Reviewing the JMBricklayer 21101 Flower House Building Block Set

  

Welcome back to It's Not Lego!  Today we get to look at another set from JMBricklayer.com.  It's the colourful 21101 Flower Shop!  It comes with LED lighting and 1593 pieces.  It can even be opened up fully to display the interesting and packed interior.

Where to Get it

Today's set was generously provided to me by JMBricklayer.com for the purpose of the review.  

You can find this set and many more on their website.  Use my code ITSNOTLEGO15% to save 15% off on selected items.  And they offer free worldwide shipping to most countries.

Set Details

• Brand: JMBricklayer
• Set: Flower Shop 21101
• Theme: City Architecture
• Piece count: 1593 pieces
• Numbered bags? Yes
• Stickers or printed parts? Both
• Missing or deformed pieces: No
• Extra parts: Yes
• Minifigures: No
• Lighting kit: included
• Brick Quality and Clutch: Great
• Measurements (approx): 8"W x 6" D x 7.5" H
• Age Rating: 14+
• 
  

Unboxing

My Flower Shop came in the original JMBricklayer box, which was jammed packed with multiple parts bags and the instruction booklet.  The first thing I noticed was the manual which listed the set number as 031061.  A quick check on the internet reveals the JMBricklayer set is a repack of the Mork 031061 Flower Shop set.  

Also included in the box is an easy to follow instruction manual consisting of 102 pages. I found a very small sticker sheet taped inside the manual, but I forgot to take pictures of the two stickers.

There are three steps to building the flower shop, broken down in the manual as follows:

Step 1 - pages 1 thru 27

Step 2 - pages 28 thru 61

Step 3 - pages 62 thru 100

Corresponding to each step are also numbered bags of parts. Total number of parts bags is 30 broken down as follows

Step 1 - 11 bags

Step 2 - 9 bags

Step 3 - 8 bags

Plus 1 bag for the led light string and 1 bag for the flower/decorative pieces.

Building Step 1

Step 1 builds one side of the flower shop which includes half of the base, one set of  walls and part of the shop interior.  Instead of using one or two larger baseplates for the floor, the designer opted for a lot of smaller plates which surprisingly held the shop together adequately later.

Found this parts bag in Step 1 with a strange message reading "All use of this white accessories, to this package shall prevail".   The bag contained the extra pieces pictured above which weren't needed at all to build the flower shop.  Weird!

Ok, this is what 11 bags of parts all opened looks like.  Let's build!

Baseplate and plant stand under construction.  And before you know it ...

... the first step is completed!  In addition to the plant stand which is now adorned with lots of greenery, there is a shelf, maybe it's a resource centre?  The flower shop gets a patterned yellow and blue floor which is surrounded by walls of several glass windows.  

The assembled door gives us the indication that the flower shop is not minifigure scale.  That's too bad.  I think the flower shop owner has neglected the plants because all of the flower heads are drooping.  Water them please!

Here's the exterior for this part of the build.

On to Step 2

Cracking open all of the bags numbered 2.

Here's a couple of nice printed tiles I found amongst the other parts.

Here's the other baseplate being constructed.

Building up the remaining walls and interior. A potted plant shelf sits next to the counter.  I discovered a couple of more printed pieces in the form of little QR codes sitting on the countertop.

Those printed tiles look like pictures that are for sale.  They sit on a small cart which has a floor fan in front of it.

The last walls of windows are built to complete Step 2.

In order to line up the small 1x1 tile pieces that form the walkway around the flower shop, I found it really helpful to use some tweezers for straightening all of the tiny parts, especially the light gray pieces which clutched a tad too much.

Final Step

Unpacking the bags for Step 3, which constructs the flower shop roof and adds all of the other little bits around the exterior.

Here's what one of the roof panels looks like during it's construction.

Of particular note one should be aware of, is that the instructions seem to miss adding a thin circular plate to the middle of the center cylinder.  The part is provided, just not mentioned.  Make sure to add this piece otherwise the pegs that clip to the center beam may not line up.

Before I show you the finished flower shop, here are all the extra pieces leftover.  Note, I didn't use any of the optional flower and insect pieces from the sprues as per the instructions.  Oh BTW, there's that tiny sticker sheet in the picture.  I didn't apply the stickers either.  We will look at the LED light string in just a bit.

For now, let's view the completed flower shop from the outside.  There are two access doors that can open and close.

Lots and lots of windows!

As mentioned earlier, the interior of flower shop can be displayed by opening the swivel base.

Here's another way to display the set.

Now, let's look athe lighting for the Flower shop.  There's no place to attach the lighting cables so looks like it's just freeform ...

... as per the instructions.

Wow, check out the effect of the lighting!

The flower shop definitely looks nicer with the lights on.

Finally, here's a quick comparison photo of the JMBricklayer Flower shop displayed next to the Mork 031063 Ecological Park set, which I also reviewed last December.  Both of the sets are very similar in size.  In fact, the sets almost look like they have been designed by the same person.

Summary

I think the JMBricklayer Flower Shop shines best when displayed with the lighting kit on (excuse the pun!).  It's a nice looking display model with lots of glass area.  I feel like it could have used a few more flowers on the inside, and I wish the shop was scaled more towards minifigures.  Danboard thinks that the scale of the shop is just fine.

With a few interior adjustments, I'm sure one could mod it, however the front and back doors would definitely need to be replaced for minifig scale.  One might wonder if there's too much white colour going on with this building.  Since the flower shop had printed some pieces, I'm not sure why they didn't just make the two stickers printed pieces as well.  

On a scale of 1 to 5, I'm going to rate this set 4.1.   My score would have been higher if the flower shop was minifig scale and had a few more flowers.  Let me know what you thought of this set in the comments below!

Thanks again JMBricklayer.com for the set.  Please visit their website if you get a chance. Bye for now!