Set Review: Mork 031063 Ecological Park (Lego Compatible)

 

Good day brick fans!  We are back, and this time we are looking at another Mork/XMork branded set.  This one is called the Ecological Park, and it is my second Mork building set.  The other Mork set I built was the Tooncity Flower Shop and if you missed it, you can find my review of it 👉  here.

This post is brought to you by Afobrick.com who have provided this cool little building for me to review.  Thanks, Afobrick!

👉 Please check out the latest seasonal promo from Afobrick.  They are a new store on the building block scene and if you could support them, that would be great!

Here are the details of today's set review:

Brand: Mork/Xmork

Set number: 031063

Theme: Block Module

Number of Pieces: 1506 pieces

Stickers: No

Minifigures: No

Extra parts: Yes

Deformed or missing parts: No

Brick clutch and finish: Excellent

Age Rating: 6+

Size: 21cm W x 20.5 cm H

Lighting: Yes!

Unboxing

Here's the colourful box which describes all the details on the front.  The box has seen better days, but that's ok because I don't collect cardboard. 

Although branded as Mork, the box logos say Xmork.  I'm so confused.  On the back of the box is a picture of the Ecological Park lit up.  Yes, it comes with a very nice LED light brick.

Unboxings are always fun!  Let's see what we got.

The building block set includes a glossy 74 page instruction booklet, a red brick separator, a light brick, a sprue of pink flowers, and 28 numbered parts bags broken down as follows:

Section 1: 10 bags

Section 2: 9 bags

Section 3: 9 bags

Each of the numbers correspond to the respective section in the manual.  

The Build

Section 1

The 10 bags for section 1 build one side of the Ecological Park.  There are quite a few masonry bricks in this set as well as a lot of windows.  The window glass was just a tad milky but that's to be expected from the Chinese brands.  No scratches or deformities encountered with the bricks so far, that's a good sign.

The building is quite tall and houses some tropical plants and also serves as an animal sanctuary.  There are a good number of printed parts as you will see.  The interior has a rack of plants that are being grown in the corner.  Above them are 4 bird houses with perches.  There are three tropical birds roosting there.  In the lower corner near the entrance is a tank where several frogs live.  I like how there appears to be a waterline in the tank.  We will take a closer look later.

Section 2

Section 2 builds the glass enclosure which is like a solarium.  It also makes the roof line even taller with the slanted roof.  There are some hanging vines that come down inside.  On the solarium side, we find a tropical palm tree and a pond with more frogs and some more plants.  I should mention that there is a narrow gray path that winds around the base, but I don't think it's minifig scale.  

The two sections are hinged at one end and the Ecological Park building can be displayed either opened or closed.  The hinge piece is a tad loose and doesn't really hold up very well.

Section 3

Section 3 adds the slanted roof and lots of foliage.

Like I mean a lot of foliage!  I'm guess a good third of this set is attributed to plant leaves and stems. Oh and the roof tiles too.  I chose not to use any of the pink parts on the sprue.

Entrance to the building is at the side.  You can pretty much put the trees and foliage where ever you want.

Here's the back of the building complete with plants and vines.  The chain is supposed to hang a printed sign that says plants, but I thought that was pretty redundant so I didn't use it.

There are four more birds perched outside.  Can you find them all?  

So the set doesn't come with any minifigures, but I added a few so you could see how big the set relative to the figure.  Based on the scale of the minifig, this building would probably be about 25 to 30 feet tall in real life or approx 8 or 9 meters tall.

Here's a closer look inside the interior.

There are three roof panels, two of which are tiled and one is comprised of windows. They can all come off by lifting.

Brick clutch was good and they needed to be, because there were a lot of 1x2 plates used.  They could have been replaced by longer 1x4 or 1x6 plates to give more structural rigidity.  I found the area with the black tile under the roof line to be the trickiest to put together.  Try not to press too hard here or it will fall off.  This is more a design issue, than a brick clutch problem.  I will probably modify it later to remedy the problematic area.

Here's a closer look at the pond and plants area.

Oh man, every day someone has to go and clean up all of the bird doo-doo!  Be careful they don't poop on your head!  (Bird poop and minifigure, accessories not included).

Hey, but what is included in the set are the following animals:

7 tropical birds pooping

3 cats pouncing

2 dogs sitting

and 5 froggies croaking

(custom stand not included)

But wait, there's more!  The Mork Ecological Park also comes with a light brick and attached LED light string.

The instruction manual pretty much tells you to put the led lights however you want but they do provide a picture of the recommended location.  

Summary

So if you are a fan of plants and animals, you will probably like this set.  It's got a lot of nice details and best of all printed parts and no stickers.  The bonus light brick really makes this building shine! (excuse the pun).  I thought that the build quality was ok except for the area under the roof and the hinge that connects the two parts of the building together.  For a display set, you need to turn on the light or open it up so you can see the interior.  Oh and add a few minifigures for more fun.

For those of you up to the challenge, this would make a nice full sized modular building. I'd expand the footprint and provide more space on the inside so minifigures could take a tour.  I'd also provide a second floor viewing platform with ladder or stairs so that the birds could be better viewed by the minifigures.

I'd give this set a 4 out of 5.  Decent little set overall.

👉 Here's the link to the Ecological Park set on Afobrick's website.  Don't forget to use my code itsnotlego to get an extra 5% off your entire purchase.

Thanks for looking!  And don't forget to check out 👉 Afobrick's latest promo!

Lego Compatible Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 Building Set Review

Welcome back to It's Not Lego, my little space on the web that looks at all of the latest building block sets and brands coming out of China.

