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Set #: 2942
Theme: Explore Logic (Duplo) Play House
Set name: Play House (a bit unimaginative)
URL: http://guide.lugnet.com/set/2942
Ages: 3-6, 89 pieces, 4 figures. (C) 2000, no instruction manual.
Price Range: US$70 on Shop@Home, bought retail in Australia for about A$100.
As an adult, I purchased two copies of this set as Christmas gifts for 2
families consisting only of young girls, who have a known liking for "playing
house". This review is therefore written by an AFOL, but based on observation
of the children's reactions to the set.
RATINGS (Scale: Must-Have Excellent Very-Good Good Fair Poor)
Set: Very-Good / Models: Excellent / Playability: Must-Have
DECALS? Yes, none covering multiple bricks, except when the kids choose to do
so :-)
SPECIAL FEATURES/COMPATIBILITY
Has a working doorbell that makes a sort of buzz sound through mechanical
action (no batteries required).
SET DESCRIPTION
The model is for a predominantly white-walled house with a red/yellow accents
(e.g. roofing) on 2 green flat baseplates. Furniture and other accessory items
are all primary colours: red, blue, yellow, green. The house has 2 levels with
bedroom, bathroom, and living/kitchen areas with an outdoor yard for play and
car parking. Like a dolls house, the construction is 1-sided, so you can either
look at it from the "outside" or turn it around and play with the family (Mum,
Dad, a child and a baby) in the rooms on the inside. There are no instructions,
you are expected to build it from the picture on the box.
SPECIAL ELEMENTS
Not being into Duplo myself, I am unsure what parts in this set are new or
particularly noteworthy. Being aimed at younger children, there are many
"single-piece" furniture items (e.g. bed, table, chair, bath, basin, toilet,
fence, swing) which are simply positioned onto the baseplates. Similarly the
accessories (e.g. saucepan, telephone) are single pieces which just sit on
table tops. Juniorised, obviously, but appropriate for the stated age group's
dexterity.
However, as an adult, the parts that were memorable to me were:
* the toilet (with a lifting seat, allowing the family of figs to argue about
whether it should be left up or down)
* the vacuum cleaner (Dad is shown in the artwork using it, so bonus points for
avoiding sex stereotypes)
* the telephone
* the door bell
There were some fabric elements, used for curtains, bed linen, and towels. The
fabric was attractive and seemed robust enough for children's play. It looked
like it was washable if required.
IMPRESSION
The set was a big hit in both households, children and adults alike. Children
and adults were involved in the initial construction, and then the children
played for hours on their own. One household had two girls in the stated age
range, the other had one in the age range with a 9 year old sister. However,
all the children loved the set, even the older girl. Indeed, I think she was a
little disappointed that it was her sister's present and not hers. The mothers
also liked the set and got involved in the building and play.
It was necessary to have a bit of adult help with constructing this set. In
both households, the children wanted to initially build the set, exactly as it
appeared on the box artwork. With 80+ pieces and no instructions, this was
actually a bit too difficult for the children (even the 9-year old who was well
outside the age range and who has a lot of Lego herself), as the construction
of the wall at the back cannot be easily deduced from the picture. It needed an
adult to do the logic of "well, if those bits are going there, then these bits
must be the ones used here in the area we can't see so clearly, and if so, then
this piece must go in that direction so it looks flat from this angle, <etc>".
Put simply, the box artwork didn't seem to show enough views from all angles to
make it trivial for the children. Whether it was accidental or deliberately
"discreet", the toilet is virtually impossible to see clearly in the box art.
Similarly the children didn't immediately work out that the drawer pieces
needed to be put inside the cupboard pieces or how the curtains were hung. I
think this set might have benefitted from having some instructions for the
benefit of children working alone. Also, the initial fitting of the windows
into their frames required an adult's dexterity, but once fitted, they were
fairly firmly connected and the children could use them unassisted afterwards.
