Review: 10243 Parisian Restaurant

[emilstorm]

A Parisian Hotel / Restaurant like this would also look pretty awesome....

It certainly would :) I like those modulars but they are just to small for me :)

[glendo]

well, i have just completed building my PR for the first time. (I've had it sitting in it's box for 6 months due to lots of life events).... so sorry for my feedback delay.

in short: I enjoyed building it, but im concerned by the size of it. It is considerably smaller than modulars of the past. It's piece count is bloated by an enormous volume of parts that are smaller than or equal to a 1x2 plate. It's dimensions are a slimmed down modular by depth and height.

Im concerned this is the new path by the TLG. Let's see what's next. All in all this is a modular with about 20% of it's 'volume' missing.

[LegoSjaak]

well, i have just completed building my PR for the first time. (I've had it sitting in it's box for 6 months due to lots of life events).... so sorry for my feedback delay.

in short: I enjoyed building it, but im concerned by the size of it. It is considerably smaller than modulars of the past. It's piece count is bloated by an enormous volume of parts that are smaller than or equal to a 1x2 plate. It's dimensions are a slimmed down modular by depth and height.

Im concerned this is the new path by the TLG. Let's see what's next. All in all this is a modular with about 20% of it's 'volume' missing.

This is very true.. Last weekend someone asked me if i had already built the PR. He still had it in the box.. I told him it was fun, but the second thing was that the building itself wasn;t very big...so i guess there are a lot of people noticing this.. I think TLG should not raise their profits on sets more and more each year...or else the bubble will pop.....just like it happened in the past.. So i hope TLG makes it up with us next year!!!

[Strelki]

I don't like the minifigues. They are overall nice but their heads are ugly. Now we are used to seeing great variety of detailed facial expressions of minifigures. And the designers give us expressionless heads?! They aren't even trying! At least the heads can be replaced with others.

[nesquik]

I think TLG should not raise their profits on sets more and more each year...or else the bubble will pop.....just like it happened in the past.. So i hope TLG makes it up with us next year!!!

They went all-out on the interior with the PR, which is why the scale appears small for the piece count. If you want larger buildings, then expect to pay a lot more from here on...

[Mestari]

I don't like the minifigues. They are overall nice but their heads are ugly. Now we are used to seeing great variety of detailed facial expressions of minifigures. And the designers give us expressionless heads?! They aren't even trying! At least the heads can be replaced with others.

This is the only place to get those now. And I really like that fact, that you still are able to buy a set with a classic smiley face. I hope they will keep this tradition in future Modulars as well... It's like a tradition now, don't let us break it!

[Remus_Lupin]

I don't like the minifigues. They are overall nice but their heads are ugly. Now we are used to seeing great variety of detailed facial expressions of minifigures. And the designers give us expressionless heads?! They aren't even trying! At least the heads can be replaced with others.

This is one of my favourite features of the series and I hope it never changes. Give me the classic smiley over the excessively detailed, ridiculously chisled new Luke Skywalker any day of the week.

[Withacee]

This is the only place to get those now. And I really like that fact, that you still are able to buy a set with a classic smiley face. I hope they will keep this tradition in future Modulars as well... It's like a tradition now, don't let us break it!

I second that!

This is one of my favourite features of the series and I hope it never changes. Give me the classic smiley over the excessively detailed, ridiculously chisled new Luke Skywalker any day of the week.

And that! Classic smileys ftw!

PS

I loved PR. Smaller, larger, more parts, less parts, it's all fine by me. I just loved the design and the looks of it, and it was a great build.

[alois]

People who don't like the classic faces used in the modulars are just too young to own a modular building

[TheBear]

I've always wondered about the classic faces in the modulars. When they started working on the modular concept around 2006 they consulted AFOLs heavily, and my guess would be that they went with classic faces based on the feedback they were given. In my opinion the quality of the faces improved a few years after that and given the choice today I am not sure the outcome would be the same. You only have to look at modular MOCs on this forum to see that most people go for expressive faces in the figures they create for their modulars. Personally I think they fit in better with the more realistic look of the buildings themselves and make the scenes depicted in MOCs more interesting.

[TheLegoDr]

More expressive faces are always going to be more realistic considering no one is walking around with blank generic faces. However, I still prefer the classic smiley face. Call it nostalgia if you want, but it just exudes LEGO to me and I love it.

But I love faces with expressions too, just not with Modulars.

[jfbat]

I'm not a great fan of the expression faces, though there are some I like. There are, however, also quite a lot of them I simpy don't (really) like. Also, I've got quite a few doubles or even triples of faces, which kind of ruins the "uniqueness"...

So, it's not a big surprise I like the classic faces in the Modulars. However, I also understand people that think them to be a bit out of touch with the rest of the minifigures that are around these days. If you are incorporationg the modulars in a City lay-out, the minifigures that come with them don't quite fit in with the rest of the population.

But in the end, I am happy modulars have classic faced minifigures. And I wish all my minifigures had them and yes, that is nostalgia.

[Strelki]

What disappoints me about this series is that the minifigures have plain expressionless faces. They could have at least given us unique faces as is the norm, but using the same face for all the people! The plain faces could be useful for minifigure children for instance, that's acceptable. You could even use a plain face with a plain white torso without printings and a plain blue pants, maybe he's a minimalist minifigure. But I just don't think the plain faces work with some of the minifigures. Now they have both front and back detailed printing, but poor quality heads. That's just sad. And we need to spend extra money to buy replacement heads too. Unrealistic minifigures are living in realistic houses! What ironical!

The other thing that disappointing me is the lack of furniture in some of the buildings, although the city hall is well furnished. For example, the apartment with the pet shop set is poorly furnished. The first floor has only a few furniture, I could include some more in there. The second floor, nothing! It's a huge room, what a waste. Builders have to buy furniture separately to fit the room. I would have included a table, bed, chair, maybe a TV even. The third floor has only some boxes and that's it! It will make a nice bedroom for minifigure if well designed. Probably I will add extra furniture when I buy it.

