Halloween Haunt

I decided to celebrate Friday the 13th by building the Halloween set. This set (40260) cost $9.99 and has 145 pieces. It took about 35 minutes to put together and take pictures. The box has a funny scene on the back:

Excluding the large brown plate, all of the pieces are divided between two bags:

The back of the instruction booklet has a picture of the Thanksgiving Harvest set (40261). I'll be getting it soon!

Here are all of the pieces from the bags:

The set comes with a "normal" minifigure, a skeleton minifigure, a red spider, and a gray rat:

The instructions start off with the cauldron and the rat with a pumpkin:

Now on to the main build:

Here are the leftover pieces:

And here is everything together:

This is a great little Halloween set. I love the jack-o'-lantern and the gates. Using the plant stalks as a tree with the silhouette of the buildings is a great touch. This set has also added some different colors to my brick collection. It's nice to have this yellow-orange shade of bricks and the color green they used for the plant stalks and the round tiles is interesting. The spiky plates in the set are also very interesting and I can't wait to see what I can do with them. Here is a close up of the jack-o'-lantern and a couple of the spiky pieces:

Overall, this is a great Halloween set and I can't wait to get the Thanksgiving and Christmas ones. It's a lot of fun building these little holiday sets and it's always interesting to see what colors and types of pieces they include that can be useful in other builds. And of course it's always great to have new minifigures for my collection. Thanks for reading!

Modular Poolside Holiday

This month's post is about the Modular Poolside Holiday set (31067). It has 356 pieces and costs $29.99. Like the beach set in last month's post, this one is also a 3-in-1. Here is a look at the box:

Unlike last month's build, this one has all 3 builds in the same instruction booklet. The pieces are divided between one large bag and 3 smaller ones:

There are 2 minifigures in the set:

Also unlike the last 3-in-1 set, this one is modular. All three versions of the set start with the same simple build. Here is what it looks like and what pieces are needed to build it:

After showing how to build the base, the instruction booklet first shows how to build the largest version of the set, the poolside holiday:

As you can see in the pictures, the booklet first shows how to make the furniture, then moves on to the wall units, the yard pieces, the roof pieces, and the accessories. Now let's see all the pieces together:

This build used all of the pieces except this little group:

It took about an hour to build this and it was quite fun. This is my first modular set and I really like it. The different sections were easy to build and install. The pool float is cute and I love the fountain piece in the wall. The details and plants are great. Having a grill on the roof is a little strange, but it is a nice piece. I think my favorite piece is the ping pong table. My only issue with the set was this:

As you an see, there is a height difference between the door section and the wall opening. Having some of the wall below the top of the door doesn't prevent minifigures from going through the doorway, but the look of it bothers me a little.

Now let's move onto the next version of the set, the skate park holiday. Once again, we start with the simple base and move on to the furniture, windows, etc:

Now let's see it all together:

Here are all of the pieces needed for this version:

The skateboard park is really cool and took about 45 minutes to build. I might build one a little bigger for my town since I already have a half-pipe from a LEGO friends set. The rooftop garden and the little duck pond are nice touches. I also like that they gave the girl a camera so she can take pictures of all the awesome tricks that the boy does.

Time to see the last version of the set, the music garage holiday:

Here are all of the pieces together:

And here are all the pieces needed for this build:

I love that LEGO put together a little garage band. The big speaker is great and I like the little desk light inside. I like this version, but it sure seems like a garage door should be bigger than this. I do like the building details around the door though. The slanted window in the roof is a great technique. It took about 40 minutes to put the garage together.

Overall, I like this set and think it was worth the money. I really like the modular idea because it allows you to switch around which spots each section is placed and you could even combine sections from the different versions and create your own build. It was really easy to build each mini section and install it onto the base. The little chairs, TVs, and other accessories are great touches, especially that ping pong table. The minifigures go great with the set. The modular structure of the set also means that it can easily be combined with other similar modular sets. The LEGO shop page for the set says it can be combined with the Modular Modern Home and Modular Family Villa sets. It was fun to put this set together and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. I just got my Halloween set in the mail yesterday, so I'll probably post about it next weekend. The Modular Modern Home will probably be the set I build for next month's post.