the printed brick with the sun screen formula and of course the palm leaves. most importantly, getting this bag (more than once, if you so desire) could help you bolster your otter squad.

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Concluding Thoughts

This year’s rescue theme is surprisingly well-rounded. The color scheme is attractive in the sense that its colorful and a bit flamboyant, yet not too over the top and also obeying some basic rules of color harmony. The designs are nice and evoke a certain feel and then of course there’s the otters. They’re not the most attractive to me due to the way they have been done (real otters are more slender and cute in a different way), but new animals are always a good argument pro purchase. The main deterrent really is the questionable pricing for some of those sets and you should be on the lookout for discounts if you want to get them.

New Rooms with a View – LEGO Friends, Aliya’s Room (41740), Leo’s Room (41754) and Nova’s Room (41755)

Back in the day when I was transitioning from being a LEGO Technic guy to conventional brick-built stuff, the Friends “room” sets were among the first I reviewed (here, here and here). They were fun little sets at a decent price point (with discounts, of course). There hadn’t been something similar in a while, but with the overhaul of the series it seems LEGO thought it was a good way to bring this idea back and introduce new rooms for some of the characters as a way of building the character lore. I don’t particularly care much for that, but appreciate a good set on a budget, so I got them to have a look how things now turned out several years later.

Price and Contents

To begin with, those sets are bigger, more complex packages than the original ones. This is immediately made clear by them containing two characters as minidolls and the layouts recognizably always featuring a 8 x 16 plate as the base. This is not only necessary to accommodate everything, but simply allows more freedom in design. Currently there are four of those sets of which I only got myself three for the time being – Aliya’s Room (41740), Leo’s Room (41754) and Nova’s Room (41755). The fourth one, Liann’s Room (41739), struck me as the least attractive in terms of originality of design, so I wasn’t in a rush to buy it, but I may still get it if there’s a good discount.

Speaking of which – bigger sets inevitably come at a higher price and in this case it has basically doubled from the original 10 Euro MSRP to 20 Euro. On paper that doesn’t sound too bad for sets with 179, 202, 203 and 209 pieces, respectively, but of course you have to consider a) the overall economics of the price-per-part ratio and b) that these are just vignettes, not actual buildings, vehicles or whatever. With that in mind you should definitely  be on the lookout for discounts. I got two of my packages for 13 Euro and another one for 15 Euro, but I’d wager that eventually the average price will settle around 12 Euro. possibly you could even get the sets for under 10 Euro during some special promotion, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Aliya’s Room (41740)

First in line is Aliya’s Room (41740), which she shares with Paisley. the way it’s presented both girls are into plant-based natural sciences such as botany, ecology or for that matter protecting the environment on a general level. This is of course driven home by the decorative greenery, but also by the windows in a natural “wood” color (Medium Nougat).

The minifigures are extremely fashionable and very influenced by popular culture and fashion, which is one of the better aspects of the reboot of Friends. For the subject at hand it feels a bit out of place, though, as environmentally conscious girls no doubt would give some consideration to sustainable clothing that isn’t so much tied to trends. Maybe I’m thinking too much in stereotypes here and perhaps I’m too accustomed to seeing Mia in drab khakis, but somehow it doesn’t feel “realistic” – whatever that could imply.

Apparently the girls like to have their film night once in a while and thus we get a small separate projector assembly. It has a small twist in that they are watching stuff from their phone, which is slotted in as a printed Orange tile on top. Naturally, without having applied the sticker this little extra looks a bit bland, but somehow LEGO seem completely unwilling to give us a t least a bunch of standard elements with contemporary prints. It’s really kind of weird that they hang on to printed tiles they introduced over a decade ago, but can’t be bothered to bring out some flashy new stuff to go with the times.

The white inserts in the door frame and panel should also have stickers, but thankfully even without those the room actually looks quite okay. That’s one of the things that really won me over with these little sets – they show a level of detail that would look good in actual Heartlake buildings and in a way those little vignettes almost surpass what is on offer there. Point in case: Those sets are very dense and very lively.

The set feels very cosy and is put together well enough. Indeed this could be a slightly crammed kid’s room and things get even more crowded when your best friend is coming for a sleepover. Interestingly, there’s a few unique and rare parts, but they are mot necessarily obvious on first glance. Well, the Sand Blue 8 x 16 plate is and so are the Yellow 2 x 4 modified plates, but others are better hidden. That applies for instance to the matching Yellow slider bricks that haven’t been around in more than twenty years. Two other notable pieces have camouflaged themselves in the Dark Blue trim line at the top, one being a 1 x 5 plate and the other a round corner plate in that color.

