LEGO Creator Expert Detectives Office

A great build - very enjoyable throughout, with some really bizarre and interesting techniques at times. For instance - the water tower is actually a tank tread wrapped around a gear, with tiles capped over each link of the tread! Some of the facade above thee brown brick building is made of a bunch of mech-suit fists! I would have never thought of that. I'd say this build took me about 5 or 6 hours to complete, with a few interludes spent looking for small pieces that had fallen onto the floor or were buried in the pile. The set comes with numbered bags; there are at least 16 bags in total, numbered into 4 stages of about 600 pieces each. I think this is a great entry point for people to get into the modular buildings because it's A) the smallest that is currently available (about 10x10 inches; for the space I have available it's actually the only one that will do!) and B) is not SO complex as to frustrate. The only challenge is how big or small your hands are! Reaching into the interiors is a bit of a squeeze for an adult. From the outside the set looks great. I love these kinds of buildings! Inside, you have a pool hall/club house and a detectives office, which strike a good balance between detail and playable, posable space. The bottom floor of the other building - a barber shop - is a very tight squeeze but is well detailed. My love of the product does not insulate it from critique: Upstairs in the blue building, there isn't much going on. Second floor is a bathroom, third floor is a kitchen (what a terrible apartment!). Because the entire building only takes up about 2/3 of the entire depth of the base plate (leaving a dirty alley for lowlifes and thugs to shoot dice behind the pool hall!), the spare interior of the apartment building seems like a missed opportunity. Bump the blue building out to the back of the plate and make room for a real apartment! I also did not think the 6 minifigures were noteworthy. I get that all the figs in these expert modular building sets are simpler in design, with the default, non-gendered smiley face, but they looks so antiquated compared to yellow-skinned minifgures from modern-day City sets, and especially in comparison to collectible-series minifigures. Not my favorite aspect of the set. For me, it's all about the exterior look! One drawback that isn't really a fair criticism of the product is that, like a lot of Lego instruction manuals, the colors are sometimes off in a way that makes it hard to tell exactly which shade of gray or brown you have to deal with. It shouldn't be that the main thing that makes this set difficult enough to be an Expert-line one is that the manual is simply difficult to see. Also I'm partially colorblind so maybe that's just my issue! On another note, my package arrived (fulfilled by Amazon, delivered by USPS) in kind of rough shape. So rough that one of the Lego pieces (a 1x10 gray plate) was bent in half! Must have been SOME impact to cause that. Luckily this is a common enough piece that I could salvage it from something else, but imagine if I didn't have it, of it a different piece broke? Read more

Pros: Extremely detailed, tons of pieces, has a fun story/plot, fun to build Cons: None If you're an AFOL, then this set needs no introduction. This is Lego's modular building released in 2015 and goes with all previous buildings in the lineup. This is my third modular building (the first two being Parisian Restaurant and Palace Cinema), and I think it was the most enjoyable to build. It uses some creative techniques that I haven't seen before and there's so much going on that it's very fun to look at and play with after you finish building it. It comes six minifigs, all with different clothes and hairstyles, but they all have the default smiley face. It also comes with a cat figurine. Like many of the previous modular buildings, this one also has three levels, each of which are removable so you can see the details inside. The first floor is comprised of two connected buildings: Al's barbershop and a pool hall. The pool hall has many interesting details such as cue sticks, a cue bridge, a dart board, and a ceiling fan.The barbershop has a rotating seat and a plastic, reflective piece for the mirror. It's not a flimsy printed piece or sticker, but a pretty sturdy card-like piece. The outside of the buildings are very well detailed and interesting to look at. On the second floor, there's a detective's office and a restroom. The office has a lot of things going on and there are many props to make it look legitimate. One thing I really like is the sliding roof ladder with a working lock. The third floor features a roof with a water tower and a small kitchenette. The exterior of the top floor is very well detailed and uses some interesting pieces to accomplish unique textures. It took me about nine hours spread across two days to build the whole thing. However, like with any Lego set, the time it takes you will vary. Overall, it was fun to build and employs some interesting techniques, such as the letters for "AL'S" and the water tower on the roof. If you're a collector of modular buildings, then this is definitely one to add to your collection. If you're just starting off, this is a good one to start with if it's still available. Read more

I worked with my 8-year on this, deliberately slowing down the pace so that we could take 3 to 4 days to complete it. At this price, you don't just want to "gobble it down" in one sitting. Is it worth the price? Yes. The detail is wonderful. Even after being completely finished, you can remove the different floors and look in each room, rearrange characters, open and close doors (and windows and desk drawers and cupboards and the safes), swivel the desk chair or barber chair, rearrange the pool cues, etc. Additional to that, it helped my child start to understand the value of impulse control -- he paid for the product himself by earning the money over a three month period and avoiding spending it on other cheaper alternatives. The box says 16 years of age or older. What about younger users? I suggest a partnered build -- mistakes are unforgiving in the sense, that so much builds on top of other things. For example of what can happen, my child used the wrong color brick early on and didn't discover the mistake until an hour later. He eventually located that brick and had to decide whether to use an alternative brick or to try to access the brick he needed and replace it with the correct one. We did this last strategy and it took us about 20 to 30 minutes to correct the structural damage that resulted. But it was worth it! He learned the value of patience and really paying attention to detail -- which is yet another lesson in impulse-control. Read more