After what seems like an age, my reviews of the Summer LEGO® Friends set conclude with the Heartlake City Community Center. This review neatly follows on from the look at the Heartlake City Community Kitchen set. Both this and that set have the ability to be combined. The Community Centre is one of the largest of the new Friends sets released this Summer and is filled with plenty of fun details, including a very unexpected LEGO Easter Egg and the return of a familiar face. So join me in taking a look around the Heartlake City Community Center.
Product Details
Set Name: Heartlake City Community Center | Set Number: 43748 | Pieces: 1513 | Theme: Friends
RRP: £129.99/$139.99/149.99€ | Number of Bags: Bags x 11 | Instructions: 1 x Paper booklets + Builder App | Stickers: Sheet x 1 | Characters: Paisley, Liann, Olly, Nova, Zac & Pickle the dog. Plus Mayor Stephanie
Availability: LEGO Stores, LEGO Online & General Retail
This year has seen a number of excellent LEGO Friends sets released. From the impressive Shopping Street to the outright incredible Botanical Garden. The Community Center is another set which can be added to that list. The set includes six sections which combine to create a colourful tower block. It’s a build which delights on both the exterior and interior. The base is the foundation to sit the rest of the building and is built in such a way in order to allow the set to be combined with another, but more on that later. The base features a few details such as a cobbled pavement but most of the detail found on the base is actually added at the end of the build. These include a vintage street light complete with banners and a red-leafed tree.
The rest of the build is focused on the center’s four floors. Each is built independently upon an L-shaped base plate, which gives the building a unique and uniform shape. Although each floor has a similar build, the details of them are very different. Firstly, each floor is a different colour and has different architectural detailing on the exterior. This gives the set an eye-catching, multicoloured appearance. The exterior of the building sports different details on each floor such as plants, awnings and even a slide. The most impressive of these external details is a large, printed 8×16 plate, which becomes a colourful billboard on the top floor.
Inside is just as impressive, each floor is focused on a different activity, with the various rooms being filled with excellent minibuilds and even a few functional features. So the ground floor is home to a music-themed room. This includes a couple of instruments and a small stage. Hidden within the stage is a pair of splat gears so the performer can be twisted about. The next floor up is a little tricky to place, it seems to be both a chill-out area and a technology/media hub. This features a selection of seating and a couple of computers.
The next floor is probably my favourite. This is a gaming room and it includes a large flat-screen TV and a games console, which appears to be playing a Mario Kart-like racer. The screen shows a couple of racers which appear to be inspired by some of the costumed mascot characters from the LEGO Minifigures line. Now the next feature of the games room is a very obscure LEGO Easter Egg. It’s well known that designers like to pop nods to past LEGO themes and characters into sets, but I never thought I’d see a reference to LEGO Heroica appear in a set. This was a subtheme of the old LEGO Games theme, which offered buildable board games. This adventure-themed game is recreated in this set by a few stickered tiles representing the box and the play board, with minifigure trophy elements as microfigures. It’s an unexpected reference, especially in a Friends set, but I love it, especially as the artwork on the box has been given a Friends twist.
The uppermost floor is home to a t-shirt-printing workshop. This has a couple of fun details such as flat tile along with a pair of 1×1 quarter tiles recreating a t-shirt and a sewing machine with a ‘working’ needle. Each floor can be stacked on top of each other and it’s possible to mix and match the order this appears in as they each have the same footprint. The centre is topped by a rooftop terrace that features a small greenhouse and a small Bosun’s Chair-like device which is attached to a rail on the roof and hangs down the side of the building. This has enough room to hold a mini-doll.
As a large set, it contains a few mini-dolls, with most of the main characters included in the set. Each of the characters is unique to the set and a couple of them have torsos relevant to other parts of the set. For example, Olly and Liann have torso matching the designs found on the t-shirt printing floor. But the highlight of the set is the return of another of the original LEGO Friends characters. Stephanie joins Autumn’s Mum, Mia as the second of the characters from the original Friends sets. Stephanie has become the mayor of Heartlake City. It’s genuinely nice to see the last ten years of LEGO Friends and the characters from those sets recognised despite the reboot.
Although a fantastic set on its own, the Community Center can be upgraded by combining it with the Heartlake City Community Kitchen set. The building of the Community Center can be placed on top of the Community Kitchen. Then the roof of the Kitchen can be placed on the base of the Community Centre to create an outdoor terrace area. It’s a fun feature should you own both sets but does make the combined model quite costly. See more of the Community Kitchen here.
Overall
I left this set until last and I dreaded its size and it seemed like it could be a repetitive build. Although its size does command a lofty place to display it, its footprint is similar to a modular building. Despite each floor being the same configuration, each floor is unique and this makes the build more varied. I also appreciate the lack of stairs. Odd, I know, but there is no sensible means of getting from one floor to another, which means more room for all the impressive details found inside the Community Center. The Heroica Easter Egg is a particular highlight, I never thought we’d see a reference to what is a rather obscure bygone LEGO theme. Especially as it’s in a Friends set. The inclusion of the original Friends character, Stephanie is also nice. I hope we get to see what the rest of the gang is up to now in future LEGO Friends sets. The ability to combine the Community Center with the Community Kitchen is fun and expands the play experience. Although the combined price of both sets is quite high. Of those two sets, the Community Center is far better value. It will take a lot to dethrone the Botanical Garden as Best Friends set this year, but this is a close second.
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The LEGO Group provided this set for review purposes. The thoughts within this review are those of BricksFanz.com and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group. Providing the set for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of the set.
