Not Lego Sembo 601111 Magazine Kiosk Review

Hey brick fans, I'm back after a bit of a hiatus!

I've moved out my house for the next few months until renovations can be completed.  As a result, I haven't been buying as many brick sets as I normally would.  In March and April, I only bought four new sets off Aliexpress.  I got the Leji clone of the boutique hotel, a couple of MOC clones, 60s batmobile and an imperial troop transport.  I'll try to review those soon.

In this post, I will be reviewing the Sembo 601111 magazine kiosk or newstand.  Sembo calls the set a newstand, but there aren't a lot of newspapers included.  They look more like magazine covers to me IMO.

The set consists of 119 pieces and includes one minifigure.  

Here's everything you get in the set:  A two sided instruction sheet, four bags of parts, a couple of plates and a sticker sheet.

The mini figure comes completely disassembled, so you have to put it together yourself.

Here's how the kiosk lady looks like when assembled.  I guess she's better looking than a crusty old guy.

I was hoping that this Sembo set would include printed pieces, but no, I just got a sticker sheet.  On the bright side the stickers aren't skimpy or thin, and they have a sparkly texture to them. They were easy to affix to the tile pieces.  As mentioned previously, the stickers look like magazine covers.  Only one sticker says Sembo news. Some of the other stickers are for products like candy and juice.  I can probably reuse them in my 7-11 store in future.

Other than the stickers, this set doesn't use any special pieces, so if you have the spare bricks laying around, I'm sure you can make your own news stand or kiosk from the instructions above.

Here's all the pieces after you empty the four bags.  The brick quality is quite good, and I didn't find any scuffs or scratches.  I did find that the brick texture was softer than Lego bricks.  Other than that, no clutch issues and building the set is effortless and could be managed by little kids too.

Simple back wall and floor.  Regarding the base, it has little wheels for rolling the kiosk into place.  It also has a bracket that I guess could be used to attach to the back of a vehicle to pull it around.

Accessories include a tilting chair and a small table for the coffee mug.

After assembling the kiosk frame, it's time to place the stickers!  The chair and table just fit next to the built-in magazine racks.  Not much room for anything else.

I tried my best to match up the coloured tiles to the stickers as per the instructions, but I'm sure you could just use whatever you wanted as well.

Here are some of the stickers applied to the tiles, then put onto the side panels of the kiosk.

Here's the other side of the kiosk wall.  Both walls can fold in for ease of transport, I guess.  Kind of a mixed bag for the stickers, but they do have mini figure characters on them.

These are the stickers that go inside the kiosk.

Tada, the kiosk is complete!  Well, not quite. I need to put the roof on.

On the ceiling you get a ceiling fan and a light.  Good for tending the kiosk on those hot nights.

Normally, you would have the side doors open to display the magazines, but here they are folded in and ready for travel.

Before hooking up her kiosk, the lady always does a walk around to make sure everything is intact and stuff hasn't fallen off.  Looks like she has given the A-OK.

Here are the extra left over parts from the set.  Yours might vary.

This set is part of a 4 set series, the others are food stalls on wheels, which you might like.  I got my set delivered to Canada in approx 3 weeks.

This was a small set that doesn't require too much skill or time, but looks nice by itself or in a Lego style city.  I give it 4.5 stars.  If it had printed tiles instead of stickers, it would have gotten 5 stars.

Well, that's it!  Hope you enjoyed this review of the Sembo 601111 News stand.   See you next time!

Sembo Blocks Hong Kong Flats Building Set Review 601095

Hello not Lego fans!  Today, I'm reviewing the Sembo Hong Kong flats set number 601095.  This set consists of two building facades representing some small shops with apartments above them.  There is another set 601096 that has the same theme but with buildings that have tan and white building facades.  I chose to buy 601095 because this set is more colourful with the sand green and dark orange bricks used.

On the back cover of the instruction manual, you get an idea of how both sets 601095 and 601096 would look like side by side.

There are supposed to be 570 pieces in this set and comes with five minifigures.

There are six bags numbered as 1.1 through 1.6.

Then there are 4 bags numbered 2.1 through 2.4.  There are also 3 unnumbered bags, containing the baseplates, minifigures and a bag for a light strips and battery.

