Set Review: Keeppley K18003 Yinyi Garden Entertainment Building Block Set

It's huge, it's colourful, it's packed with details!  It's the new Keeppley K18003 Yinyi Garden Entertainment building block set.   Hey, brick fans, today we are back with another review and it's quite the set.

In case you are unfamiliar with the name, Keeppley is a building block brand that is part of the Enlighten Toys franchise. A quick scan on brick4.com reveals that they have produced just under 200 sets for such names such as Naruto, Pokemon, Doraemon,  Crayon Shin, and Hello Kitty to name a few.  If you see sets with the names Enlighten, Keeppely, and Qman, they are all part of the same brand.

A huge shout out to online store Afobrick.com who made this review possible by kindly furnishing the set for me to review.  The set was sent to me superfast and well packaged.  Afobrick.com has an excellent track record for packaging and delivery.

Afobrick.com also provides free worldwide shipping and it's all tax free. Buy more, save more!

The Keeppley K18003 Yinyi Garden Entertainment Center is now available on their website, and don't forget to use my discount code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout. (click on the pic below to go directly to the item listing).

In 2020, Keeppley  expanded into Chinese Street Architecture theme, with the  Kaiyun Hotpot Restaurant K18001, then shortly thereafter the Qiyun Luxury Hotel K18002.  

New for this year is the Yinyi Garden and Entertainment Center K18003. The Entertainment center consists of three storeys in an L shaped layout.  Where your normal modular building sits on a 32x32 stud baseplate, this one has a footprint of 36 by 42 studs.  If you want to fit this into your modular city, you might have to make some adjustments.  This is a decent sized set with well over 2000 pieces I'd imagine.

Typically, a modular building has a very interesting front facade, with a not so interesting backside.  The Keeppley entertainment center is an exception as both front and rear of the building are exquisitely and richly detailed.

Dominating the front corner of the building is a large sign board that runs the entire height of the three floors.  If someone knows the meaning of the characters on the sign, please let me know.  And yes, those are all printed parts, not stickers.

Here are some of the different exterior facades that adorn the three levels of the building.  More examples of printed pieces can be found.

Left side front view.

Right side front view.

Being a corner modular building, you can choose to display the side you like the best.

Here's the other side of the entertainment centre.  One can see a rooftop garden, a stone bridge that leads to a pagoda surrounded by water and a huge tree that overlooks a waterfall.   In the center of all this, there is a working glass elevator that services all three floors. It's a very nice setup, although one wonders where all that water is coming from.  

There's a bird perched in the tree, wish it was more colourful though.

The view of beautiful waterfall is obscured by the pagoda.

A better view of the waterfall with pagoda removed.

Shaded lookout from the second floor.

The full height glass elevator shaft. The elevator works by turning the blue knob at the top to raise and lower the platform inside.  There are openings from each floor to access the shaft, however there should be glass doors to prevent people from falling into the shaft and getting seriously injured.

I don't know if this applies to the other Keeppley buildings, but this one does not come off floor by floor like a regular modular building.  There are a couple of novel ways to view the interior of the entertainment centre.

Kitchen in a drawer!  This sliding feature makes it possible to remove the entire kitchen for extra play value.

With the kitchen fully removed, one can see all the details of the double stove, sink and other utensils.

On the other arm of the building, there are four different rooms to be seen by swinging away each section.  Unfortunately access is limited and is for viewing only.

Here is the main floor dining room, with seating for six.  Even inside there are printed signs on the wall and even the rice and noodle bowls are printed, not stickered.

I'm not exactly sure for sort of room this is on the second floor.  I'm guessing from the cups on the table that it's some sort of tea room, with different teas for tasting.

On the top floor is the mahjong room.  Mahjong is like a chinese version of gin rummy but using plastic tiles instead of cards.  Of course, there are a lot more complexities to this game than my simple explanation.  Anyways, mahjong can be found in many asian gambling establishments, typically frequented by the older generation.  And yes, all the colourful mahjong tiles are printed pieces.

One last look at the Mahjong room from an exterior view.

Finally for those of the less geriatric crowd, there is a video games room next to the mahjong room.

With a couple of controllers on the shelf and a dance mat on the floor, this should have the kids poppin.

So let's talk about the minifigures that come with this set.  There are six of them, three males and three females, all dressed in traditional chinese garments.

I'm pretty sure that Enlighten/Keeppley/Qman wanted to avoid Lego's wrath when it came to minifigure replicas.  So they made their minifigures with huge heads that look more like dolls than minifigures.   If you like them, then that's fine, but for me, I prefer all of my minifigures to look similar in size.  Xingbao and Sluban have uniquely designed minifigs as well, but they still keep within the same size norms as Lego style minifigures.  

But did you know that you can actually swap out the ginormous Enlighten heads and replace them with standard minifigure heads?  I went through my minifigure collection and selected some that loosely replicate the ones in the set.  

