10246 Detective's Office back of box

Thanks for ponying up your own higher res photos Huw. 1st floor is begging for some exploration. Not sure what to do on blue-side 2? Just a bathroom and set of stairs? Thought this was an appt. looks like a fancy foyer. For yay?? As in 'yay'?

If ever a set needed an elevator! I'm looking at you kid--by which I mean the brown architectural addon.

I had an idea for a barbershop, so this ruins my CUUSOO thing xD

Very clunky building with so much wasted space on the second floor, thanks mainly to the staircase layout. Not my favourite modular, but am looking forward to it nonetheless.

This could be my favourite modular along with Grand Emporium. The level of detail is amazing. Nice to see another female police officer. A must have!

This is so neat…

I love that ceiling fan an and pool table. I'm so excited for this one. It always gets more exciting when you're actually building all the small details into it. Well done LEGO.

Anyone notice the new EXPERT logo on the front of the box

This is so frickin' great. LEGO noir is real.

The set looks fantastic!! The designers really put some effort into the detais of the interior. I like the use of mirrors in the barbershop and in the detective office I can see some kind of secret safe in the wall behind the desk, love it!! Also I think you can access the detective office by going through the alley, making a right up the stairs (passing through the barbershop) which leads you to the bathroom and the door of the office. I think the bathroom might be for the office? The kitchen upstairs looks like a hideout for crooks and they are baking some cookies and hiding them in the barrels? There is some kind of shady deal going on where I guy is paying money for the "cookies"? The detective can access the roof by ladder on the second floor to catch or spy on the crooks? Looks great! Also, love the dart board and ceiling fan in the pool room.

Very nice. Definitely on my shopping list.
But the price has to be right, £119.99.

I'm betting it will be priced the same as the Parisian Restaurant for all countries including USA and UK. I would be shocked if TLG actually released a modular with lower prices than the previous offerings. It's a new year with new price increases...

I think a pool hall and barber shop are deserving of their own floors. They are each too small here. Female cop, while politically correct for today, doesn't fit the era. I will get the set as a collector, but hope they don't cram too much in to the next modular.

I like it much and won't miss it. I am afraid they tried to squeeze too much in the inside, it feels a bit claustrophobic. I believe the interior deserves at least 4 nops more in depth.

Whoop, what happened with the Parisian Restaurant? Seems like it got shortened on the pic!

I'd love to get this set! It looks great, especially the room with the pool table and fan! :) Hopefully it's not overpriced....

Well of course the interior is crammed. It's a 32 wide building with two smaller versions on that footprint. It doesn't even look like a full 16 wide thanks to the alleyway.

I do like the idea. I don't know what I think about the execution. The barbershop itself doesn't need to be too big in all honesty, so that might work out okay. Although, I don't understand the purpose of the floors above it. Why is there a kitchen and a public restroom in the blue building? what does that add to anything? I thought it was going to be an apartment, but I guess I was wrong. Although who wants to live near a detective agency?

I do like the unikitty tail at the top and the new bionicle fist pieces. Very clever. Also the paint roller as a light fixture is brilliant!

For whatever reason, I hate the full masonry brick facade. I like that piece in small amounts, but not in this setting, so I will definitely change that out when I get it. The color scheme is okay, although it seems really colorful compared to a lot of the other modulars...and that is saying something. I have been wanting cool yellow for a while. And it looks like royal light blue on the blue building, so that's neat!

The female officer is a good addition, but I agree out of place. This seems more 1940s/50s, compared to earlier modulars. I wonder how it will look next to the others...and not just the back of the box look. I'm talking about ALL of the modulars to get a feel for a street.

Is this an Astrid or a Jamie?

This is looking great. Love the decoration of the rooms..

Probably the worst modular yet IMO. Not that the others were bad, but sadly, this appears to be. The exterior walls are flat and lack detail; the masonry bricks seems like a lazy cop-out. The colour scheme is all over the place too. It feels more like a middle ground between the Creator Bike Shop/Cafe and previous modulars than a fully-fledged modular itself... it's almost on a par with Market Street for exterior design to be honest.

Of course, the full press release may be more flattering, but I'm not holding out too much hope. Oh well, gives me chance to pick up the Parisian Restaurant at some point without having to put money aside for this too.

Quite liking this, a very impressive level of detail throughout much like Parisian Resturant. City arctic snow shoes as a ceiling fan, wow!

I love it! Looked like a more advanced version of the Bike shop at first sight but after some time I can`t get my eyes off! They did it again!

^Jedijon a classic lattice-gated elevator would be a great fit for the time & place of this model.

Hard to tell from the angle of the photo at the quality we have now, but that top room might be intended to represent a "full" apartment, just obviously a small one. I've always lived in the suburbs, but it seems like the kind of budget one-room apartment you see in the city where your kitchen almost IS in your bedroom.

I can't work out what's going on with the masonry on the left hand corner of the building, the patterns on the side don't seem to match up with those on the front?

The female police officer is great, hopefully soon we won't even notice such things.

I've seen public restrooms with street access on two commercial buildings in Ohio from the 1910-1930, so it may be a US thing. In proper hard-boiled detective fashion, Ace Brickman may be sleeping in his office, and his lease lets him share the kitchen with Al, who's saving money by cooking at work instead of eating out. As for the mismatched masonry, the landlord keeps the front of the building looking nice, but on the sides or back instead of doing a proper point-and-tuck he just has concrete patches applied over the cracks, some he's painted over. At least that's the story I'm building from the pictures.

