Pretty dark. Not what I would associate with Italy.

I like the house, but I don't like the choice of colors.

@axeleng said:
"I remember seeing some of these granulated trees in a child psychologist playroom sometime around the mid-80s, thinking they were *much* nicer than the modern standard trees. The ones I saw had a pretty generous layer of clearcoat, they appeared intact and felt quite sturdy, especially considering they were at least ten years old. Despite appearing much stronger than the one in this picture, it was appearantly still a problem with kids chewing off the granules, so they stopped making them."
Yes, I've got several granulated pine and fruit trees and bushes that have suffered no signs of moulting (oldest from 347-1). In fact the only damage I've had is a snapped trunk!

@Bart_66 said:
"I like the house, but I don't like the choice of colors. "
Indeed. At least there was a bit of an excuse with only 5 to choose from!

Approved!

https://c.tenor.com/mNfVfSmUR5wAAAAd/tenor.gif

@MCLegoboy said:
"Are these colors accurate to Italian Villas?"

Not that I've ever seen. Looks more like an Irish house in my experience. Galway and the west coast seem to have particularly colorful houses.

All the Italian residences I've seen usually are earth tones and match the general aesthetic of the town.

Then again, there are some pretty colorful houses in Cinque Terre.

Ah, the first set I remember getting, I was 3 or 4. (My parents had a tendency to buy what they liked :) ) Sadly mine just came with a moulded cone tree. @Huw is the name correct? My parents always referred to it as 'the Swiss house', and if I check Bricklink, that's what is says there, and also (in Dutch) on the picture.

Quite interesting architecture. I suppose that door immediately leads to a stairway (at least in make-believe) because it's sandwiched between two arches.
What I love about sets like these was that they made sets look distinct despite the limited available molds though color blocking and shaping alone. Seldomly does a modern creator house look this well defined.

What I'm glad is no longer a thing though is the baseplates with dots. Such an antithesis to creative building.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Username28 said:
"That tree mold is wild"

Only the brown part is molded. That is sometimes referred to as a "crumble tree", amongst other nicknames. The trunk was molded in brown, dipped in some sort of solvent, and then dipped in unprocessed green ABS pellets which fused to the trunk where it was coated in solvent. Because it wasn't injection molded onto the trunk, many of the pellets have a really weak bond to the trunk, so with repeated handling a number of those pellets absolutely _will_ crumble off of the tree (hence the term). Also, due to the process involved, every single tree is unique."

Wow. That’s kinda cool, kinda concerning.

@axeleng said:
" @PurpleDave said: "crumble tree"

I remember seeing some of these granulated trees in a child psychologist playroom sometime around the mid-80s, thinking they were *much* nicer than the modern standard trees. The ones I saw had a pretty generous layer of clearcoat, they appeared intact and felt quite sturdy, especially considering they were at least ten years old. Despite appearing much stronger than the one in this picture, it was appearantly still a problem with kids chewing off the granules, so they stopped making them."

getting their daily dose of macro plastics before it was popular :D

Pizza

@Binnekamp said:
"What I'm glad is no longer a thing though is the baseplates with dots. Such an antithesis to creative building."

That was a crude solution to a problem that they wouldn't begin to solve for several decades. Early sets came on wide open baseplates, with the only two ways to determine placement being the paintstaking counting of studs, or when stuff starts to overhang the baseplate because you started building in the wrong spot without realizing it. Dots were a subtle and simple way to help out the middle crowd, without completely locking the baseplate into a single use (like painting a floor for the building).

Modern instructions are the result of smarter people getting involved, who figured out that you can let the construction guide the placement of parts, rather than encouraging the developement of masochistic tendancies in young children. Now, you see construction begin in corners, which are easy to locate. Placement of parts spreads outward from those anchor points, in a way that makes it difficult, though not impossible, to get it wrong. Dots are no longer necessary, even for the few sets that continue to include proper baseplates.

But dots never made the baseplate useless (like painting the floor would have done). When freebuilding, most kids would have been able to just ignore them. Others might have found creative ways to cover them up with carefully placed plants, barrels, yard lights, or even just making a larger house with a plated floor that extended past the ring of dots in at least one direction.