Leo’s Room (41754)

LEGO have been beating to death the fact that they want the new Friends sets to be more inclusive and representative and that also means they want to get away from making them too gender-specific/ gender-biased. Now I’m a weird old guy who has always liked this stuff for its crazy colors and have never let the series’ focus on teenage girls get in the way, but just as well I have been critical of it more than enough. Any effort to mitigate this onesidedness is therefore welcomed, but before you rejoice: No, we’re not there yet. Even the new Friends in 2023 is still 80 percent girl stuff.

Regardless, seeing a set that actually features two boys (and only boys) is a good start and of course as a gay guy I derive some twisted pleasure on whether they are just brothers or best buddies or whether there could be something more going on between Leo and Olly. 😉 Outside that of course the best part of the whole set even without deeper inspection is the fat grumpy cat. How effin’ brilliant is this? It’s one of the best ideas for a companion animal LEGO had in years!

The little obese kitty gets its own toy station, but not really much else. It could have benefited from having a tray or cat castle as an extra. On the bright side we do get a little goal for the two boys to play soccer/ footy, including an Orange ball. this could have come in a different color like Dark Azure with white decorations perhaps to make it more distinct. The model already has an awful lot of Orange and Coral parts.

The room itself is again quite stuffed to the brim with a small computer area beside the bunk beds, some surfing/ diving equipment and surprisingly enough a small kitchen area, including a camera setup to record videos for social media. That cooking/ baking/ cake decorating part feels a bit odd, to say the least. It’s not that boys/ men don’t spend time in the kitchen (I love baking myself), but I doubt many would have a setup to that effect in their sleeping rooms…

A standout feature of this set is the extra balcony, which adds some visual interest. This in particular makes you wish that the sets could be stacked together as if they were part of a modular building.

Nova’s Room (41755)

The third set is a bit of an outlier with its very dark and “cold” color scheme. Mind you, it’s not unrealistic, just a bit unusual. It’s more reminiscent of one of those dedicated gaming rooms with dark walls and neon lighting you see on respective streaming platforms and YouTube. As a regular sleeping room it’s perhaps a bit depressing or crazy-making. That notwithstanding, the color scheme in itself is tasteful enough and consistent.

The most interesting feature of the minidolls for Zac and Nova  are the gamer-themed prints on the shirts. That is going to draw some attention, though due to the two using skin colors other than the standard Light Nougat it would not be easy to use the elements on other figures.

Playing video games all day is of course not always a fulfilling activity and for health reasons you have to have some other interests as well, so we get a little workbench that hints at the two possibly being involved in skating or other activities. It’s never really spelled out what it is, but at least those tools would come in handy to fix the cart of the paraplegic dog.

 

The gaming station is a beefy computer rig, which would become even more clear with the stickers. Those include those colorful RGB fans and some other details. Again the non-existence of some decent prints is biting everyone in their behind and in this particular scenario a printed 2 x 6 tile to represent an ultra wide monitor could have been pretty awesome. And even a mundane 2 x 4 tile representing a Windows desktop would have been better than stickers. It’s all about options, you know.

The seating is modeled after those gaming chairs, but in the end feels more like a captain’s chair ripped of a Star Trek ship bridge. It’s just a bit too bulky due to the limitations of building it with existing pieces. A side effect also is that it actually cannot be turned around without scratching the “table”. if you look closely you also see that this causes some sort of “hole” in the scene, i.e. an area where no real detail is placed. Adding some flowers on the right hand side of the table could have avoided that.

Part of the problem is also the retractable shelf and the hidden crevice behind it.this contributes to the empty feeling and while applying the stickers would improve things, it would have been preferable if there were a few built details, be it just a few colored 1 x 1 plates and tiles.

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Concluding Thoughts

I really liked those sets. They nicely illustrate what’s possible in the Friends series if only you commit yourself and leave the designers some breathing room. Pretty much any of these separate rooms would look good in an actual building. At the same time that is of course the big frustration – actual building models never are this rich and you can see how corners are cut or the details are stretched out and distributed across multiple levels and rooms to fit the budget. It’s really a shame since if things were different, Friends could easily compete even with actual Modular Buildings (the specific design philosophy that sets the series apart notwithstanding). If you want to see what’s possible with LEGO pieces and a bit of love I would definitely recommend getting those packages just for that warm fuzzy feeling inside.