Looks fantastic, but come on LEGO, the parts are there in Friends sets next year for a proper old-fashioned black toilet seat. Why the white one again from the portaloos that come 'hilariously' with every crane set?

Not sure that black toilet seats were ever common in the U.S.; the only ones I can recall seeing were all in the U.K. And after all, you can always change it out....

What I can't figure out is where the person with the apartment sleeps. Is there a Murphy bed somewhere, or will we have to copy one from the PR apartment?

Otherwise I'm thrilled with this. Love all the clutter of paperwork in the office! And the pool hall is everything I'd hoped for!!

I like the use of the quarter-domes used in the arches. The snowshoe fan is brilliant, and the Unikitty tails are nice too. It has everything a detective office should, and it looks well-designed. It's just not selling me yet.

Oh I get the masonry now, it looks like the corners are only connected by the top masonry brick, it looks like the front section swings open perhaps for play features?

That's the drawback of the masonry bricks (another reason why I don't care for them). They don't allow you to actual build something structurally sound. I highly doubt the front swings open for play considering these are designed to open the top for play. I think it just looks like that because they can't intermix them since they don't have corner or 1x1 masonry bricks yet (although why not come out with one?). But since Modulars can't use new pieces specifically for that set, I guess that is why. They'll have to create other pieces to put into this, but by then we'd have to MOD the set, which I plan on doing anyway...

At the very least, I finally like seeing some new torsos (new to me at least) in use. I am sick of all of the others we get multiples of.

And 5 main colors on the front?? It isn't sitting right with my eyes. And to think, this was approved!

And most likely those will be stickers on the front. I'd love printing, but PC shows that they can get away with stickers in these sets and people will still pay an arm and a leg. Just look at UCS Star Wars. They pay premium prices for stickers too....

Looking at the most bottom picture insert, it seems like there is some kind of internal-cookie-smuggler system build in. Directly from the roof, underneath the detective office, to the pool room. That would be brilliant! I'm looking forward to the press release, my guess is that there is way much more in this set that can be seen from this photos...

^^
Yeah I think you are right about the front not swinging out, looking at this set is making me too excited about all the possibilities.

This is cool but the interior is crammed. Extremely crammed. It looks more like a townhouse with a little office in it. Heck for THAT it looks amazing. Maybe it only seems crammed Becuase of this pictures , because it kinda looks bigger ok the outside. Anyway it'll probably be too expensive for me to ever hope to get.

Incredible!!!

I gotta be honest, I don't really understand the floors above Al's, based on these pictures. That middle floor, is that a public space (which is why there's a bathroom)? Or is that a downstairs part of the apartment that's on the third floor? I don't quite get it.

Great detail in the set but I don't like the exterior colours - too many, non co-ordinating and why have light yellow and blue against tan bricks and green shades? I will be interested to see the designer video - who will hopefully disclose the reason for this colour palette. I like it but am a bit disappointed.

^^It does seem like the space above Al's is more of a public usage restroom and kitchenette? Very odd, for sure. I don't understand it either. I was expecting an apartment, but at that size, you wouldn't have any room to put anything. With the PS, it at least had a loft for the bed!

And I agree about the colors. It seems weird to have so many main colors on the front.

Some of us are trying to read too far into this. Personally, I think it's my favorite modular yet. It does an excellent job of breaking up the "blockiness" of buildings like the Town Hall and Fire Brigade (still love them). It helps mesh buildings together in a realistic look and will make the street look far better.

Regarding the interior, of course it's cramped. The baseplate determines total size, then the exterior is designed, and finally details are added inside. I'm very pleased with the number of details added. You certainly can't call it sparse. Details like "where is his bed" and "who's bathroom is that" are really not an issue for me. I just want places for my minifigs to occupy. I don't have room for each minifig to have a kitchen, bed, and day job!

^Well said @Revenant, I'm with you. Total realism is impossible with Lego due to nothing more than scale and proportions. I love the set, I couldn't agree with you more. :)

I'm concerned about those drawers in the office. I got the Simpsons House and none of the top drawers would stay in, they were too loose. I hope Lego corrected that issue.

Hey Revenant & Zips, would you prefer no stairs then? If I was sacrificing realism, I'd prefer no stairs + functional interiors to accessible, but useless interiors. GE has an implausible escalator which is fine. That's the compromise I like best. 16 wides are going to need exterior landings to really shine on the inside - especially if they're shaped anything more interesting than a 20x16 box!!

Wow I like it but I don't see a detective's office every day( in real life) maybe something common like a post office or a hospital

May looked crammed and some colours just wrong, but really I think that is a set I'm getting for sure, a detectives office and barber shop may suit my city needs, and that the effort put into it, excellent, especially the outside design, I really like the tiles on the outside, and it's nice to have a police officer, I've got a police station which it can go in.

Looks great.......can't wait!

@Jedijon - good point about the stairs. I suppose the situation is exactly what you describe, a list of possibilities and a limit to how many you can pick. I suppose I would put stairs quite high up my list of preferences, but it's a shame they have to take up a full four stud width - they could maybe have been built into the wall, if they had 1x3 tiles on they could be 3 studs wide without minifigures being 2 studs wide with arms on either sides causing a problem.

I imagine if we could see all the possibilities and the choices that were made we might appreciate the final outcome better?

The ceiling fan is utterly fabulous.

@lippidp if you don't like the policewoman, just take her hair off and put the police hat on. There. She's now a man.