Lepin 15009 Not Lego Petshop Set Review - Part One

Welcome back!  It's been over 2 years since I bought the Lepin 15009 Pet Shop, and I just finally got around to building half of it.  Let's take a quick look.

There's two buildings in this 2032 piece set.  Big enough to fill up this blue bin.  For this post I will concentrate on the Pet Shop.  The adjoining Townhouse will be reviewed in a separate post.

As I'm putting this together, I notice that the layout is very efficient and would make a good template for my future custom modular buildings.  I like the foldable staircase going to the second floor and the adjoining store front.

Having said that, I do find that there's a lot of wasted space in the back.  It would have been better if the Lego designer had increased the depth of the modular by 2 or 3 studs.

 Currently, there's enough room in the Pet Shop for 2 kennels, a fish tank and a bird stand.

There's also a little table and cash register.  I've got all these Friends style pets that I can finally use now in the pet shop.  If I expand the footprint of the building, I can add more kennels and use up some more of the animal figures.

Second floor of the pet shop under construction.  Don't mind the mess.

 While the second floor is adequately furnished, I wasn't particularly enamored with the furniture.  I decided to completely remove the fireplace and the moved the provided coffee maker to the stairwell wall.  I also replaced the chair that came with the pet shop with a sofa instead.  The dog minifigure is originally from the main floor kennel but he got adopted by the girl minifigure.  Sorry, but she doesn't come with the set.

Second floor updated.

 Second floor rear view.

 Pulling away the front facade gives a better view of the second floor flat.

 I need to start changing all my modular buildings so that walls can be pulled away for viewing.  It definitely makes picture taking easier.

The third floor consists of a bed and and a lamp (not shown).  I changed the bed from green to pink, just to use up some pink brinks.   The open concept wastes a lot of space.

 I don't particularly like the three windows on the third floor.

 Third floor exterior.

 If I had to change this model, it would be to increase the footprint of each level of the building.  The third floor would benefit from the addition of a bathroom if there were more floor space available.

 Just a few more pics.

There are four minifigures that come with the pet shop set.  There's one minifig face that looks different than the rest.  I'm not sure if it's a one-off misprint problem or if this is consistent on all the Lepin pet shop sets.

I've now decided that I will definitely start tearing the building down to rebuild it and make it larger on all levels.   Time to get to work, soon you soon!

Lepin 36013 City Shop Set Review (replica Lego 40305)

 Hi All, look what the postman left at my front door yesterday.  It's the Lepin version of the "Microscale Lego store 40305".   The Lepin brand store set number is 36013 and it has 405+ pieces.

 The Lepin set was tightly packed into a smallish box.  Contents of the box include the multi-page instruction manual, sticker sheet and ten clear plastic bags of brick parts.

The Lepin manual is copied from the Lego manual because it only shows 4 bags of parts.

Nice to see that the clear window parts are packaged separately.  My window parts were all scratch free.

The Lepin store includes two minifigures, a guy with floral shirt and a small boy with white hoodie and red cap.  I'm going to have to replace the  hands of the small boy because don't fit into his arms.

Let's review the building details now.  The store front consists of a large window and door.  I haven't yet placed the Lepin sign over the door yet.

There's a bank machine at the side of the building.  Is that Lego's way of saying how expensive their sets have become?  Ie. You probably didn't bring enough money, so you need to spend more to buy our sets.  Luckily my Lepin brand store was about half the price of the Lego version.

The back of the store is open and there's a cash register and a pick a brick parts wall.  Some sets are also displayed in the front window.

On the other wall, there are product boxes, for which I still haven't applied the stickers yet.

A quick peek from above.  There's also a yellow bin for parts or polybags.

The second floor of the Lepin brand store has two large windows and two red flags.  Yellow awnings over the windows.

There's windows on both sides of the building.  You can pop them out easily, although I'm not sure why you would want to.

The second floor has a bin with shield and a table for making your own minifigs.  There's more product on the wall between the front windows.

