Pieces: 2523
Minifigures: 6
Price: $199.99
Description from Lego:
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Simpsons-House-71006
It has arrived...Ahhhh The Simpsons!
The rear of the box shows various vignettes of happenings in and around the house.
In an attempt to extend the build as long as possible, and against the recommendations, I opened all the bags to make one massive pile of pieces. Tan and brown are clearly the dominant colors of the set, with a good helping of bright pastels for interior detail.
Out of the box, there are a total of 19 bags, numbered 1-7. Within the 19 main bags, there are 22 smaller bags as well as 6 bags for each minifigure head. There is also an unnumbered bag of large plates, and the 3 instruction booklets and sticker sheet are in a tape-sealed bag with a cardboard backing.
Speaking of the (dreaded) sticker sheet. Most of these are actually perfect little finishing touches to the set, and the “Property of Ned Flanders” labels on multiple items Homer has “borrowed” add some humor as well. I would have liked to see a few more of these as printed pieces, but really that could be said of any set that has stickers, am I right?
An interesting feature of the booklets is that they sometimes clarify what piece to NOT use.
Before assembling, I picked out some of the unique pieces and colors. Many are used only in this set or a few others (mainly Friends & Chima). The instructions for this set are available at Lego.com if you're curious as to the individual part numbers or distributions. The brick separator is a nice inclusion, especially for prying small plates apart. I like that Radioactive Man is Lego-fied...maybe a future set?
Also included are 2 different groups of utensils, one for the kitchen and another for the garage. Bonus: all 26 pieces are only counted as 2 in the total piece count.
Say “hi-dilly-ho” to the Simpson family and stupid, sexy Flanders. Lisa looks Ok without her dress, but Marge is funny in just her underwear!
Marge and Lisa now decent with dresses on.
Marge, Lisa, and Flanders have rear printing on their backs.
The first things you get to build are all the exterior accessories (excluding the mailbox, which isn't until the end of the first booklet for some reason). I don't know who is supposed to be laying out on the lounge chairs – Marge and Homer don't have time to relax with 3 mischievous kids running amok! The set comes with 3 sausages...mmm, sausage...but only 2 are used on the grill, so I incorrectly thought one was a spare (see if you can find where it ended up in one of the pictures below). Bart's skateboard ramp adds extra playability, and the “El Barto” decal is a nice nod to a running gag in the early episodes of the show.
The Simpson car is 6 studs wide with opening front doors and trunk. The front-right fender is perpetually crumpled, true to the cartoon version. It's a very tight squeeze to fit all the characters inside at once. I had to remove an arm from both Bart and Lisa to get them in the back seat, and Maggie can only kind of lay sideways in the very back.
After the car, you assemble the garage (or “car hole” as Moe would say), which features great details, including paint cans, tools/boxes, and even a vice on the bench. Side note: the bottom of the white tool box is actually a window that has a tiny glass window that was nearly impossible to find in my giant pile! You can see in the background that I did begin gathering similar pieces together, making big towers of brown and tan plates.
The garage is almost complete, with sideways 1x2x3 windows and garage door composed of flesh-colored 6x8 plates, unique to this set. All of the doors in the house are also in this unique color.
Here I'm a ways into assembling the front half of the first floor, showing how the protruding front windows are created with sets of 1x4 hinge plates.
This is the back half of the first floor with the famous couch and TV along with a brick-built telephone for Bart, AKA “Hugh Jass” to make prank calls. Notice the compact, yet detailed oven and sink in the kitchen as well. Right after this, both halves are joined with more hinge plates and you can continue building the back half.
Here is the whole first floor, just before starting on the second floor.
The last accessories you assemble before moving to the second floor are the kitchen table and chairs. You can fit 4 figures at the table, but not in the (half) kitchen.
The second floor layout, with all the carpet in place, along with Maggie's cute, creative crib and some of the bathroom fixtures taking shape. Also visible is the unadorned back patio.
