I stopped in the LEGO store at the Mall Of America and saw the set sitting on the shelf. That's all there was, just the one set. I didn't buy it, I'm still not convinced that I need one. I have enough tan and brown. It's mostly the minifigs that I want. There are some other smaller sets that might be worth picking up but when you get down to it I don't even need the minifigs that much. Breaking the havin' something for the sake of having it habit is hard.
There was a built set in the front window of the LEGO store and I looked at that for a bit before I left. It is kind of nice and I did find some nice shots of the interior online. They are big pictures when you click on them.
I like the crib and the vacuum. That's a Droid body in blay there. Very versitile part, huh. You can't tell but the crib sits in one end of Homer and Marge's bedroom. Maggie doesn't get her own room in the LEGO version of the house. Bart has a nice square Radioactive Man comic. The lamp is great use of the hot dog. Nice decorations and a good bed.
There are some nice bits in the garage. There's a cell door in there somewhere. The wrench, drill and tire iron were in some racing sets last year. They wouldn't be something that I buy. I'm sure they will turn up in other sets. I see that the wheelbarrow belongs to Ned. I wonder what else does? If Homer's poorly treated neighbor is coming back to reclaim some of his stuff I'm betting he won't do so well. The couch and tv look fine. It would be more accurate to take a plier and put a bend, or two, in the levers that are pretending to be the antenna.
Lisa has a nice room but I don't remember Maggie being so mean. Lisa has her backpack and a cute little bed. There's a bit more of Lisa's room on the other half of the house. Not the best toilet I've seen but decent.
There's Maggie making a mess and Lisa playing the purple piano. Odd that she's standing up to play. Nice kitchen cupboards with a few Friends accessories. Both rooms have bay windows. You can see partly how that was done from the picture. A nice bunch of shots of the family at home.
I do like the rooms for the most part but sadly Maggie's bedroom isn't the only change to the house. I'm sure if they built the house as it was supposed to be it would be much more than $200. I could see it being nearly double. It needs to be something special for people to fork out that kind of dough.
I found this cool cut-away of the house on the internet. You can compare it to the top down shot of the Brick Built version below and see plenty of changes. The garage is now an attached side along instead of a partial tuck under. The TV version has 5 rooms on the ground floor plus the garage. The LEGO version only has three and those rooms have everything smushed together and re-arranged. The kitchen has a bay window that over looks the front street. The room behind the garage is missing completely. If I was personally making a model of the house I would have made it more like the tv version. I could imagine that it would be way more than 2500 pieces. Re-creating the color scheme would be hard and expensive. So, that leaves me out.
The brick built house isn't the same color as the TV version either. The TV version is a riot of color and the brick version is much more subdued. They change up a lot of the color details. Look at the stairs to the second floor. You'd have to build the house with walls 2 studs wide so you could have a different color inside and outside. That would sky rocket the list price of the set. Still having a big pile of that dull orange color might be nice and look at all the pink you'd get if the set were built true to the original.
The second floor has 4 rooms and two bathrooms. There's a little storage room by the bathroom that shows up better on the floor plan layout at the bottom of the post. Each of the kids has their own rooms and they have a lot more furniture in those rooms.
Marge and Homer share the room on the left with Maggie. There's just the one bathroom. That would be a nightmare, sharing a bathroom with Homer. At least Marge would clean up after him. The rest of the floor has the two kids rooms and the stair way. There is a lot of doors and they are solid ones in what looks like medium flesh or nougat. It's not listed anywhere yet. I like some of the older doors but you can only use that one with the window so often. It's nice to have a different looking solid door.
Here's that floow plan I mentioned. It pops up to be pretty large when you click on it.
That's pretty much it for this part. Next couple of days I'll do a post on the figures and then some more pictures of the Contest House.
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