Little Yellow Brick Pick #2 - 10196 Grand Carousel

Look what we bought today - an unopened Grand Carousel set! Now it's going to be taken down from our wishlist.. :)

Front view of the Grand Carousel. Comes with 9 minifigs!

Back view of the Grand Carousel. Can't wait to start building!

We managed to get hold of this out-of-production Lego set this morning. At 3,263 pieces it is significantly larger than any of our buildings in our Modular Town, which are in the 2,000-piece region. The Grand Carousel is battery-operated, and we are looking forward to adding it to our Modular and Winter buildings!

Stay tuned for our post on building the 10196 Grand Carousel! :)

Little Yellow Brick Pick #1 - 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop

We went to the Toys Hunt sale yesterday! Look what we got, at 20% off!

10199 Winter Village Toy Shop

Front view of the box. Looks too pretty to be opened!

Close-up shot! The happy minifigs will make our Modular town more lively!

Back view of the box. It's going to be a challenge to replicate the background! :)

Released in 2009, the Winter Village Toy Shop is the first building in Lego's Seasonal subtheme under the broader Town theme. The other set in this Seasonal series is the 10216 Winter Village Bakery , released in 2010. Since the series fits our Modular Town so well, we have decided to collect this series as well! More on the Winter Village Bakery when we get our hands on a set!

Lego has announced that it will also be releasing the 10222 Winter Village Post Office this year, and we will be looking forward to adding a set to our collection.

At 815 pieces, the Winter Village Bakery is very much smaller than our Modular Buildings, which are over 2,000 pieces each. Nevertheless, we believe they will add a cheery mood to our Modular Town.

Well, we will stop here for now. Once we have finished building the Winter Village toy Shop, we will publish a post on it. As always, stay tuned!

Related posts:

Our eighth Lego project - 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop

Our ninth Lego project - 10216 Winter Village Bakery

Our tenth Lego project - 10222 Winter Village Post Office

Our Lego Winter Village - Two and Counting

Our Lego Winter Village - Three and Counting

Our Lego Winter Village MOC - 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop, 10216 Winter Village Bakery and 10222 Winter Village Post Office 

Lego Christmas Winter Wonderland 

Our 15th Lego project - 10229 Winter Village Cottage

Our Lego Winter Village MOC - 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop, 10216 Winter Village Bakery, 10222 Winter Village Post Office and 10229 Winter Village Cottage 

Our 17th Lego project - 10235 Winter Village Market 

Our Lego Winter Village MOC - 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop, 10216 Winter Village Bakery, 10222 Winter Village Post Office, 10229 Winter Village Cottage and 10235 Winter Village Market  

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Four and Counting

From left: Green Grocer, Grand Emporium, Fire Brigade, Pet Shop

Now that we have completed our Pet Shop, we thought we would post pictures of our latest addition to our Lego Modular Buildings series with its predecessors. In a break from previous practice, we are publishing the pictures in a separate post for two reasons: we had a lot of pictures and comments on the Pet Shop to share, and we felt that our collection was large enough to command an entry by itself.

Let's do a recap of our Lego Modular projects:

Related posts:

Our third Lego project - 10185 Green Grocer

Our fourth Lego project - 10211 Grand Emporium

Our fifth Lego project - 10197 Fire Brigade

Our sixth Lego project - 10218 Pet Shop

Our seventh Lego project - 10190 Market Street

Our 11th Lego project - 10182 Cafe Corner

Our 16th Lego project - 10224 Town Hall

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Four and Counting

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Six and Counting 

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Seven and Counting

Our sixth Lego project - 10218 Pet Shop

• Model: 10218 Pet Shop
• 2032 Pieces
• Released in 2011
• Retail price: $149.99 USD

Once again, the grey front tiles are designed to match other Modular Buildings. The Pet Shop is actually made up of two buildings; scroll down to see more pictures of the individual blocks!

The backyard of the Pet Shop. Note that it is two green bases pieced together. The reddish-brown building has a basement!

While most of Singapore was watching the Formula One night street race yesterday, we decided to spend our afternoon and evening building our Pet Shop, which had arrived two weeks ago in the post.

The Pet Shop is our fourth completed structure in our Modular Building series - after Green Grocer, Grand Emporium and Fire Brigade - and it is truly unique. Our first three completed buildings were comprised of one structure each; contrast this with the Pet Shop, which is made of two distinct blocks, each of which can independently join itself to a Modular Building. In terms of similarity, the Pet Shop blocks each have three storeys (in fact, the reddish-brown block has a basement), and comprise a shophouse (sky blue) and apartment (reddish-brown).

In terms of building experience, the Pet Shop's 2032 pieces are fewer than our previous three Modular projects. Difficulty-wise, as the building project was divided into two smaller blocks, we found it less time-consuming and challenging. Nevertheless, given that we were working on a 2 x 3-storey building, the overall building time was comparable to the other Modular buildings.

The Pet Shop is aesthetically pleasing. The reddish-brown apartment contrasts well with the sky blue shophouse. In terms of number of colours, the Pet Shop is definitely more vibrant compared to the Green Grocer, Grand Emporium and Fire Brigade.