Marge and Homer's bed with nightstands. The bed/nightstand combo consists of a single main “T” shaped structure that snaps into place. I think a couple lamps for the nightstands would have been a logical addition here...Bart and Lisa have them anyway.
This is 2/3 of Lisa's room, featuring bed, nightstands, and a shelf full of her books and the (working) magnifying glass.
The bathroom has all the essentials: sink, mirror, shower with both hot and cold knobs, and toilet with toilet paper – looks like Marge corrected the “toilet paper hung in improper overhand fashion”.
Here we have the only section of the second floor that is removable (aside from the roof). This includes the staircase/hallway with framed pictures, Bart's whole room, and the other 1/3 of Lisa's room. Bart's room is quite faithfully represented, though the window is too small for him to escape to his treehouse!
Alternate angle showing Bart's bulletin board, perpetually-open desk drawer, and “Keep Out!” sticker on his door.
The other part of Lisa's room with her vanity mirror, desk, stool, and strangely enough, a camera stand.
Once Lisa's room is finished, we just need to build the last section of roof, snap the garage to the house (which can be easier said than done), and we have the finished product.
I ended up with 68 spare pieces. Nothing too surprising, except for the 4 extra levers.
All told, it took me about 12-13 hours to assemble. Bear in mind that I was occasionally taking pictures and making notes, and I had mixed all the pieces together. Sorting the pieces by bag and by color would considerably decrease assembly time, but where's the fun in that? :)
It wasn't a particularly difficult build, just lengthy. Building the boxy car, garage, and house is pretty straightforward, with some SNOT techniques sprinkled around, mostly for furniture and windows. Some trickier things resulted from incorrectly snapping small plates together.
Playability: 9/10
I personally purchased mine for display purposes and general bragging rights, but there are enough characters and accessories to play around with the set too, recreating classic moments from the show or making new stories of your own. You've got definite potential for stop motion films too, if you have the patience for that kind of thing. All the kitchen utensils, tools, and furniture really extend the dollhouse-like play possibilities for the set. However, if purchasing for a child a) please adopt me, and b) there are far cheaper alternatives for generic dollhouses/playsets. I only subtract a point because I don't believe those who are young enough to really “play” with the set could appreciate the awesomeness of it. I'd be willing to wager that the demographic of this set will be primarily for those in my age range (25-30), who grew up in the golden age of the show.
Design: 9/10
If it's not immediately apparent, it should be noted that this set is not an exact replica of the Simpson house floor plan. I'm sure this is simply a compromise to keep the set at a somewhat reasonable price point. I suppose at least another whole set would be sufficient to duplicate the house perfectly, and there are probably those out there with more disposable income than me that have already attempted it. If anyone is curious what the floor plan should be, the illustrations below are the best place to start.
Nevertheless, it's still a fantastic set within this piece restriction, with a few odd design choices here and there. For instance, I think the colors of the TV and piano should probably have been swapped, and there should be one long, smooth staircase banister (for Bart to slide down).
If there had been a way to design the floor plan so that the kitchen wasn't split in half, or if the second floor was removable above the kitchen, this would have allowed all the characters to fit in it at the same time. And while none of the windows have curtains, I was slightly disappointed there are no corn cob drapes in the kitchen. In fact, when my father saw this set, the first thing he asked was “Are there corn curtains?”...so it must be a pretty recognizable detail.
As hinted at above, it can be tricky to connect the garage to the house without one or more walls crumbling. Using Technic pins instead of the bricks with pins does make it easier to connect.
Price: 9/10
Using the “traditional” method of price, you get 2523 advertised pieces for $199.99, or about 7.9¢ per piece. However, given there are about 70 spares and the kitchen utensils and tools are actually 26 separate pieces, you could say there are ~100 more pieces for a value closer to 7.6¢ per piece.
