Review: 42687 Liann's Family House
Posted by MeganL,
Houses for the main characters of the Friends have been staple since the inception of the theme. For the original cast, one Friends house was released every other year, which meant that poor Andrea had to wait ten years for hers! Fortunately, that was remedied by the fact that she was the only one of the original cast to get a house upon growing up.
When I reviewed the first house of the new generation, I said that I hoped that the houses would come out more frequently than every two years. It's kind of worked out that way - 41730 Autumn's House was released three years ago, and 42620 Olly and Paisley's Family Houses was released two years ago. However, last year was Friends house-less, so we're averaging about one a year. At this rate, it will take a long time to get through the rest of the Friends.
In any event, 42687 Liann's Family House is next on the list. Liann is featured in a lot of sets this year, so let's take a look at her house.
Summary
42687 Liann's Family House, 946 pieces.
£59.99 / $69.99 / €69.99 | 6.3p, 7.4c, 7.4c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
The third Friends house from this generation checks all the necessary boxes, plus some
- Excellent use of colour for house exterior
- Lots of great details
- First Friends house with a skate ramp!
- One of the axolotls from a previous set is now a pet. Free Bubbles!
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Inside the box, there are eight numbered bags, one unnumbered bag with two 8x18 plates and a ramp piece, and an instruction package with three instruction books and two sticker sheets. I suppose it's not surprising that there will be a lot of details in the house.
Minidolls and animals
There are four minidolls in this set. Liann is having a get together with a couple of the other Friends. Nova is one of them, and she and Liann are set for some skateboarding activity. Nova is quite colour coordinated with a purple skateboard and purple helmet with goes very well with her sleeveless teal hoodie with purple accents and her purple shorts.
Liann is taking a bit more a chance while skateboarding - while she's wearing a helmet, she has a crop top on underneath her dungarees. Hope she doesn't take a spill and get road rash!
The other two minidolls are Liann's mother, Michelle, and another of the Friends, Paisley. Paisley is wearing an outfit we've seen before. Michelle is dressed very mom-like in a burnt orange blouse with three quarter sleeves, a pearl necklace, an khaki trousers.
Previous sets have shown that Liann has a younger sister, Victoria. As she's not in the set, perhaps she's at daycare?
Two animals are included in the set. We've met Popcorn, Liann's gecko, several times before. However, apparently Liann has added a pet - an axolotl!! Sadly, it's one of the axolotls from 42681 Axolotl Adventure Boat. Poor Bubbles was just trying to enjoy her habitat, and ended up in a terrarium in Liann's house for her trouble.
The completed model
Liann's family has a very attractive abode, with peach and purple colours featured in the main building. I'm not sure why the family has a skateboard ramp instead of a driveway, but it certainly provides Liann and her friends an outdoor activity.
The rear view shows that there are plenty of details inside the house, and a ladder provides the way to get between floors. The back of the skate ramp doesn't look that attractive, but that's not all that surprising.
Moving to the inside of the house, there's a small kitchen just inside the front door that has a lilac throw rug in the center. Most of the basic appliances are here, include a stove/oven, sink, and a fridge. Cabinets provide some extra space. There's a nice building technique used for the sink. I like the inclusion of a soy sauce container on the counter and disk soap near the sink.
A picture on the fridge door shows Liann's family with Liann, Michelle, and Victoria.
Inside the fridge there is plenty of food, which is a good thing considering Liann has a fondness for snacks! There is a nice variety of food pieces here.
In the living room, stickers provide many of the details: artwork on the walls including a koi painting, items in the console and a video game being played on the TV. The game controller is on a table close by. A bamboo plant provides some greenery in the corner.
Liann's room takes up the entire upper floor. Space is used pretty well here. A ladder leads up to Liann's bed, and there's a work desk underneath. The scene on the computer screen looks like the fan fiction that has been featured in several Friends sets over the last few years.
A good chunk of space in the room is given over to terrariums for Popcorn and Bubbles. Pet food is close by. These spaces look very small for Liann's pets. And why is Bubbles out of their natural habitat?
The near-mandatory Friends bathroom is also on this floor, and covers all of the necessary appliances.
A second door in Liann's room leads to a small balcony that overlooks the skate ramp.
The top floor of the house is nicely detailed. I particularly like the use of the half circle pieces for roof tiles. The colouring of the whole house is just charming.
You can see the balcony outside Liann's room here, plus the top of a shade tree that's beside the house.
Similar attention to detail can be found on the ground floor. Colour use for this building is excellent, and I like all the flower details and the small tree located at the corner.
Inexplicably, there's a skate ramp right next to the house. Stairs gain access to the top of the ramp, and inline skates are provided in a box on the first step. The skate ramp also offers a way to combine Liann's interests. In addition to the skate ramp, there's a mural that's in the progress of being painted - spray cans and paint rollers are right there. Several different tiles are included so the mural can be customised as needed.
