Sembo Coffee Shop Modular Building 601143 Review

Hey brick fans, welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com!  Today I'll be showing you my build pictures from my latest modular building.  It's a coffee shop from the Sembo brand, set number is 601143.   Don't forget to check out my other blog over at bricksandfigs.blogspot.com too!

This set has a total of 1295 brick pieces and comes with six minifigures, a cat and a bicycle. I'd normally only expect two or three minifigures for a set this size, so extra minfigs is quite generous.  There are two sheets of mostly coffee themed stickers, with a particularly large graffiti sticker for the wall.  This is a three storey building that sits on a 16x32 baseplate.  I purchased this set from Aliexpress around the end of June 2021 and it arrived around mid July, so the Aliexpress delivery times were acceptable.

The instruction booklet is printed on decent quality paper and the instructions are easy to follow.  The instructions are broken down into two sections and the numbered bags of parts reflect which section that pertain to.

The first thing you might notice about this building is the rather unflattering use of dark yellow bricks and light yellow bricks, rounded out by brown framed windows. Not gonna lie, this is one ugly building in my opinion.  But what drew me to this set was the french style architecture of the top floor, which has some similarity to the Lego Bookshop roofline.

All three floors of this modular are furnished inside although only the main floor is fully tiled.  Sembo blocks are generally of good quality however I did find a deformed brick in this set.  Other than that all pieces were accounted for and had decent clutch.

I didn't apply any of the stickers but there are some tiles ready for some coffee posters, flanking an unexpected pink and green gramophone.  The counter has some mugs and baked goods with a large shelf on the back wall that has more mugs and a coffee pot.  There's a winding staircase that goes over the back entrance to the second floor.  Other accessories on the main floor include a microwave oven and cash register.

On the second floor of the coffee shop there are two round tables with seats and some glass mugs.  Other furnishings include two pedestals with flowers and a bookshelf under the second floor staircase.

At the back of the building, there is an awning over the door, with light and a cool looking dumpster.

The third floor of the shop is furnished with a bed accompanied by a night table and lamp.  There's a door that leads out to a back terrace adorned with flowers.

Here's a few close-up shots of the front elevation.  All of the lights on this set are a spooky dark orange colour, unlike other modular sets where typically the lights would be clear glass. Even the street light is dark and foreboding.

Following the standard format, this modular building can be separated at each floor.

All of the interiors in one shot.

Some more pics.

There you have it, the completed Sembo Coffee shop, set 601143. 

Thanks for checking out my review and see you in my next post.   Feel free to let me know what you think of this set in the comments below.   Bye!

Garbage Truck MOC C5333 (Lego Ideas Garbage Truck)

Hello!  Welcome back to my blog, Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com!  

Last month, I bought this garbage truck MOC set from the BuildMoc store on Aliexpress.  

This MOC is based on the Mochi Master designed garbage truck that was submitted to Lego Ideas back in 2019.  Two years later, Lego has yet to produce this truck.   Here's the Lego Ideas submission:  https://ideas.lego.com/projects/7d7f4e15-55e7-44c4-bb30-3a66b9cc0598.

I just finished building it and I just want to say that this set disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, the original design of the mechanism that pick up the garbage cans and empties them into the truck is excellent.  It's just that this MOC set used some really bad quality bricks.

This truck is really cool in that you can twist a knob on the side of the truck and the mechanism arms will grab the garbage can to lift and dump the contents into the truck.  There is another knob that is used to push the collected refuse into the rear bin.  That bin is hinged so you can then unload it by lifting it up.

Pictured above is the truck using not Lego bricks.  The set comes as shown with three garbage cans and some assorted bones and 1x1 circular pieces.  After I completed the build, there were 2 extra pieces left over.

The instructions are in booklet form.  As you can see on the cover, the set is designated as C5333 and has 379 pieces in total. As this is a MOC set, there is no branding associated with it.

Here's the back cover of the booklet describing the features of the garbage truck.

There are eight bags of parts, six of them are numbered plus one bag of tires and one bag of transparent pieces.

The issues I have with this truck:

The garbage truck has three main colours, green, white and light grey.  The white bricks were somewhat yellowed.  The light grey bricks had some yellowing as well. The green bricks had different shades of green depending on the part, although hopefully not as noticeable in my pictures.

Some of the technic pins and pieces are lacking clutch and tend to fall off (see second pic above).  If I get the pieces to stay on the mechanism to unload the garbage can works fine.

Also, the wheels on the garbage truck do not turn at all.  The problem seems to be with the protrusion going into the back of the rim, it's too tight.

Lastly, there is no interior in the cab of the garbage truck.   

I saw on Aliexpress that the Xingbao brand also has a garbage truck.  I think it's set uses the same unloading mechanism in their truck.  The set is listed as XB-18017 and has 550 pieces.  This model seems to be a bit more detailed and probably the bricks used would be better quality than the C5333 MOC.

If you are thinking of getting this garbage truck MOC, hopefully your set will be better than mine.  I would only recommend it, if you have replacement parts to fix the deficiencies.

Update!  I fixed the Garbage Truck!  See my fixes here:

https://bricksandfigs.blogspot.com/2021/06/i-tried-improving-garbage-truck-moc.html

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.