Which minifigure style do you prefer? Let me know if you prefer the Lego standard or the new Enlighten ones.  

As a final note, I took a lot of pictures as I built the set, but not sure if there's anyone interested in seeing the process.  Let me know if you want to see those pics and I can make a subsequent post.  I found the brick clutch and quality to be excellent.  There was a matter of  one missing piece and one deformed piece, however those did not impact the build.  There are some transparent window parts which are relatively clear and scuffed or scratched.

I gave this set a 4.8 out of 5 with points deducted for the missing and deformed parts and the big headed mini figures.  But overall a fun and enjoyable build.  And the entertainment center is absolutely photogenic.

Want to build this colourful and exquisite set?  Head on over to Afobrick.com and check out all the different brick sets they have at the store.

Hope you have enjoyed this review and let me know what you thought in the comments.   Bye for now!

Mork 031051 ToonCity Florist Set Review (design by LetzPlay)

What's up brick fans!  I'm back to show you the latest not Lego set in my collection.

Today, I'll be reviewing the ToonCity Florist shop.  The Florist shop is part of a series of building sets designed by the group LetzPlay, composed of 5 brick enthusiasts in Malaysia (according to their Facebook page).  They have collaborated with the Mork brand to produce their sets.

As of this post, there are a total of three sets in the Mork ToonCity series;  the Florist (031051), the Fruit Shop (031052) and the Town House (031053).  

A big thank you to Afobrick.com for supplying me with this set to review.  You can find the Tooncity Florist shop along with many other not Lego building block sets on their website.  They offer great prices and superfast shipping.

The ToonCity Florist Shop is a colourful and whimsical building set.  It features many bright colours and a lot of  play features which the kids will love.  This set is quite large at 2102 pieces, enough to keep them busy for days.  The set is recommended for builders age 6 and up.

For those who want to see the set contents and the build pictures, I've posted them here for you to see (coming soon!).   The Tooncity Florist measures 30 × 19.5 × 25 cm and is Lego compatible, meaning that you can interchange the building blocks in this set with your Lego bricks.  

The Florist shop has lots of curves, curved entrance, curved windows and even curved roof.  The predominant colours are the turquoise roof and orange accents on the roof, doors and windows.

From the pictures you can see that there are unique details on every side of the florist shop.  Every wall has a window you can peek into.  

Did you know that the roof comes off?  You can actually remove both parts of the roof and look inside.  Let's check it out!

Here's the interior of the Florist shop.  There's a curved brown door which you enter into what looks like a storage area.  There's a sink for washing up and a table and ladder.  That's odd, how does one get inside the shop?

Here's the surprise, there's a secret door that turns.  Only those who know it's little secret can enter the florist shop.

Inside the secret room, is a menagerie of plants! There's lots of flowers and specimen jars for the budding botanist.   And a giant tree is growing right inside the shop.  It's home to several tropical birds.  Can you find one of them in the picture?

On the opposite wall is another workbench and more flower specimens.  When not tending to the plants one can sit in the big comfy chair and watch their favourite shows on the TV.

Here's a neat trick, the TV actually lights up if you press a button on the outside.

Unfortunately the TV does not stay lit up unless you keep the button pressed.  Luckily, we got some help from a small friend.   

Can't forget to mention the two giant flowers on the roof.  Wow they must be mutants to grow so big.

Another great play feature is that you can rotate the flowers round and round by turning the knob in the roof.  Surprise your friends!

Here's another tropical bird that comes with the set.  Normally he's perched inside but we took him outside to get some sun.  That's the nice thing about this set is that you can move things around and put them where you want.

Need to water those plants in high places?  No problem with the handy ladder that comes with the set.

If you are still wondering about the size of this set, here's the ToonCity Florist next to the FunWhole Wood Cabin, I built not too long ago.  It's just a tad shorter because it only has a single floor and a roof, whereas the FunWhole cabin has a raised foundation and a second floor loft area.

Final thoughts

The ToonCity Florist shop was a nice build and would be great for kids because of its play value.  There are three printed pieces in the whole set and thankfully no stickers.

It should be noted that this set comes with way more flowers than I've shown in my pictures.  There are literally hundreds more flowers that I didn't add to really customise it.   The Mork brand brick quality is top notch and I had no clutch issues in putting the set together.  Mork also provided lots of extra pieces in my set.

I will note that the large curved roof piece might need the assistance of an adult to put together.

The one drawback I had with this set, and a big one at that, is that it did not include any minifigures with it.  You do get two tropical birds, if that's any consolation. I added my own minifigure to the pictures to give you a sense of scale and showcase the set's features.   I would imagine that you could add your own, but for the price of the set, I think they should have added one or two little people.   For that reason, I will deduct half a star and only give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

If you like what you see, you can get it at Afobrick.com.  And don't forget to use discount code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout for another 5% off the price!

Thanks so much for spending your time on the read, hope to see you back real soon!