For painters or skaters requiring some tunes, a boombox is perched on the top step.
Friends aren't the only ones who can groove to the tunes.
(Note: grooving sloth not included in this set.)
Overall thoughts
The exterior of the house is lovely and I particularly like the colour scheme used. The skate ramp looks quite incongruous next to such a muted and sophisticated house. However, this is the first Friends house set with a skate ramp, and skate ramps aren't exactly known for having muted colours. Considering the architectural detail, I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Wes Talbott is the designer for this set.
I also like the trend of seeing more of the Friends at each other's houses - Autumn had some friends over as well, as I recall. Michelle must be a single mom, so I like that some diversity is being shown with respect to family make-up.
I'm disappointed that we see an axolotl as one of Liann's pets, especially since finding axolotls in their natural habitat was the focus of the set earlier in the year. I'm really pulling for Bubbles to escape and find her way in the world (perhaps with a sloth companion?).
Like the other Friends houses, this is a classic dollhouse type set, and checks all the boxes for that, plus some bonus ones for having a skateramp attached (who needs a garage), and all the excellent details, especially all the fun food pieces.
Pricewise, I think this is decent value for money, which is getting to be more of a rarity in the Friends world.
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14 comments on this article
Heartlake City has good public transit, so Liann's family don't own a car, so they used the driveway to put in a skate ramp.
One of the better houses they did.
I am a huge fan of a designer - Wes Talbot, he is known best of ELVES sets!
And I See I wil have to get two. xD Want to make it a 3 story building with open back for my city :D
I adore gentle colorsheme this build has.
The inside is also decently designed with lots of playspace and cool scenarios.
Hey maybe Bubbles is a roommate, paying rent while building up savings. Who says she's here against her will? An axolotl's gotta do what an axolotl's gotta do.
The picture on the fridge is of Liann with Peter and Victoria, her younger twin siblings
Is it certain that Bubbles’ residence is permanent? Or is it indeed the same axolotl as in the habitat set?
It might be a foster/hospital stay or a distant cousin who was raised far from nature as an ambassador for the species…
That axolotl is the cutest thing I've ever seen
Love the brickbuild lantern
FREE BUBBLES!
What happened with the third-last picture (the one of the ramp and balcony, before the sloth one)? There seems to be all kinds of weird AI-like artifacts along the right edge, like the now 3-stud wide mailbox with an extra "8", some wonky duplicate of the first-floor window frame on the second floor, and the roof edge now being two studs wide.
BTW, why doesn't this review mention the IMO rather strange use of transparent (rather than solid-colored) curved panels for the sides/top of the dormer section? It seems like the pics here tries even harder to hide this fact than the official ones.
A strange part of the Friends design ethos I've noticed over the years is that animals usually don't belong to one particular friend unless it's explicitly THEIR pet; wild animals have a chance to be reused as a pet and side characters' pets tend to swap owners between sets.
As a side note, leucistic axolotls are exclusively captive (outside a very rare mutation) so Bubbles was always designed after a domestic axolotl... no comment on their toothpaste blue friend though.
@axeleng said:
"What happened with the third-last picture (the one of the ramp and balcony, before the sloth one)? There seems to be all kinds of weird AI-like artifacts along the right edge, like the now 3-stud wide mailbox with an extra "8", some wonky duplicate of the first-floor window frame on the second floor, and the roof edge now being two studs wide."
It must be some kind of camera glitch? It reminds me of when a subject moves during a panorama capture... but it does look VERY strange lol
@Nuclearxpotato said:
"A strange part of the Friends design ethos I've noticed over the years is that animals usually don't belong to one particular friend unless it's explicitly THEIR pet; wild animals have a chance to be reused as a pet and side characters' pets tend to swap owners between sets.
As a side note, leucistic axolotls are exclusively captive (outside a very rare mutation) so Bubbles was always designed after a domestic axolotl... no comment on their toothpaste blue friend though.
@axeleng said:
"What happened with the third-last picture (the one of the ramp and balcony, before the sloth one)? There seems to be all kinds of weird AI-like artifacts along the right edge, like the now 3-stud wide mailbox with an extra "8", some wonky duplicate of the first-floor window frame on the second floor, and the roof edge now being two studs wide."
It must be some kind of camera glitch? It reminds me of when a subject moves during a panorama capture... but it does look VERY strange lol"
I've no idea what happened! I'll call it a glitch in the matrix. I've made sure the original is loaded, so it should look a bit better.
@patch said:
"That axolotl is the cutest thing I've ever seen"
42681 is a very cheap set with two of those cuties.
I really like this house, but that skate ramp very detracts from the otherwise good building.
Maybe it's not Bubbles. Maybe Bubbles is still safely in the axolotl-habitat with her sister Blossom. This might well be the third sister, Robocop.
We all wanted it to be "Buttercup", but then, this set also contains Nova. It was never going to end well.