Here's the second floor attached to the first.  Brick clutch is good, however I find the brick plastic to be a bit on the soft side.

 And here's the completed roof.

Tada, the completed Lepin store 36013.

 Hey look, there's the not so official Lepin store mascot girl.   She arrived just in time to receive the latest shipment of the Lepin building sets.   If you need the Blue Brick girl, just search Aliexpress for PG8151 or PG1243 (Pogo brand minifigure).  There's also a red Brick boy minifigure PG1242 not pictured here.

 The Lepin delivery minifigures are actually from the Lepin Roller Coaster set 15039.  Also pictured is the Lepin Delivery Truck 02036.

I finally put the Lepin sticker on the store.  The sticker quality isn't that good, as you can hardly make out the wording.

Here's the Lepin store removable panels .

Finally, here's a few spare parts I got with the Lepin store.   The Lepin store is a nice addition to anyone's City layout.  I plan on making the Lepin store a full modular building for my Its-Not-Lego town in the near future.

Thanks for looking!

Set name:  The Lepin store
Set number:  36013
Clone of:  Lego 40305
Number of pieces: 405+
Number of minifigs: 2
Score:  5 out of 5

Lepin 02036 Not Lego City Truck Set Review

Hello and welcome back to Its Not Lego, a blog about Lego alternative building brick sets.  Today, I will be reviewing the Lepin 02036 City Truck.  It is a near exact copy of the Lego City Truck set 3221, with the exception of the Lepin logo on the truck instead of Lego.  Pictured above is the cover page from the instruction booklet.

And here's the back of the instruction booklet which I'm sure is a copy of Lego's booklet (again except for the Lepin logos).

I ordered my set off Aliexpress using a new account.  Recall that my old account got suspended for raising too many disputes.  If you missed that blog post, you can find it here.  Anyways, I'm not going to raise as many disputes as I used to, because I want to stay under the Aliexpress radar.

This is the sticker sheet that comes with the Lepin City Truck set.  Do you notice that the licence plate has the Lepin set number on it?   Normally I don't put the stickers on the building sets, but this one will be an exception.

You only get two minifigures with the Lepin City Truck set.  The guy with the dark blue shirt must be the driver.  The guy with the red cap and overalls is responsible for loading all the boxes.  They both look to be near Lego quality, right down to the hair piece.  Lepin has really upped their game recently when it comes to mini figure reproduction.

Ok, let's start building!  Here I've started on the truck chassis.

Chassis completed!  Pretty straight forward build, no advanced techniques on this one.

Building the sleeper cab.  There's two exhaust pipes on the rear of the cab.  Inside there is one seat and a bed.  You get the standard red mug also.   Good news ... no scratches on the windshield.

You can't see it here, but there is also a printed TV screen on the inside of the cab.

Roof, doors and mirrors attached to the sleeper cab.

The sleeper cab of the City Truck clips onto the chassis snugly.

Here's another view before I add the wheels.

The Lepin city truck has the replica Lego wheels which I like.  It rolls great!

Now it's time to work on the semi-trailer (that's what we call it in North America, what do you call it  in your country?).

The side doors and walls of the trailer are in.

Another pic of the almost completed trailer.

The back doors have been added to the trailer now.

Now we work on the undercarriage of the trailer.  Not exactly a fifth wheel configuration, but it works.  Also added the support struts.

Tail lights added and wheel assembly too.

Time to flip it over.

Testing the struts.  Its Not Lego gives it a passing grade.

Ta-da!  We've now hitched up the trailer to the cab.   The Lepin City truck is complete.  Well almost, now we need to add the stickers.

Here's the final Lepin City Truck with stickers added to the truck and the boxes.

Looks awesome!

More views!

It's so long it has a hard time negotiating the curve in the road.

Here's a look from behind.

Well, that's my review, hope you liked the pictures!

Brand: Lepin
Model:  02036 City Truck
Knockoff:  Yes,  Lego City Truck 3221
Number of pieces:  298 pieces
Number of minifigs: 2