I've been thinking that simply dividing the number of pieces by the price may not be the most accurate way to measure value, as you can't count a 1x1 brick as equal to a 8x16 plate. So I weighed all of the pieces (including spares and separator) with a kitchen scale for a total weight of 92 oz (2608 g). With this measurement, the set is $2.17 per oz, or 7.7¢ per gram (coincidentally, almost the same as price per piece).
I can't say if this will catch on, but it's a different way about thinking of the value of a set, especially if it includes a significant number of larger pieces. I'd encourage others to obtain a scale to mess around with just in case. Maybe we can determine the “ideal” weight for a certain price or number of pieces.
Whether you try to rationalize it by all the pieces or the total weight, I think the $200 price tag will still be off putting to some that would really like to have this set. Full disclosure: I bought this set using $35 worth of VIP credit, and it was still the most expensive Lego purchase I have made. I personally wouldn't have paid the full $200 for this or any Lego set; that's just my frugal nature. That being said, 200 bucks for 2500+ pieces may very well be a bargain, at least compared to other sets, licensed or otherwise.
Parts: 9/10
You get A LOT of parts with many rare pieces and unique colors, with creative uses to make an incredible amount of detail, inside the house and out. At time of writing, there are only 8 other sets with more pieces than this for sale at Lego.com.
I have to be picky here and deduct a point because Lisa doesn't have her trademark “sax-o-mo-phone”, but she does have a poster with one on it. At least giving her a bicycle would have enhanced her playability. There are no Santa's Little Helper (dog) or Snowball II (cat) pieces, though both animals are shown on the box art. I would have sacrificed all the exterior details (mail box, skateboard ramp, grill, lounge chairs) AND the Flanders minifigure for the dog, cat, and sax to round out the central family/interior details.
Slight color variations of some pieces were difficult to discern in the booklets, though this may have been solved by not mixing all the bags together. And again, a couple more printed pieces would have been nice, but considering each character has their own molded head, that's not a big deal.
Mini-figures: 9/10
In terms of replicating the cartoon characters, the figures are pretty spot on. However, I'm honestly not sure why the sleepy/shifty-eyed expressions were chosen for Homer, Marge, and Bart, particularly when the whole family is wide-eyed and smiling on the box art. Even so, the painted details are impressive, considering the atypical 3D head shapes.
I could see most of the clothing (pants, short-sleeve shirts) being re-purposed, but the heads are always going to be who they are; being solid, there are no hairpieces to be used on other heads.
Marge and Lisa really didn't need cloth dresses; they are tricky to put on, and I don't think anyone would have faulted the designers to just use painted legs. Marge can't sit down without really crunching the dress...even in the picture on the box of her sitting on the couch she doesn't have the dress on. Also, her hair, while of accurate height, is too tall to walk through the doorways.
Overall (average): 9/10
It's the Simpsons in Lego! If that statement doesn't excite you, you'll probably never care about this set. For the most part, it is a faithful recreation of one of the most iconic houses (and families) in TV history. It really is a long time coming...how we ended up with SpongeBob sets before The Simpsons is quite befuddling. Granted this set may have been more relevant back in the heyday of The Simpsons (mid to late 90's), a lot of the pieces and colors hadn't been created yet until recent years. And I wouldn't have been able to afford it back then anyway!
I do hope they will continue to put the license to good use and come out with smaller sets for a wider audience to enjoy (so much potential!), with the understanding there will always be additional expense for the licensing, and if they need new molds for additional character heads.
I don't expect someone to place all their trust in a random guy on the internet when deciding whether to spend $200 on little pieces of colored plastic. If you really wanted it, you probably already got it right away, or at least let someone know it's on your wishlist. For those still on the fence, I hope this review gave you the push to check it out without spoiling all the fun of actually building it!
If anyone has any other questions, feel free to post them below. I tried to include some things that I've liked from other reviews, but please let me know what you thought of my first review!
See also The Simpsons Minifigures Series Review
