LEGO 40056 Thanksgiving Feast

This will be a quick one since it is a polybag set. I bought this from eBay from a seller who had not responded to my question by the the auction ended. The scene for this set is a Thanksgiving feast. Here is a look at the polybag packaging. It has the standard bright yellow.

The larger pieces are in loose form, the smaller pieces in a smaller separate polybag. The instructions as usual are in the form of a booklet.

I must say I bought it mainly because it was full of those accessories. Certainly it was not for the minifigures where are really plain vanilla one which one can find any Lego City set. Of course their faces are better than the classic ones found in the modular sets but really, nothing is very special about the 2 minifigures.

Next are the 2 cats. Sadly there are no printing on them. Makes them look a bit like zombie cats. If we start talking about the accessories, oh my there are a lot to talk about, not even sure where to start so I will mention the more prominant ones. The trans clear wine bottle has the ship printing that can be also found in the PoTC Captain Log Cabin. The pie was first found in the CMF series 5 Small Clown so it an uncommon. The full turkey with 2 drumsticks is an uncommon item as well.

So of course without hesitation, my first thought would be which modular building would be fitting for it? The first set to come to my mind was the Green Grocer. Thankfully there was enough space to put in the big table into it though it was a slight snug fit.

Overall a nice set to add some accessories to any dinner table scene in your Lego build. For SGD$15 bucks, it is of course horrible in terms of price per piece but one must remember most of the 46 pieces are mostly those accessory parts which are not that easy to get and are the prime reason to get this set. Plus it is not available in Singapore so the price is pretty reasonable. Actual retail if it can be found in US is USD$7.99. So the guy who sold it to me maybe made a profit margin of 3 dollars from me? Which is not too bad because on must also consider the shipping costs.

To close off, we are getting close towards Thanksgiving and Christmas. This set is like a appetizer for the month of November and leads into December. I have bought some Seasonal sets and cannot wait to build them at the start of December.

Lego 31012 Family House

This build comes from the creator series and is called the Family House. I got it from Metro during a 20% sales promotion which Metro has several all year round.

At $88 bucks for 756 pieces, it is quite a good price and comes with a not so common light brick which recently are often found in the Winter Village Seasonal sets among other sets. This light brick lights up the house with a nice warm light in the right bigger portion of the house. The box of course highlight this light brick

The back show all 3 builds in more detail, with one build being considered as easy, another medium and finally the main build as advanced. Only the advanced build uses the light brick.

Here is a cover art scan of one of the instruction manual. The advanced build is given 2 manual whereas the medium and easy one comes with 1 each.

So opening the box unveils a cardboard backing with the instruction manual. This is great as it will keep the manual from being bent or crumpled. This was in the recent past found only in exclusives sets but are now the bigger standard Lego sets are getting this good treatment and hopefully it continues. This set does not come with a sticker sheet and the bags un-numbered. What is great as well is the big plates used in this set. The main build is 32 studs wide, which is the same as modulars but slightly shallower at 24 studs. Might in the future, mod it slightly to join it to my modulars.

Moving onto to the minifigs. This set is slightly sparse if one compares to the modular ones and has only 2, one male and one female. Older creator houses come without any so this has to be considered an improvement in this case. It seems the males is holding a remote control for his remote car. The remote car microbuild is pretty well done I must say and they seem to be gaining traction in Lego sets.

The next piece we build is a small yellow car that seats 1 person only. So it is a little small but I understood why which is obvious later on in the build.

At the end of the first instruction manual, the bottom level is complete. We will look at some of the interesting feature found in there next.

There are 2 side doors with one being next to the garage.

Near it is a small pool, which has a light probably to make sure some poor bloke does not accidentally fall into it and drown.

Some small plants are found at the side of the main entrance.

The furniture at the ground floor is rather sparse. Not much other than a table and chair. Well at least the table has a nice milk carton.

There is a nice cosy looking fireplace though so that in the winter nights this place would not be bleeding cold.

Another door can be found next to the fireplace chimney. So at build has a total of 3 doors all over the place.

Here is a shot of the build when it is opened. This makes it easier to access it and place all the minifigures or whatever during role playing.

The build uses a 2 simple elements to hold and 2 halves together. 

It does the simple of job of holding them together well so no complaints here.

The next build is the 2nd level of the house. One side is the ceiling and hold the chandelier with light bricks.

Here we have a close up of the light bright mounted at angle before it gets completely covered up by the roof bricks.

Here you can see the light brick lighting up the chandelier piece.

Too bad it does not look convincing enough that the chandelier itself is lighting up the space. Never the less, it still looks pretty awesome.

Here is the 2nd part of the 2nd floor. It consists of a small room for a bed that has a lampshade or some sorts. Outside it, there is a small grill.

My chief complaint here would be the small room is so small that it is very hard to put a minifig in there lying asleep on the bed. Making it worse is the presence of the lampshade.

Finally a shot of how the whole build looks like assembled up. Gorgeous and looks very modern indeed. In fact it is so far the most modern looking Lego house that I have in my collection. The rest look more like preserved heritage buildings.

Here is a shot of it fully opened up with the car put into the garage. As you can see the car fits lengthwise exactly. Hence why the car build was rather small.

To end off this review, here is a shot of the house with the light brick in action.

Lego 10217 Diagon Alley - Gringotts Wizarding Bank

Prologue

So this is the third and last building in the Diagon Alley set which is know as Gringotts Wizarding Bank. This is supposedly the only bank of the wizarding world in the world of Harry Potter. Here is the instruction manual cover art and is the same as the rest except it is labelled 3.

 

The Build - Gringotts Wizarding Bank

At 50% build, the super big reddish-brown door look imposing indeed and makes this almost seem like the front of a castle.

The back side of this is still rather plain. No surprises there.

The full build looks very unique I believe due to the slanting pair of pillars. The facade design around the windows are really a nice touch. Tile walled looks very colonial indeed, pitty that the upper levels also could not be like that.

When completed, it looks like pretty majestic or even like a library. The chandelier above the door is very well made and with it so high really makes the interior look majestic as well. The other stuff to me are pretty meh.

Here is how the build looks like when "closed up" and both ways, closed or open, it looks pretty good.

The angled skylight also adds to the unique design of this build. I guess slants are the norm here for this build.

Here is a back shot of the build and if you look at this, this whole build looks quite detailed from all 4 sides which is not so common in most Lego builds.

Here is a shot of the balcony, which is a bit narrow. It also has no door and leads to nowhere. The only pity of this is that there is no platform at the 2nd level to place minifigures as well, hence it only looks good from the outside. The build has no actual 2nd level is a slight pity.

Final Thoughts - Gringotts Wizarding Bank

This is the last of the 3 builds for Diagon Alley.I must say that my favourite is definitely Ollivander's Wand Shop. Coming up 2nd is Borgin and Burkes. So this last build is 3rd place. To be honest, the 2nd and 3rd place come close. Except the cool factor of the glow in the dark tiles, probably tilts it for Borgin and Burkes. Overall though, all 3 builds offer more advanced techniques than regular Lego city sets. Price per piece is very decent too if you could get it at retail price, like most of the exclusives. Although I am not a Harry Potter fan, I bought this set mainly because of the designs rather than the characters. With that said, this closes the 3 part review of Diagon Alley, hopefully in the near future I can find a way to modify them slightly and add them side by side to my modulars!