Lastly, in terms of play experience, the Pet Shop comes with four minifigs and many pets (dog, cat, rat, parrots, fish). The shop can operate on its own, given that the apartment and shophouse have living quarters. Of course, the Pet Shop was not created to stand by itself; as a member of the growing Modular Building series, it is a great addition to a growing Modular town (more on that in a later post). Our parting comment for this summary? For Modular Building collectors: you don't have a choice! For others: it provides a relatively enjoyable building experience and a nice display item in the living room.

Thank You For The Hits!

Just now, we logged into Blogger to look at the stats for today and guess what we found! Today is by far the most diversified group of viewers on our humble blog in a day!

When we first created the Little Yellow Brick on 21 Aug (just over a month ago), we were hoping to gain traction with fellow Lego fans in Singapore before slowly reaching out to friends from other countries. At the time of publication, we have had 635 visitors from countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands and Russia.

It has been mindblowing for us to know that we have viewers from four continents. We have had great fun building our Lego sets and blogging about it, and we will endeavour to continue sharing our experience and opinions on our various Lego projects. Once again, we thank you for your views, and we hope you will continue to visit Little Yellow Brick often!

Update (24 Sept 2011):

We've set up the flag counter on the right column! Look forward to having all the countries we mentioned on the counter, plus new ones as well! :)

What's In the Post #1: 10218 Pet Shop

Today, a long-awaited item arrived in the mail!

10218 Pet Shop

We will be publishing a more detailed post after we build this set, so we will keep this entry short. Just a quick observation: the order of buildings at the back picture seems to have changed - Fire Brigade comes after Grand Emporium and before the Fire Brigade. We shall keep that in mind when we add the Pet Shop to our growing Lego town.

Stay tuned for our sixth Lego project - 10218 Pet Shop!

Related posts:

Our third Lego project - 10185 Green Grocer

Our fourth Lego project - 10211 Grand Emporium

Our fifth Lego project - 10197 Fire Brigade

Our sixth Lego project - 10218 Pet Shop

Our seventh Lego project - 10190 Market Street

Our 11th Lego project - 10182 Cafe Corner

Our 16th Lego project - 10224 Town Hall

Our 18th Lego Project - 10232 Palace Cinema  

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Four and Counting

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Five and Counting

Our Growing Lego Modular Town - Seven and Counting

10224 Town Hall posts:
Little Yellow Brick News #1 - 10224 Town Hall

Little Yellow Brick Investigates #1: 10224 Town Hall
Little Yellow Brick Investigates #2: 10224 Town Hall

For Sale #1 - 10193 Medieval Market Village [SOLD!]

Calling all Lego deal hunters!

As the first post of our For Sale Series, we are putting up a new set of 10193 Medieval Market Village up for sale!

Some specs:

Pieces: 1601 (if building the 1664-piece Imperial Flagship was anything to go by, this set will take you quite a few hours to complete!)

Lego release date: January 2009

Box play status: Unopened

Box Damage: Dented at the sides and top

Additional remarks from Little Yellow Brick

We fell in love with the Medieval Market Village when we came across it at one of the local Lego shops earlier this year, so we decided to buy a set back. Very nice cottagey look, but we are running out of space with our two ships (see our Imperial Flagship and Brickbeard's Bounty posts) and three-and-counting Modular Buildings (see our Green Grocer, Grand Emporium and Fire Brigade entries).

We believe in transparency and full disclosure as we would expect the same from those whom we buy Lego sets from, and what we would say about this Lego set is that the box is dented. While this might put off some fussy builders or buyers looking to give this as a present, it is still in very reasonable condition.

For more information on 10193 Medieval Market Village, please click on the Lego.com link below:

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Medieval-Market-Village-10193

Please contact us at lego.enthu@gmail.com if you're interested! :)

Tips to Save You Time and Tears During Lego Building

We all know that the complete Lego experience involves building, displaying and playing. But we dare say that many of us have occasionally endured frustration and wasted much time hunting for that elusive piece in a sea of Lego blocks. Well, we would like to share our experience on how to save some time and cut down on unnecessary spikes in blood pressure. They are not rocket science but simple habits and items that are easily done and obtained.

1. Build on a clear table top and sit on seats with backrest. The clear table top, preferably white, provides a good contrast to the Lego blocks and facilitates location of Lego pieces. When we built the Imperial Flagship, we had a hard time searching for pieces on the brown coloured floor; sitting on the floor did not help our backs either.

2. Follow the pack numbers. This is probably the most obvious advice, but it is important! For our Modular Buildings, each pack number matched an instruction manual, which corresponded to a floor.

3. Invest in some containers. Do you always throw away those plastic containers after having your wanton noodles, chicken rice or soup? Well, could we suggest a second life for them as Lego containers. Putting the blocks into the containers ensures that no piece gets lost.

