Review: 40696 Bakery
Posted by Huw,40696 Bakery is the fourth and probably final in the series of microscale shops that have been available as gifts with purchase this year. It's likely that this one will be offered in the next few weeks, free when spending in excess of £180/$200/€200.
Unfortunately, it does not match the others...
Summary
40696 Bakery, 376 pieces.
An attractive and finely detailed model, but it doesn't match the others in the series
- Wonderful interior details
- Bay windows cleverly constructed
- The addition of snow makes it look odd when displayed next to the others
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The 2-storey building has a detailed exterior and some interesting architectural features, such as the cleverly-constructed bay windows topped-off with 'Super Mario' plates, and croissant above the door.
The lamppost is woefully short, but at least it matches those on the other buildings.
This fourth entry in the series is covered in snow, with a white pavement and patches of white on the roof and awnings.
Judging by the small amount of it on the higher parts of the building, it's not snowed for some time, so I would have thought that that on the pavement would have been melted by foot traffic by now.
The building might be small, but as with the others in the series, the inside is crammed with details on both floors.
The ground floor has baked goods everywhere: in the windows, on shelves and in glass cabinets, where printed 1x1 round tiles have been inserted into the undersides of 1x2 bricks to great effect.
There's a tea room upstairs, fitted out with tables, chairs, and yet more cakes on a trolley.
Combined with 40680 Flower Store
If you have any of the others in the series, it's likely that you'll want to display them side-by-side and this is where this one falls short, because the pavement doesn't match.
Although I have the fruit and sweet shops, I've not built them yet, so here it is next to the first in the series, the florist, and as you can see it looks a bit odd with a white pavement next to a grey one.
Of course, that's easily remedied with a few spare parts, so I removed the snow and decorations and replaced the white tiles with grey and, personally, I think it looks much better now.
It's an attractive addition to the series, but one which, if left unmodified, looks better displayed in isolation than lined up with the others.
We don't know exactly when it'll be available as a GWP but we'll let you know when we do.
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16 comments on this article
Not my kind of set to get as GWP, but looks nice enough as non-minfiigure intended display, wish those shops were a little bit larger and sold directly.
As far as figure / doll compatible store, there's 42618 Heartlake City Café of course, which has a quite a lot of interior, and similarly sold cookies/cakes.
Excellent final? addition. Best of the 4. I shall look forward to adding a handful of snow to the other 3 for the festive season!
Weird choice to make it not congruous with the other buildings in the series. Almost like LEGO realizes the crazy high price threshold means very few people own more than one in the series in the first place.
I assume they're vaguely seasonal: Flower Store (spring), Candy Store (summer), Fruit Store (autumn), Bakery (winter). Not that there's a lot of clues in the other three. The Fruit Store could use some harvest browns and oranges to signify changing seasons.
These are tempting, but they appear to be out of scale with other micro buildings like Ninjago City and the Toys R Us promos from a few years ago. (I feel like these last two are kind of in scale even if radically different in design.) I'm moderately tempted by the idea of a large microscale city for those of us who have put away our System-sized minifigure cities, but not when the sets are GWP exclusives and also out of whack with each other.
It has a nice match of green and red, I would keep the white tiles,and with a few other colour substitutions it makes a nice stand-alone Xmas decoration.
Now I just need to see a sized up version. Maybe I'll consider that eventually after all of my other project ideas (that I've been sitting on for years....)
@TeriXeri said:
"Not my kind of set to get as GWP, but looks nice enough as non-minfiigure intended display, wish those shops were a little bit larger and sold directly.
As far as figure / doll compatible store, there's 42618 Heartlake City Café of course, which has a quite a lot of interior, and similarly sold cookies/cakes."
My daughters have loved the other three using their mini dolls from the friends theme. Perfect size for them.
This set will be available from the 15th of October and at the same time as the next double VIP points promotion.
Super size it to minifigure scale and we've a perfectly fine Winter Village set.
I wonder what delicious bread is being baked in there?
The white 1x3 slope to the right of the door should have been replaced with a 1x2 to match the left side if you want to remove the snow.
These microscale shops (along with last year’s microscale houses of the world) have been some of my favorite GWP. These look great and I am a big fan of microscale builds in general.
Pixar mom minifig not included
I like the modified version better, without snow and Christmas wreath. And also with the flowers in the upper window switched to match the florist.
@Norikins said:
"The white 1x3 slope to the right of the door should have been replaced with a 1x2 to match the left side if you want to remove the snow."
I didn't have a tan one.
@Mica86 said:
"Id prefer a scoop from the pick a brick wall personally. Id never display toot like this... £200 to qualify for those is hilarious. Idiotic company."
Yet you continue to purchase from them.