[rollermonkey]

I think the standard smiley face is perfect in the modulars, and if you're doing scenes or whatnot, you can substitute newer style faces for key players, making them stand out more.

Being given a different set of expressions actually sort of forces you into certain scenes or scenarios to an extent, but with the classic smileys you can set up anything you can imagine.

Edited June 22, 2014 by rollermonkey

[craiggrannell]

Unrealistic minifigures are living in realistic houses! What ironical!

Only they're not realistic—they're still an abstraction on real-life property, just one that's more detailed than most other Lego models. I always liked the slightly vacant smile and plain nature of the old figures, because, as rollermonkey says, you could project whatever you wanted on to them (including even gender) without a mood being provided for you. But anyway, it's Lego, so you can always switch out the faces in a second.

[Roger_Smith]

Personally, I'm very glad that the modulars use the old smiley faces, and I would be very disappointed if they changed that. It's a nice nod to Lego's heritage. Obviously, nostalgia plays a role here, too, but in a good way . I distinctly remember building Fire Brigade (my first lego set in about 20 years) and being very impressed by the overall building experience, but having the classic faces was a nice flashback to my childhood.

I think that some of the modern faces are too exaggerated, which I don't like. Some of them also show momentary expressions like shock, surprise, intense joy, and having a minifig displaying those expressions permanently for me feels kinda creepy.

[craiggrannell]

Two things have become apparent on Lego faces: first, you have the inevitable shift away from a fairly neutral expression towards ones more rooted in anger and violence. Secondly, Lego's kind of meandered into a kind of

scenario. In the former case, I recall some unsavoury things happening in my childhood Lego town (lots of fires/explosions/crimes), but those weren't 'led' by any expressions; on the latter, it's a pity Lego's stumbled into that setting where the 'default' is male and 'decorated' is female. The modulars are kind of an antidote to all of this. Perhaps that's all just terribly old-git sounding, but, hey, it's Lego! If you want different faces, that's easy enough to change!

[TheLegoDr]

It also is comical to me about the classic smiley being involved with sinister individuals. Blacktron were supposed to be the villains, yet underneath their black visor was this little smiley face.

It honestly wouldn't hurt my feelings if they never went away from the classic smiley. I realize they needed to change with the times and now there is a lot of variety in the facial expressions, but I loved the classic smiley. It does give people more freedom to play with these people how you want vs having a sad/excited/angry face 100% of the time.

Try switching some of the CMF to classic smiley. It is quite humorous.

[Mestari]

Absolutely! The black blacktron minifigure is a perfect example :)

In my case that poor fella that was improsoned in the Star Trak space police vehicle, was actually a good guy ;)

[Strelki]

It also is comical to me about the classic smiley being involved with sinister individuals.

Maybe it's an evil smile...

[Faefrost]

well, i have just completed building my PR for the first time. (I've had it sitting in it's box for 6 months due to lots of life events).... so sorry for my feedback delay.

in short: I enjoyed building it, but im concerned by the size of it. It is considerably smaller than modulars of the past. It's piece count is bloated by an enormous volume of parts that are smaller than or equal to a 1x2 plate. It's dimensions are a slimmed down modular by depth and height.

Im concerned this is the new path by the TLG. Let's see what's next. All in all this is a modular with about 20% of it's 'volume' missing.

The PR is a denser build than some of the others. Most of it's loss in pure size of the outer shell of the building comes from giving us a different or less typical profile to the building. Yes some of the other buildings seem larger on a shelf. But GE and TH are mostly open air inside. Balconies surrounding an inner atrium. The FB is 2 floors in the space of 3. The same with PC. Do you want a deep intricate build with lots of fascinating little details? Or do you want a big box of air? Because being a box of air tends to be the biggest complaint with the TH.

We here in the AFOL community tend to obsess over piece count. When a better measure is weight. The PR weighs pretty close to the PS when all is said and done.

[Off the wall]

Faefrost, that's a good analysis. And both opinions are okay with me. I prefer the big box of air type of building. That allows me to add to what TLG has given us in the original design as far as the interior goes. But, I'm more into the building and really don't care about the interior at all. I did buy enough grand emporiums to create one building that's four stories tall and has a 96 x 64 footprint. I haven't done much with the interior.

I also think that town hall gets a lot of unfair criticism. The interior does have some nice detail and the elevator was a different touch.

Some types of buildings lend themselves better to being modular subject matter. I didn't think my grand emporium could really be 'grand' if it was the same size as the green grocer. Like wise, I'm not happy with how the TH looks in my modular city. That's why I'm thinking about buying a couple more and making the town hall 64 wide and a story taller.

I also took three PRs and combined them into one multi purpose, three story building with the restaurant on the first floor. It has more the dimensions of the other modulars.

Sorry, I don't post pictures...but I have emailed pics to a few fellow AFOLs. If you'd like to see my PR and GE, just send me a message with an email address.

Now, off to the world cup....I hope no one gets bitten today.

[badbob001]

It was the PR's higher level of interior detail that finally sucked me into the modulars. If you want both big buildings and detailed interiors but have no confidence in your MOC skills or just don't have much spare pieces, then one can simply buy multiple PRs and stack them. And I think detailed interiors helps sets the stage for the photo narrative that goes into the back of the box, which greatly helps sell sets.

[Off the wall]

Yep, basically I took the parts from three PRs, put out them all on a large table and proceeded to build what I thought better fit my modular city.

[glendo]

Yep, basically I took the parts from three PRs, put out them all on a large table and proceeded to build what I thought better fit my modular city.

pics?