Today, we'll be doing a review of the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge, set number is FH9004 with 1969 pieces and it even includes a light kit standard with the building.

Now available on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.   Find my special code at the bottom of this blog post to get an extra 10% off their website pricing.

The Lakeside Lodge is reminiscent of a fishing lodge that sits on the water's edge. It has a main floor that consists of a cozy living room and well equipped kitchen.  There is a nice loft space on the second floor that accomodates a bedroom complete with fireplace.  

Funwhole is a relatively new building block brand that is making a mark in the Lego space. According to their website, they've been around since 2014 but only recently started to market building sets, focusing on unique design and innovation.  Unlike other brick brands, all of the Funwhole kits come with lighting included in the price of the set.

This is my second Funwhole set, the first being the rustic Wood Cabin set FH9001, which I had a lot of fun building.  You can find my review of it here.  I did an in-depth review of their lighting kit on the Wood Cabin set, so I won't be reviewing the lighting in this post.  Just know that the lighting kit in the Lakeside Lodge works the same way.

I want to point out that there are a lot of brick brands out there right now, but it all comes down to their customer service and whether they stand behind their product. I had some issues with my kit and Funwhole customer service came through with flying colours more than once! (We will discuss in detail later).

It's so great that Funwhole shipped me the Lakeside Lodge building set in the original box.  The presentation and the pictures on the box are really nice.

Also included is a very thick and detailed instruction manual, and a small sticker sheet.   

Additionally, there are four resealable envelopes that contain all the lighting components to make the Lakeside Lodge extra special.  

The large instruction manual makes it easy to follow the steps, but I will say however, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain the right colour of the pieces because there are different colours of browns, tans and greens in this set.  In that case, I usually take a stab at it and hope for the best.

The Lakeside Lodge has a standard 32x32 stud footprint but instead of one single baseplate the foundation is composed of 4 16x16 plates.  Although not required, I constructed a MILS base underneath to make the flooring more rigid and easier to handle.  This is something that I've started doing to all of my modular buildings, so it's not due to any deficiency of this set in particular.

To build the set, there are six major steps and there are six bags of parts pertaining to each step.  Within each of the large numbered bags, there were several smaller bags of parts.

As I started to build, I noticed that there was something odd about the bags of parts I had received in step 1.  There was a duplication of some bags and missing others which prevented me from continuing the build.  

I took pictures of the bags I had and contacted Funwhole customer service through an Instagram DM.  They were very quick to respond and we figured out which bags were missing from the set.

Here's a complete breakdown of the component bags by section that Funwhole sent to me.  I was missing bags 1.1-3 and 1.1-4.  Funwhole immediately shipped out the missing parts to me, and I received them right after the chinese Golden Week holiday.

With the missing bricks in hand, I started making progress again.  As you can see from the above picture, the Lakeside Lodge set is a building that is located next to the water's edge.  I added some of my own minifigures just for fun.  As a reminder, there are six steps to the construction and this completes section 1.  Time to move on to section 2.

And then just as I thought everything was smooth sailing, this happened.  It looks like one of the parts bag had a bad accident and several of the pieces inside suffered some damage.

I let Funwhole know and within a week and a half, I had replacement bricks sent to me, quickly and painlessly.  Needless to say, I was really pleased with Funwhole's communication and promptness.

With the completion of section 2, the main structure of the Lakeside Lodge is apparent.

The interior consists of two rooms, the kitchen and the living room.  The kitchen features two cooktops, a fan hood, a coffee maker, a sink and loads of cupboards.

 The living room sports  couch with side table, TV and grandfather clock.  Behind the couch one finds a rack with hat, jacket and boots.  There's a small foyer which leads to the front door of the lodge.

Before we move on to the second floor, now's a good time to test the lighting on the main floor.  There's some accent lights in the water and one on the fishing dock.

There's several more lights inside and outside of the lodge as well.

Funwhole provides a battery pack and all of the lights and wiring, you just need to supply two double AA batteries to power the lights.

Jumping ahead to section 3, we have now completed the second floor bedroom.  In addition to the single bed, there is a side table, a bookshelf and a chair and desk with lamp.  The red light brick in the middle of the room will serve as a fireplace in an upcoming step.

Here's how the Lakeside Lodge is shaping up before we move on to section 4.

Section 4 sees the completion of one side of the rooftop and dormer window.

A tree with colourful leaves rises from the ground.

Section 5 builds some more of the side roof panels.

Section 6 finishes off the roof and chimney.  And with that, the Lakeside Lodge is finished!   Time to take it all in.

I gotta say that this set really pops with the lighting.  Some bonus shots follow.

The Funwhole Lakeside Lodge does not come with any minifigures, but it sure brings life to the set if you add your own.

So in summary, the Funwhole Lakeside lodge is 1969 pieces and rated for ages 8 and above as per the box and manual information.  The set bundles in a great lighting kit that if purchased separately would probably cost at least $30 to $40 more. 

Funwhole uses the same lighting system as Briksmax.  For a detailed primer of how the lighting kits work, please check out my blog post here.

It comes with a sticker sheet (which I didn't use) and a really thick instruction manual.  Although there wasn't any page numbers, there were a total of 555 steps spread out over 6 sections.  Bonus tools include a brick separator and tweezers to pick up those small pieces.

I had some really bad luck in that my set was missing parts and also had deformed parts. But Funwhole made it right with their excellent communication and super quick replacement of the affected parts.

Want to add the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 to your brick collection?  You can find it on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.

Because I've partnered with Funwhole, they are offering a further 10% off your purchase price by using code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout.   How great it that?

 Thanks for visiting and see you next time!  Bye!