JMBricklayer 20109 Botanical Collection Flower Bouquet Review

Hello again, friends of the brick!  I'm making this post belatedly a little after Valentine's day, so hopefully it will still resonate with anyone who likes flowers and bricks.  Lego introduced their floral sets back in 2021 and I guess soon after the alternate brick brands followed suit, seeing that there was a market for these sets.

I checked brick4.com and there are several chinese building block brands making floral bouquets including Sembo, Panlos, Zhegao and Woma to name a few.  The set I'm going to review today is the artificial plants Flower Bouquet set 20109 from JMBricklayer's Botanical Collection or Home Decor line.  

At the time of this post, JMBricklayer has a total of seven different flower bouquet sets on their website.  And because it's February, they are having a promotion in their online store and in their Amazon store, right now!  Please check it out if this interests you.

Use my discount code "itsnotlego15%" to save on applicable purchases from the website.

Thank you again to JMBricklayer for sending me this floral bouquet set to review!  They thought it would be nice for everyone to see some flower building block sets during this special valentine season.  Let's now look at the set details

Details

• Brand: JMBricklayer
• Set: Flower Bouquet 20109
• Theme: Botanical Collection/Home Decor
• Piece count: 836 pieces
• Numbered bags? Yes
• Stickers or printed parts? None
• Missing or deformed pieces: No
• Extra parts: Yes
• Minifigures: No
• Lighting kit: No
• Brick Quality and Clutch: Mostly decent
• Measurements (approx): tallest flower is about 18" H, width varies
• Age Rating: 14+

Unboxing

The Flower Bouquet set comes in a black box with the very nice image of the flower bouquet on the front.  Inside there are a total of 15 bags of parts, six bags numbered 1, and eight bags with the number 2 on them.  There's a last bag of pink parts all attached to sprues.

The instruction booklet contains 26 pages and is broken down into two sections which the bags of parts pertain to.  A note about the number on the instruction manual. It says 034004 which when I checked brick4.com is actually a set from the Mork brand, so like many other sets from JMBricklayer, the floral set is a repackaged version.

While there are no stickers in this set, there is a warning card included on how to reduce the stem height so that the flowers don't fall over.  The instructions are straightforward and easy to follow.

Building the Flowers

So in section 1, each bag pertains to a different flower, so we have built six different flowers pictured above.  Hope you can name them, because I don't know much about flower species.  As part of this section of the build, it also includes two different leaves.

I've never had much success with keeping plants alive, so these flowers will never need watering or any attention but will still look great wherever you put them.  Since I didn't have a vase at home, I used an old peanut butter jar and this silver can as my vase.  

I would highly recommend that you get a vase for this set, because it doesn't come with one.  Make sure the vase is tall enough, maybe at least 12" high or more because the next flowers that we build have longer stems.

For section 2, you build four unique flowers, but some are duplicated and some are just leaves.

In section 2, you get 1 big light green flower, 2 purple flowers, a plant that has lots of little pink flowers and one that looks like a weed, lol.  You also make some leaves here as well.  I forgot to take a picture of me using all those tiny pink flowers from sprues to make the plant shown on the left, but you get the idea.

This series of flowers are assembled with extra technic pins that makes the stem of each flower taller.  However, due to my small "vase", a lot of the flowers toppled over, so I had to reduce the stem height as per the included warning card.  If I had a taller vase, I probably wouldn't have to have done that.

A problem with the purple flowers

When I followed the instructions to build the purple flowers, the heads kept falling off the stem.  It was because the green pin was too short to hold the head in place. 

There are two longer yellow pins included in the set, but they don't tell you what they are for.  If you replace the shorter green pins with the longer yellow pins, the purple flower heads stay firmly attached.  I'm not sure if this fix was included in the original Mork set, or whether this is a new fix specific to the JMBricklayer set.  

I had a similar experience when building the JMBricklayer Vintage Car set.  The original Mould King branded set had some unplated pieces which were subsequently replaced in the newer JMBricklayer version of the set.

Finally, here are the extra pieces I had left over.  I might have leftover some pieces on the leave portions because they were already too tall. And I didn't add all of the stem portions (technic pins) for the same reason.

Pictured here and below are my rather pathetic attempts at flower arrangement.

Hopefully you can make your flower arrangements nicer looking than mine.

Summary

So this was my first time building a floral set and I think it turned out rather nice despite being a novice at it.  I think everyone, especially those new to Lego and building blocks could give this a go in case they are intimidated by the larger building block sets.  Instructions were clear and easy to follow, except that they didn't mention the fact that the purple flower heads needed the longer yellow pins.

Most the flower parts held up well, but some were a little floppy. This was more of a design issue than a clutch issue.  Surprisingly, I didn't have many pieces falling off  despite me moving and placing them several times to take pictures.

My biggest recommendation would be to use a real vase, not an old peanut butter jar to display these flowers. And make sure it's at least 12" or more in height.  I measured some of the flowers and leaves and they can be well over 18" tall if you included all the stem pieces.

From a brick perspective, I liked that the set used a lot of ingenious pieces, like snowboards, gears and scuba diving fins to make the flower petals and leaves.

Would definitely recommend this set to those with an interest in dabbling with Lego style bricks for their first time or enthusiasts who love plants and  flowers.  With 836 pieces, the set is sufficiently challenging and would make a nice rainy day build.

Here's the direct link to JMBricklayer Floral Bouquet set.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 for decent clutch, ingenuity in parts and the bright colour palette.  Hope you liked this review, see you next time!  Bye!