Here's the stickers Sembo provides to adorn the Hong Kong flats.  I didn't use any of them on my set yet.  I also didn't use the LED light strips because I plan to deconstruct this set pretty soon.

Here are some of the leftover pieces that were extras or that I didn't use.  The technic pins are used to attach 601095 and 601096 sets together.

There are 5 minifigures included with the Hong Kong flats consisting of a police officer, two male pedestrians and two female pedestrians.  The torso prints are bright and properly aligned, however there's no leg printing.  With the exception of the yellow hoodie guy, everyone else looks like they're scowling, which is pretty much on point if you've ever walked along a busy street in Hong Kong.  The green shirt guy has a strange gray mark on his lips. That would be the only defect I could find.

The completed shops and apartments. I guess I would have to recommend using the provided stickers otherwise these buildings do look kind of bland without them.

Here's the backside of the set.  There's just enough room to allow a minifigure to pose there.  Interior accessories include a cooking area with woks and sauce bottles for one shop and a counter for the other.  Three of the four apartments above are each furnished with a table.

The sand green building is 5 studs deep, with the shop below being a mere 4 studs deep.

The dark orange building is only 4 studs deep overall.

The building facades look ok if you were to just display this set on it's on or with the 601096 set.  But when you display it with other Lego style modular buildings, you definitely notice that the design of these flats are a lot small in size.  The three floors of the Sembo flats equals the height of 2 storeys on a standard Lego style modular building.

Here's the final look at set 601095.  As mentioned earlier, I will probably re-build this set with extra bricks to increase the height and depth of the two buildings.  They will also be placed on a regular sized baseplate as well so I can put a sidewalk in front of the buildings.  At that point, I may entertain putting some of the stickers on the buildings to make them look more realistic.

Here's all the Not Lego sets I bought in 2020!

 Here's all the Not Lego sets I bought in 2020

Hey there brick fans, welcome to my first post in 2021 on my blog Its Not Lego.   As the blog post title indicates, this is just a quick list of all the not Lego building sets I've purchased last year.  

Some sets are knockoffs of existing Lego sets such as the Bela brand 11053 Yacht or 11342 Harry Potter Bus.   Other sets are unique China designs such as the Sembo 102348 SWAT truck or the Urge 10180 Bakery modular building.  I also added a couple of MOC design sets to my collection, including the Jerac TIE Bomber and the Kristel Cast Iron modular building.

On the topic of MOCs, I customized a lot of my own sets too last year.   I converted the King 84008 Green Grocer into a cool police station for my not Lego city.  I used the original Zhe Gao QL0935 set and transformed it into a fully furnished modular building.   You can find more example of my MOC builds on my other blog Bricks and Figs.

Here's the list of sets which I bought in chronological order throughout 2020.   I haven't gotten around to reviewing each building set, but if I did there will be a link next to the set name.

Sembo 102348 SWAT truck

Bela/Lari 11053 yacht

Sluban B0780 Recycling truck   (link)

Sembo 601070 Crab Shop   (link)

Lepin 45012 Rexplorer

Qman 1132 Bun shop  (link)

Bela/Lari 11342 Potter bus (link)

King 84008 Green Grocer

Zhe Gao QL0935 Hill Tavern    (link)

Sembo 107007 Troop Carrier

Sembo 601075 Sakura Tree

Sembo 601303 Ambulance

Lepin 05145 X-Wing

Sembo 601078 Japanese food stalls

MOC 13952 TIE Bomber  (link)

Jack JJ001 Central Perk

Decool 2113 Osprey Chopper   (link)

Bela/Lari 11429 Snowspeeder

MOC C4228 Cast Iron modular

Rael 10004 Bike Shop (unbuilt)

Urge 10180 Bake Shop

Lele Bros 8613 Food cart

Hsanhe 31001 Train station

Xingbao XB01013 Urban village (unbuilt)

Total of 24 sets - average of 2 sets per month during 2020.   As you can see, 2020 kept me pretty busy building with not Lego.   Hopefully it will continue in 2021!

That's it for this quickie post.   Thanks for looking and see you in the next blog post,