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B u y t h e t o y s , n o t t h e h y p e .
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The Simpsons' HouseLegoby yo go re
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Need help? Mail Us! |
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B u y t h e t o y s , n o t t h e h y p e .
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The Simpsons' HouseLegoby yo go re
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Need help? Mail Us! |
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We start with Homer's car. Originally based on a Plymouth Valiant, the car on the cartoon is a pink, four-door sedan. This one gets the color right, but is missing two doors. And a roof. That's sort of a standard shortcut for Lego cars, so we can forgive it.
with a fair amount of SNOT - "studs not on top" - construction. It has an angled grill in front, moveable side mirrors, opening doors, and a functional trunk. There is enough space for two minifigures in the front seats, but the back is at once more spacious and more crowded: there are no backs to the front seats, just studs to fit in the figures' legs, while the back seat is about twice as long as you'd expect.
There are three sticker to apply to the car: front and back license plates (1PHL07) and a radio on the dashboard. Just like on the show, the driver's side fender is slightly crumpled, which is an amazing little detail for the designers to remember to include.
The "garage?" Hey fellas, the "garage"! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man! [Well what do you call it? --ed.] A car hole! From the outside, the car hole looks rather plain - it's just a beige box with a brown roof and a small window over the door, nothing too special. The door itself is orange, which a bit unusual, but not so out there that it looks wrong. There's a bushy green shrub growing by the rear corner, and the whole thing has a footprint 16 studs wide by 22 studs deep.
Yes, the door raises as well, but taking the roof off is much more conventient. Pushed against the righthand wall you'll find a blue workbench with a gray vice and a red toolbox; a broom hung on the wall; a rack of tools including cans of paint, a power drill, an oil can, four different wrenches, a hammer, a screwdriver, and a tire iron. The bin the tools sit in is pretty clever: it's actually two windowframes, attached sideways to the locker next to them to form a space deep enough to hold all the pieces. Well played, set designers. Well played.
the Simpsons have? Two: Homer's pink car, and Marge's orange station wagon. And since they have two cars, they also have a two-car garage. This one is only half as wide as it should be. Plus, what happens at the end of every opening, right before the couch gag? As Marge pulls in, Homer enters the house immediately in front of her car (either running or being thrown), so we know that's where the door is. On this set, the door is off to the left. Uh-oh.
while the exterior of the house is very plain and unassuming, the interior is brightly colored. The walls aren't pink, but the floor (almost completely covered by 2x2 flat plates to make smooth, un-studded carpet) is pale blue. There's an orange, purple and blue area rug in front of the iconic couch, a blue telephone on a purple end table next to it, and a painting of a sailboat on the wall behind. Across the way sits their blue television, its rabbit ears currently bringing in Itchy & Scratchy.
There's also a vaccuum cleaner built at this point. It's just five pieces, but it's instantly clear what it's supposed to be. This is a delightful little accessory, one that we didn't need, but will add a lot of personality to the scene. It would have been easy to leave this out, and no one would have ever missed it at all, but Lego wanted to do one better.
to the front door. On that side of the room the only furniture is a purple piano, with a red and white stool in front of it. The piano itself is pretty clever: again, there's a lot of SNOT work, and the keys are formed by putting white "grates" over a flat black panel. Neat! There's a sticker representing sheet music on there, but it's not the same tune as 
Through a smaller archway we enter the kitchen. Just as on the show, the floor is alternating blue and yellow tiles. The blue used is desaturated, but grey would have been better. The cabinets are orange with pink drawers, and the countertops are dark blue. There's a sink under the window, and next to it is a green stove. Sadly, the corn-cob curtains have not been duplicated around the window.
by a blue tablecloth, so there's no telling what color is actually is. For this set, the designers made it the same blue as the living room carpet, with dark blue legs. Okay then. There are four orange chairs that fit under the table perfectly. There are no exposed studs on the floor, so all the pieces can move around easily. The door opens, to give access to the back yard.
To accessorize the kitchen, the set includes a black pot that can sit on the stovetop (two of the burners are studs, while the other two are smooth), three yellow plates, four red mugs, three forks, three knives, three cupcake cups(?), a little tray, a frying pan, a hand mixer, and a silver skillet. The mixer and skillet can hang below the cabinets, the plates fit on the table, the cups can go on the countertop, and all the small things can fit in the six opening draws or the two opening cabinets. Seriously, this is the best toy kitchen since 
the fold point. That's why the living room was divided by a big archway, and is also why the kitchen, in our photos, appears to be in two pieces. All folded up, those halves line up perfectly. Over the living room, the second floor can just lifted off - it's a shame the same isn't true for the rest of this level. The only way you can really see the kitchen is when the set is opened, so it's hard to appreciate it as a cohesive unit.
