Here's my take on not one LEGO® Modular building but three of these Creator Exclusive sets; Grand Emporium (10211), Pet Shop (10218) and Parisian Restaurant (10243) I hope that the content here will offer new LEGO® fans valuable points of view about these three modular buildings and for those who already own any of them this article should act as eye candy of these LEGO® Modulars we've come to love. space for some retail therapy. Municipals and public service structures are important but the Modular sets related to those themes especially the Fire Brigade 10197 are now retired and way too unattainable at the time of this writing. Town Hall 10224 is available but our small town is just not big enough for two Mayors. So to keep things 'essential' I stuck with the above basics to keep the play factor real and nothing too luxurious. 4) Size and Storage So let's get to it. LEGO® Online Shop has listed the Grand Emporium as a cold sold out, it still has not changed its label to Retired like the other officially retired sets but prices of available sets are seeing 30-60% increase over their original shelf price in the open market like eBay.
The Pet Shop and Parisian Restaurant are still in production with the latter easily available in most specialized toy stores including the official LEGO® Online Shop, The Pet Shop is next in line for retirement so unless you really like the design you could probably wait another 3-6 months (maybe a year who knows) or so before things start going crazy as with The Grand Emporium and insane such the Fire Brigade. An overview of the LEGO® Modulars ever (and to be) released. The full service kitchen of the Parisian Restaurant (2014) 1st floor apartment and a top floor Artist Studio with a baking oven plus 2 paintings. All of which contribute to a more elaborate play for my kid. Artist Studio above the Parisian Restaurant. A fully furnished 1st floor apartment. Working backwards (bypassing Palace Cinema 10232 and Town Hall 10224, sorry I don't own them yet) you will see that the details begin to reduce, where Pet Shop with a decent amount of exterior and interior details has 2 rather empty floors.
The play naturally exist within the Pet Shop, its building and on the ground floor of the Town House. The 2 unique detachable buildings of the LEGO® Pet Shop 10218 not necessarily a bad thing. This is our most recent and third modular so we haven't really had to time to do any renovations. The Grand Emporium was our second modular acquired and when it comes to design the Grand Emporium stands out as a really nice architectural piece, for those that like the LEGO® Architecture™ series this is a great modular to transition into. The Grand Emporium 10211 and its distinctive architectural features Imagine doing this build on 2 full floors. The Grand Emporium furnished with extra products. In addition to its grand exterior it houses a bustling ground floor with mannequins, cashier and sales person, a window cleaner and an ice-cream stand out front but what was nice about the interior was the Chandelier and escalators which gave light to some unique build techniques along with the front 'SHOP' Signage which was quite cool as well.
The top floor Chandelier along with additional product While the Grand Emporium does measures up to its name in terms of design the Pet Shop and Parisian Restaurant do deliver on design in their way. For instance the Pet Shop has its cool storefront sign (all these signage gave inspiration to the signage of my HUB Bike Shop Cafe MOD) and the Town House with its characteristic bay windows. The frontage of the the LEGO® Pet Shop 10218. The classical design of the Parisians upper floors. Now here comes practical part of my overview. I'm sure not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated room or space to keep a LEGO® town displayed all day and all year round. I tend to keep our sets stored unless my kid wants to play with a specific modular and on special occasions the town would be set up for a day to have a full on play session. Before I got these sets and any LEGO® sets for that matter I always look at the size specifications to see where and how they could be stored before being acquired.
When you have young kids LEGO® can't not be left around the house for safety purposes. Furthermore as a parent you do want to encourage and maintain a good habit of keeping things organized. I've found that a good storage system for these Modulars and LEGO® in general are the IKEA BESTÅ Storage Units each unit section easily fits 3-4 modulars depending which one and I can safely say these three sets fit with space for another 32x32 custom modular I built. You won't have to split the floors but you could do that and enjoy a game of LEGO® Tetris (the above pic will give you an idea) to get the most space out of your storage units. Even with the current four modulars in one storage section I still have space to place containers of spares within the same unit. To me its by far the best way to keep things well stored and organized. So there you have it, three really nice LEGO® Modulars each unique with their own characteristics (and flaws). Today the Parisian remains to be my favourite even with it being the smallest, to me the level of detail and it's classic design makes it a modular worth having.
This same attention to detail can be seen in the latest Detective's Office 10246 and I reckon this will be what we can expect from future modulars. It would have been nice to have gotten the Fire Brigade 10197 as my son is into Fire Stations and Fire Trucks at the moment but I guess you could say I came into the game a little too late and could not find any rationally priced sets. There is the LEGO® CITY Fire Station 60004 which by looking at the part inventor might prove to be a decent modification project in the not too distant future. Finally, I can see why many kids and adults enjoy LEGO® around the world and these Exclusive sets truly exemplify the potential of its creative system, furthermore it somehow fulfils our desire to play with miniature structures. If you've reached this point of my overview it means I have done something right to keep your attention with either my words or my illustrative pictures. I hope you enjoyed this overview of mine and please do comment or feedback with any corrections if spotted.