LEGO® Creator Expert review: 10270 Bookshop - The Elements

Whoops, The LEGO Group accidentally released images a few hours early but now the true embargo has passed we can divulge details of next year's Modular. To begin, Jonas Kramm has assessed all of the pieces in the set and figured out which are new or interesting.

Today marks the reveal of the 2020 addition to the Modular Buildings series - arguably the most popular LEGO® series among fans. And having survived the Black Friday madness in the last few stressful days, it’s now time to relax and take the first glimpse at the newest building in town: the Bookshop.

This Creator Expert set comes with 2504 pieces, costs US$179.99/ CA$199.99/ €159.99/ £149.99/ 1299DKK and will be available, as is traditional, from 1st January 2020.
On the left we see the Bookshop “Birch Books”, named after the tree standing right by, and it has a Medium Nougat/ Medium Dark Flesh facade. The property on the right fits a residential home with the house number 107, a hint to the ID of the very prominent colour of this building: Dark Turquoise/ Bright Bluish Green, aka Teal.

Sadly the Bookshop comes without any new moulds whatsoever. Which, while sad, isn’t something bad at all! It gives us hope that a creative design team worked to get things done with the already existing bricks, something Creator 3in1 is pretty proud of.

Recolours

First, it's time to look at what’s actually new here: plenty of recolours, existing elements in new exciting colours!

Starting with the Bookshop the first interesting pieces are eleven Tile 2X2 in Cool Yellow/ Bright Light Yellow (6286832|3068) used for the floor. These are not to be mistaken with the Tile 2X2 in the already retired Light Yellow that came in one Scala set in 2001.

For the birch tree a surprising amount of new plant elements become available in new colours such as the Plant, W/ Plate 1X1 (32607), that comes new in Bright Yellow/ Yellow (6286830) and Bright Yellowish Green/ Lime (6286831).

The mould of Plant, W/ 3.2 Shaft, 1.5 Hole was first introduced with the Harry Potter Collectible Minifigure Series, but has steadily gained foothold in normal sets. I’m even more pleased to see it coming in Olive Green now (6285465|37695). But only a single one.

The designer of this Modular Building is Wes Talbott, one of the people at LEGO who helped to bring Dark Turquoise back in 2018. So it’s not a surprise he chose this colour for the house (and no surprise either that he was very jealous of my Dark Turquoise New Elementary T-shirt when we met in Skaerbaek this year).

With that decision he not only fulfilled his own dreams, but also the dreams of AFOLs who want more Dark Turquoise. This set contains for the first time Brick 1X8 (6289133|3680) and Brick 1X12 (6289134|6112).

Also new are Roof Tile 2X1X2 (6286837|60481) and Turn Plate 2X2, Lower Part (6293265|3680). The latter is especially surprising to see, as this part hasn’t been recoloured in decades. Even though some Q-colours are available on BrickLink, this piece officially only ever came in the very basic LEGO colours.

The piece gets used right above the entrance to hold the White wedge plate, but we will examine that further in my upcoming review of the building techniques .

Frame 1X2X3 is new in Medium Azure (6286836|60593) and gets used five times for the windows of the building, while Frame 1X2X2 in that colour (6149782|60592) has been around since 2016.

The new appearance of the Ornament in Black (6286835|28870) will surely catch the attention of many builders and make it more widely used. Three come with the Bookshop. Prior to this it was only available in two other solid colours, Earth Blue/ Dark Blue and Warm Gold/ Pearl Gold, and a wider selection of Transparent tones.

LEGO designers really love to decorate their building facades with tiny 1x1 elements, as we recently saw with the Corner Garage last year, and so it happens here again. After the Garage featured Roof Tile 1X1 Deg. 45 in Medium Stone Grey/ Light Bluish Gray, now also come 14 in White (6286834|35464) with this set.

Also great for any animal-loving fans, we get new colours for two already existing animals. The Bird now also comes in Dark Azure (6287960) and the Chameleon can now change its colour to Dark Turquoise.

Minifigures

Five Minifigures come with this set to populate the Bookshop and neighboring residence. None of them have any new prints on torso or heads, but I like the banana icon on the kid’s shirt (6275889), which only came in 70424 Hidden Side Ghost Train Express.

At least we get a new scarf colour with Bright Yellowish Green/ Lime (6286833|25376) and the woman’s hair comes in Black (6288259) for the first time.

Printed Elements

Good news: all decorated pieces in this set are printed, no sticker sheet. New prints are: the name of the Bookshop “Birch Books” in a beautiful font with each word on a Black Tile 2X4 (6287324 & 6287364), and the cover of the “Moby Brick” book (8287374).

Also the house number “107” is printed on a Black Tile 2X2, W/ Deg. 45 Cut (6287434|35787).

Honorable Mentions

Next to the absolutely-new goods, there are many more interesting pieces coming with this set. Here is a selection:

Plate 1X1X2/3, Outside Bow in Medium Stone Grey (6262085|49307) comes in a whopping amount of 60!

Ridged Tile 2X2/45° in Earth Blue (6285473|3043) is very new and gets used here twice.

Plate 1X2, Rounded is another very new element and comes two times in Bright Yellowish Green (6264062|35480).

Arch Brick 3X3X2 in Earth Blue (6223695|88293) isn’t new, but was only used in one set before.

Propeller, W/ 1.5 Shaft in Bright Yellow/ Yellow (6265497|54568) is unreasonably expensive at Bricks & Pieces so it’s great to get one (plus one spare part) here.

“[...] where any one of the five LEGO minifigures included in the set can settle down to read ‘Moby Brick’ (or any other book) in the peace and quiet of the detailed bookshop.”

In terms of elements it remains open till the second chapter of this review as to how this quote from the press release gets fulfilled as there is only one book (Moby Brick) in the set inventory.

Anyway the selection of recolours is already promising and I’m looking forward to now see how they stick together.

Come back to New Elementary soon to see the next part of our review when we take a look at the actual build and take a detailed look at the building techniques!

READ MORE: Now read Jonas' review of the build and its techniques

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