The chimney cap is a separate piece, obviously, and measures 3x4. Given the way it's designed, it can be centered on the chimney in either open or closed configurations. Truly enterprising Lego fans could probably even design a gear system to move it automatically, but that's a bit beyond my skill level. If you do it, let us know how it worked out.
down the center, then magenta cones and purple slopes to form the railing. Once you get to the second floor landing, the purple railing continues, and there are pictures of Grampa and Maggie hanging on the wall. All the carpeting upstairs is green, and it's all made from those smooth 2x2 plates once again. There are four doors here, each leading into a different room. The white pieces that help hold the roof in place serve as ceiling lights, too.
in this set, but things really start to fall apart on the second level. We start with the master bedroom, which does have a really impressive rendition of Homer and Marge's marital bed, but also features Maggie's crib on the other side of the room. What? Maggie's got her own room, and always has. Where are the freestanding closets? Where's the vanity? Where's the en suite? You can overlook a lot of the errors, but they start to add up.
in really clever ways, with curved pieces at the edges to make them look natural, rather than like big square blocks. Homer and Marge's bed has a purple headboard and footboard, which is accurate, and yellow covers, which is less so. There are blue nightstands on both sides, with orange drawers. There are two pillows, and a pink basket sitting on Marge's side of the bed.
Maggie's crib is constructed cleverly, using the old-fashioned "ladder" pieces as the slats on the sides, and rounded pieces at the head and foot to serve as padding. The body of the crib is blue, and the feet are made from single-stud hinges, one of which plugs onto a stud on the floor in order to keep the crib in place when you're moving things around.
until you realize that a chunk of it is on the other side of the house thanks to the split. Her bed has pink covers (not the blue they should be), and is flanked by light blue stands with orange drawers - one has a lamp sitting on top, while the other has a fifth red mug. She has a tall blue bookcase, with books on the lower shelves, a magnifying glass and some kind of jar on the top shelf, and a... cake? Hat box? Something. On the top.
but more importantly it has the vanity that Lisa, of course, uses as a desk. It's pink, rather than purple, but the drawers are the appropriate shade of blue. The mirror is mounted on the wall, and she has an orange and pink stool to sit on. Back on the other side, she's hung a Jazz Fest poster on the wall. She also has a yellow hairbrush, and a black camera on a stand. You know, because Lisa is famous for... her photography? Yeah, okay.
bookshelf (his lucky red cap, a few blue and white boxes, a coulpe books, and a radio) sitting askew and one of the orange drawers in his red desk permanently hanging open. The corkboard above his desk has a calendar, a drawing of an airplane, and a monster face. An issue of Radioactive Man is laying on the desk next to another red mug. His desk chair pulls out. A poster of Krusty hangs on his wall, behind the door.
Bart's bed is purple with a red headboard and a blue nightstand with a red lamp on top. Since the bed only attaches to the floor by a single peg, I'd love to see a future set (possibly one of those awesome little polybags that Rustin is always buying) to give us a replacement bed that could be dropped in, styled after the clown bed Homer made for Bart.
There's a sink with a mirror above it, and storage shelves on the side. And yes, there's a toilet in there - it's permanently attached to the wall, so don't expect to pull it out and put it in your Millennium Falcon or anything, but it's easy enough to build that you could follow the directions to make your own. They even remembered to include a roll of toilet paper! It's made from a car door. Unfortunately, they chose the passenger-side door, which means the roll is hung in improper underhand fashion.
The exterior of the house is the same muted color as the car hole was, and is constructed with the same kind of built-in bushes, particularly around the front steps. There's a brown fram around the door, and the bay windows are created very well thanks to the use of hinge pieces. The chimney is a darker tan, other than where it's broken up by the beige hinges, and there are a few "brick pattern" bricks used to give it detail. A black antenna is on the roof, and there's an air conditioner in the wall outside Lisa's room. That seems like an odd place for it (why not something mnore central? why not the master bedroom?), but so it goes.
not just one. And on the other section, there should be two windows on the ground level and two windows above them, not just one on each. If you really want to get technical, there should also be a porch light by the door, but compared to all the other mistakes, that seems minor. Part of the problem is that they're missing the section of the house that goes over the car hole in the back, so there's not enough room to build all the rooms there need to be.
a functional flag and a letter to put inside, two red chaise lounges (with clear goblets and pink cherries), a green wheelbarrow with a shovel and two flowers ready to be planted, and a large orange grill that has two sausages to cook on it. The wheelbarrow, grill, and even the air conditioner all have stickers on them reading "Property of Ned Flanders."
We start, of course, with Captain Wacky. He's clearly just getting home from work, because he's wearing a necktie and his SNPP ID badge, and carrying a briefcase. The set also includes 
painted. His eyes are half-closed - he must be tired from his day at work.
Bart has his skateboard, which is green with a red stripe and purple wheels. He uses the "short" legs, because he's a child, and is also looking to the side - though in his case, it makes him seem like he's looking forward when he's on his board. In a promo video, the designer claimed that these were the first Minifigures with molded sleeves and shorts, but that's definitely not true here.
The way Lisa's eyes are painted makes her look sad. Is she upset because she only got an A+, instead of an A++? Or because he's got a skirt piece just like her mom, and it doesn't work any better here than it on Marge? She uses the same "kid" legs as Bart, and is wearing her green backpack. Her necklace is painted on, but the Lego style means the yellow skin of her shoulders doesn't go all the way around, like it should.
Maggie is the only member of the family whose eyes are painted normally: ie, wide open. Her pacifier is molded as part of her head, but her bow is just painted on. She gets normal minifig arms, but the rest of her body is new, since they had to depict the bag she always wears. As a bonus, it allows her to be even smaller than Bart and Lisa,
as she should be!
