Review:71006 The Simpsons House/ToaMeiko

ToaMeiko
Country: United States Age Group: TFOL Gender: Male
Joined: December 18, 2012 № of Reviews: 7 № of Featured reviews: 4
Building Experience: 15 years

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Today I'm privileged to be reviewing a brand new set: 71006 The Simpsons House. This set is the flagship set of LEGO's new/upcoming Simpsons franchise, being released early just recently for LEGO VIP members. While I'm not much of a Simpsons fan myself, I love this set and everything about it. I happened to be going to the mall to see a movie yesterday, so I figured I'd hit up the LEGO Store in the same trip, in which I decided to pick up this set. Anyways, let's get to some details:

Set: 71006 The Simpsons House
Theme: The Simpsons
Pieces: 2523
Minifigures: 6
Price: $199.99 USD
Brickipedia / Brickset

The Box and Contents[edit | edit source]

The first thing I noticed about the box when I saw it in the store was that it was huge. It makes sense, since it's a huge set. The box, like all LEGO boxes, highlights the entire set on the front, and shows details and close-ups on the back. The box design is very Simpsons-like, with very cartoony accents and a lot of yellow.

Upon opening the box, I was greeted by a large amount of bags. There are many bags in the set, all numbered up to seven. The instructions and stickers are also cardboard-backed, which is very nice to have. There are a total of three instruction booklets, all about the same size. Inside the first instruction booklet has an image showing what each bag builds, which was good to know ahead of time.

The Build[edit | edit source]

Bag 1[edit | edit source]

The first bag is the smallest of them all. It is comprised of the family car, a grill, a wheelbarrow and a skate ramp of Bart's. The only minifigures in this bag are Homer and Bart Simpson. All the minifigure heads in the set come packaged individually in a small plastic package to prevent scratching or other disturbance I guess, much like the Ninjago Serpentine or Legends of Chima heads. I'll go into detail about the minifigures later.

The car in the set is really nice. Not only does it closely resemble the car that the Simpsons family drives, but it can also fit pretty much all of them in it at once, which is good. The other little objects in bag 1 are nice, but nothing too much. The grill is one of the better grills I've seen in LEGO— better than the one in 850449 Minifigure Accessory Pack. I can't find if the grill in this set is one that ever appeared in the show or not, but either way, it's a nice little accessory.

Bag 2[edit | edit source]

The second bag builds the garage. It has a couple little accessories in the garage, but mostly the garage is just a tan box. I do like how the windows are done near the top of the garage, and the roof is certainly nice as well. Inside, there's a really nifty rack for tools using a jail door piece horizontally. I like how that was done.

Bag 3[edit | edit source]

The third bag builds the first part of the actual house. This bag only has one minifigure in it, Ned Flanders, who sports a "Hail to the Chef" apron. This part of the house features nice bay windows, part of the kitchen, and part of the living room. Inside the living room is a small purple piano. It isn't the best LEGO piano I've ever seen, but it's good for the size of space it has to fit in. Additionally, there is a standalone mailbox included in this bag. Nothing very special about it.

Bag 4[edit | edit source]

The fourth bag completes the first floor, with the finished living room and kitchen. The living room is one of my favourite rooms, just because of how accurate it is to the show. It has the carpet in the middle of the room, the couch that fits the entire family on it, the painting of a sailboat, and the table next to the couch with the blue telephone. It's got all the details from the living room in the set, in which I am very glad to see. This bag also includes a minifigure of Marge, which I must say is possibly the tallest minifigure ever with the size of her headpiece. Inside the kitchen, there is also a nice round kitchen table with orange chairs using some cool slope pieces in a large quantity. There's also a vacuum cleaner, which, until I looked at the back of the box, didn't realise it was a vacuum, but it actually isn't too bad of a minifigure-scale vacuum. The TV in the living room shows The Itchy and Scratchy Show on it, which is a cute little detail to have in this set.

Bag 5[edit | edit source]

The fifth bag starts the second floor of the house, with some bedrooms and a bathroom. It also contains a minifigure of Maggie, which uses a unique body piece to capture the look of Maggie's clothing. Maggie's crib is actually an interesting build, since it uses several SNOT techniques. Everything else in this bag is basically just beds, which aren't too interesting since they're built the same as most other LEGO beds.

Bag 6[edit | edit source]

All that the sixth bag contains is pretty much just finishing the roof of the front half of the second floor. Nothing interesting in this section, so I'll just skip to bag 7.

Bag 7[edit | edit source]

The seventh and final bag finishes the house off with the last bits of the second floor, and a minifigure of Lisa. While bag 7 is much like bag 5, being only bedrooms, it has more detail, especially in Bart's bedroom. On the wall is a poster of Krusty the Clown, and on his desk is a Radioactive Man comic. Bag 7 also adds a bit to Lisa's bedroom, with a makeup table with a round mirror on the wall.

Finished Model[edit | edit source]

The finished model is certainly a beautiful sight. It looks just like the house in the show, which is perfect. The accuracy and detail in the set is incredible. Very little significant things were missed in this set. It's probably the best LEGO modern house set ever to have been released. I've also never seen the Simpsons house as a MOC, so this certainly sets the standard for any MOCs of it I see in the future.

The minifigures are honestly my favourite part of the Simpsons theme. When pictures originally surfaced, people had a lot of complaints about them, but I genuinely think they resemble the Simpsons very well. While some of the pieces, like Marge's head, are completely useless for anything but their intended purpose, I think that LEGO did a great job with all of them. And this is the first time I've gotten a set with licensed minifigures with yellow skin in a long time! :P

Conclusion[edit | edit source]

Build/Design	5 / 5
Playability	4½ / 5
Parts	5 / 5
Price	4 / 5
Overall	4½ / 5

Overall, this is a great set. The design of it is fantastic. It's both show-accurate and fun to build. This set also contains sufficient play-features, with the garage and car. The set has great parts. Not only is it great for tan bricks, but it has many tiles in various colours used on the floors of every room. The set is extremely colourful, using various blues, purples and brown shades, and several other great colours. The price is the one catch on this set. Since it is a licensed set, it has a big price tag. At 200 USD, you'd have to really want this set to buy it, not that you'd ever regret getting it. Even if you're not a Simpsons fan, you could get this set and use it as a LEGO minifigure house and resell the minifigures and get a couple pretty pennies for them if you didn't want them.

Anyways, that's it for my review of 71006 The Simpsons House. I hope you liked the review, and you can leave any comments on it below. Thanks for reading!