However, once the model was built, the older of the girls in each household
then seemed to understand how it all worked and could rebuilt it without
assistance, but the younger girl (3 y.o. in each case) still seemed to need
some assistance of her older sister or parent. My feeling is that the age range
of this set should perhaps have been a little higher (both lower and upper
bounds) based on how the children interacted with it.
The playability of the set and re-use of the elements was very high indeed,
based on the observation of the children. Lots of rearrangements of the rooms,
furniture and figs occurred, together with various play-acting of stories.
Although many elements were special purpose (wall, roof, furniture, accessories
etc) and were not as reusable as a regular brick to build a non-house model,
nonetheless they were used to build many different house layouts etc. As the
pieces all have the standard Duplo top/bottom connections, Duplo bricks from
other sets were quickly incorporated to build even larger play houses. Of
course, this meant that the formerly white walls became a mish-mash of colours
as other Duplo sets have almost no white bricks, but at that age, the children
were predictably unconcerned about colour matching and used whatever bricks
came easily to hand. For this reason, the resulting structures didn't look as
aesthetically appealing to me as the Lego original model, but clearly the
children were delighted with the results. The children played continuously with
that set for some hours (until my departure) and, according to the parents, it
has continued to be popular subsequently with the children.
As I have given Duplo sets previously to children in these households, I have
to say that they seemed to like the Play House more than Bob The Builder,
Winnie The Pooh, or Toolo sets. The other Duplo set that has been an equally
big hit with kids in my experience is the Sea World Zoo (I can't find it in the
LUGnet database to give the number) which comes with a lot of whales, seals,
penguins and so forth. Perhaps this is because home and Sea World are things
that those children have first-hand experience of, whereas the other themes are
not things with which they have first-hand experience.
Set Rating
The parts in this set are a lot of fun. If the same parts were sold in Lego
System minifig scale, I think the Townies among us would be buying them by the
truckload. However, as the parts are fairly special purpose, I would have to
rate the set for parts as Very Good rather than Excellent.
Model Rating
The model built as shown on the box is excellent (very realistic really given
the practical constraints) and clearly inspired the older children to take its
construction ideas and experiment with them.
Playability Rating
This set seems to have enormous playability, certainly for girls. They
immediately began play-acting with the set, and would modify the model to fit
the "story" or the real world house they were talking about.
Likes/Dislikes
I loved the toilet with the lifting seat! The little sleeping bags used for bed
linen were cute too. I was worried that the parents might not like the working
doorbell (toys with sound can drive parents to distraction after they've heard
it 100 times) but it turned out that the doorbell only made a soft scratching
sound (perhaps with parental sanity in mind), and not the "ding-dong" I had
expected (I had expected it to need a battery). So I was actually a little
disappointed with the sound of the door bell.
Scale
The set is built to Duplo figure scale.
Errors
I did not see any errors in the set.
Extra Elements
I do not recall any extra elements.
CONCLUSION
I would absolutely recommend this set for girls (4-10). I don't have any
experience with the reaction of boys to the set ,but I would think younger boys
would enjoy it. It probably lacks the machismo required for an older boy :-)
Mums and dads seemed to like it too, and actively participated in play acting.
Clearly play acting in a house/family setting could provide a means for parents
discuss issues with children using the set to illustrate the
"desired"/"undesired" behaviour (e.g. what to do if there is a stranger ringing
the door bell).
As an AFOL, I don't normally write reviews on sets I buy for children. But this
one was such a big hit, I thought it worth drawing to the attention of other
gift-giving adults.
REVIEWER INFORMATION
Review Written: 12 Jan 2002
By: Kerry Raymond
Age: 42, but reviewed as a child's gift and not for adult purchase
Favourite Lines/Themes: System/Technics rather than Duplo!
--
============
Kerry Raymond
kerry@dstc.edu.au
Proud to be LUGNET Member 599
www.lugnet.com/people/members/?m=599
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