Reviewing the JMBricklayer 21101 Flower House Building Block Set

  

Welcome back to It's Not Lego!  Today we get to look at another set from JMBricklayer.com.  It's the colourful 21101 Flower Shop!  It comes with LED lighting and 1593 pieces.  It can even be opened up fully to display the interesting and packed interior.

Where to Get it

Today's set was generously provided to me by JMBricklayer.com for the purpose of the review.  

You can find this set and many more on their website.  Use my code ITSNOTLEGO15% to save 15% off on selected items.  And they offer free worldwide shipping to most countries.

Set Details

• Brand: JMBricklayer
• Set: Flower Shop 21101
• Theme: City Architecture
• Piece count: 1593 pieces
• Numbered bags? Yes
• Stickers or printed parts? Both
• Missing or deformed pieces: No
• Extra parts: Yes
• Minifigures: No
• Lighting kit: included
• Brick Quality and Clutch: Great
• Measurements (approx): 8"W x 6" D x 7.5" H
• Age Rating: 14+
• 
  

Unboxing

My Flower Shop came in the original JMBricklayer box, which was jammed packed with multiple parts bags and the instruction booklet.  The first thing I noticed was the manual which listed the set number as 031061.  A quick check on the internet reveals the JMBricklayer set is a repack of the Mork 031061 Flower Shop set.  

Also included in the box is an easy to follow instruction manual consisting of 102 pages. I found a very small sticker sheet taped inside the manual, but I forgot to take pictures of the two stickers.

There are three steps to building the flower shop, broken down in the manual as follows:

Step 1 - pages 1 thru 27

Step 2 - pages 28 thru 61

Step 3 - pages 62 thru 100

Corresponding to each step are also numbered bags of parts. Total number of parts bags is 30 broken down as follows

Step 1 - 11 bags

Step 2 - 9 bags

Step 3 - 8 bags

Plus 1 bag for the led light string and 1 bag for the flower/decorative pieces.

Building Step 1

Step 1 builds one side of the flower shop which includes half of the base, one set of  walls and part of the shop interior.  Instead of using one or two larger baseplates for the floor, the designer opted for a lot of smaller plates which surprisingly held the shop together adequately later.

Found this parts bag in Step 1 with a strange message reading "All use of this white accessories, to this package shall prevail".   The bag contained the extra pieces pictured above which weren't needed at all to build the flower shop.  Weird!

Ok, this is what 11 bags of parts all opened looks like.  Let's build!

Baseplate and plant stand under construction.  And before you know it ...

... the first step is completed!  In addition to the plant stand which is now adorned with lots of greenery, there is a shelf, maybe it's a resource centre?  The flower shop gets a patterned yellow and blue floor which is surrounded by walls of several glass windows.  

The assembled door gives us the indication that the flower shop is not minifigure scale.  That's too bad.  I think the flower shop owner has neglected the plants because all of the flower heads are drooping.  Water them please!

Here's the exterior for this part of the build.

On to Step 2

Cracking open all of the bags numbered 2.

Here's a couple of nice printed tiles I found amongst the other parts.

Here's the other baseplate being constructed.

Building up the remaining walls and interior. A potted plant shelf sits next to the counter.  I discovered a couple of more printed pieces in the form of little QR codes sitting on the countertop.

Those printed tiles look like pictures that are for sale.  They sit on a small cart which has a floor fan in front of it.

The last walls of windows are built to complete Step 2.

In order to line up the small 1x1 tile pieces that form the walkway around the flower shop, I found it really helpful to use some tweezers for straightening all of the tiny parts, especially the light gray pieces which clutched a tad too much.

Final Step

Unpacking the bags for Step 3, which constructs the flower shop roof and adds all of the other little bits around the exterior.

Here's what one of the roof panels looks like during it's construction.

Of particular note one should be aware of, is that the instructions seem to miss adding a thin circular plate to the middle of the center cylinder.  The part is provided, just not mentioned.  Make sure to add this piece otherwise the pegs that clip to the center beam may not line up.

Before I show you the finished flower shop, here are all the extra pieces leftover.  Note, I didn't use any of the optional flower and insect pieces from the sprues as per the instructions.  Oh BTW, there's that tiny sticker sheet in the picture.  I didn't apply the stickers either.  We will look at the LED light string in just a bit.

For now, let's view the completed flower shop from the outside.  There are two access doors that can open and close.

Lots and lots of windows!

As mentioned earlier, the interior of flower shop can be displayed by opening the swivel base.

Here's another way to display the set.

Now, let's look athe lighting for the Flower shop.  There's no place to attach the lighting cables so looks like it's just freeform ...

... as per the instructions.

Wow, check out the effect of the lighting!

The flower shop definitely looks nicer with the lights on.

Finally, here's a quick comparison photo of the JMBricklayer Flower shop displayed next to the Mork 031063 Ecological Park set, which I also reviewed last December.  Both of the sets are very similar in size.  In fact, the sets almost look like they have been designed by the same person.

Summary

I think the JMBricklayer Flower Shop shines best when displayed with the lighting kit on (excuse the pun!).  It's a nice looking display model with lots of glass area.  I feel like it could have used a few more flowers on the inside, and I wish the shop was scaled more towards minifigures.  Danboard thinks that the scale of the shop is just fine.

With a few interior adjustments, I'm sure one could mod it, however the front and back doors would definitely need to be replaced for minifig scale.  One might wonder if there's too much white colour going on with this building.  Since the flower shop had printed some pieces, I'm not sure why they didn't just make the two stickers printed pieces as well.  

On a scale of 1 to 5, I'm going to rate this set 4.1.   My score would have been higher if the flower shop was minifig scale and had a few more flowers.  Let me know what you thought of this set in the comments below!

Thanks again JMBricklayer.com for the set.  Please visit their website if you get a chance. Bye for now!