4. Keep the plastic packs. It is easy and tempting to just throw the plastic Lego bags away. However, we would suggest that you hold off from doing so just yet in case you missed out on some pieces. We missed out on a window for the Grand Emporium; on closer inspection of the opened Lego bags, we found the transparent window in one of the packs.

5. Sort the blocks using colours and size. It is no use throwing all like-coloured blocks into one container - finding a particular block, especially a small one, will still be a painful task. Try sorting similar-sized blocks, such as longer 1 x 6 and 2 x 4 pieces in one container, and the minute 1 x 1 pieces in another. Additionally, putting blocks of contrasting colours together helps make the search process easier too.

We all know that building Lego involves time and effort, and many of us take pride in the process. However, we don't think that we should lengthen the building duration and get upset for the sake of bragging how "hard" it was to build that set. So do try out our tips and let us know if they work!

Imperial Flagship vs Brickbeard's Bounty!

Our first two Lego projects were the Imperial Flagship and Brickbeard's Bounty. After building both ships, we thought, what would happen if we put both ships side by side? Well, let's find out!

Before we start, let us do a recap of our two ships:

Imperial Flagship

Production Release: in 2010

Pieces: 1664

Dimension: 29"/75cm by 23.6"/60cm

Firepower: 2 x 4 side cannon ports; 4 movable cannons

Speed: Moderate; three masts tempered by size, anchor and one more cannon

Imperial side: 7 (1 captain, 1 captain's daughter, 1 lieutenant and 4 soldiers)

Pirate side: 2 (1 senior and 1 junior pirate)

Brickbeard's Bounty

Production Release: in 2009

Pieces: 592

Dimension: 22"/56cm by 17"/44cm

Firepower: 2 x 2 side cannon ports; 2 movable cannons + 1 mounted cannon

Speed: Fast; smaller in size and no anchor but one less mast

Pirate side: 6 (1 senior, 1 female and 4 junior pirates)

Imperial side: 2 (1 lieutenant and 1 soldier)

Before we start...

Remember we commented that six soldiers for the Imperial Flagship was the bare minimum? Well, we decided to do something about it! We bought 1 lieutenant and 1 soldier. Here they are:

Can't really remember how much each minifig cost, maybe S$5.50? Quite a ripoff huh. Anyway, for those of you who are thinking of buying more minifigs for your ship(s), do note that the lieutenant does not come with the red feather, while the soldier does not come with the blue epaulette / shoulder pads (this sounds wrong!)

Anyway, so here's the new fighting balance:
Imperial: 11 (1 captain, 1 captain's daughter, 3 lieutenants and 6 soldiers)
Pirate: 8 (2 senior, 1 female and 5 junior pirates)

Imperial Flagship vs Brickbeard's Bounty

A shot of the full-blown action from afar!

Close-up of Imperial troops vs Pirates!

If we could add two more Imperial troops, surely we could make the monkey an elite fighting force? :) Also, check out the partially hidden senior and junior pirates on the left side (peekaboo blue bandana) dueling three soldiers!

And if we could make the monkey an elite fighting force, perhaps we could also make the shark a little hungry? :p

Making use of the mounted cannon!

Well, we didn't buy any coastal Imperial or Pirate bases, so we won't be publishing a post on that for now! As with our previous posts on these two ships, building them was very fun, but playing both ships off each other was even more enjoyable. We would recommend that Lego ship enthusiasts try playing them both, and perhaps give us more battle scenarios!

Related posts:

Our first Lego project - 10210 Imperial Flagship

Our second Lego project - 6243 Brickbeard's Bounty

Little Yellow Brick Wishes Readers A Blessed 2012!
It's February!
10210 Imperial Flagship MOC - Officers on Deck!

Our fifth Lego project - 10197 Fire Brigade

• Model: 10197 Fire Brigade
• 2231 Pieces
• Released in 2009


• Retail price: $149.99 USD

Front view of the Fire Brigade. Ready to save the day!

Front view of Green Grocer, Fire Brigade and Grand Emporium! Once again, let's take a moment to appreciate the grey floor tiles of all three buildings!

Back view of the three buildings!

Corner view of the three buildings

We built the Fire Brigade after completing the Green Grocer and Grand Emporium, which were released by Lego before and after the Brigade respectively. Initially, we were reluctant to build it as it did not look very nice compared to other Modular Buildings. After we started building it up, it slowly grew on us; today, it sits pretty next to the other two buildings as we aim to complete the rest of the town.

Building the Fire Brigade was a different experience compared to the Green Grocer and Grand Emporium. For a start, the fire station only has two levels while the others have three; another contrast would be the relative lack of colours - the Fire Brigade is predominantly red and grey. We also had to construct the fire engine from scratch; it sure took a lot of time!

This Lego set comes with four minifigs and a dog. Playwise the building does not offer much by itself and we would argue that it probably would have less standalone value compared to shops such as the Green Grocer and Grand Emporium; after all, why would one need a fire station if there aren't any other buildings around? Hence, we think it is necessary to join the fire station to a row of other buildings. Should we follow Lego's sequence of Green Grocer-Fire Brigade-Grand Emporium? Maybe we should explore this in more detail in future posts!