Set Review ➟ LEGO® Creator 31097 Townhouse Pet Shop and Cafe
In this review we look at the primary build of the 3-in-1 LEGO Creator Townhouse Pet Shop and Cafe. The box contains bags of parts numbered 1 through 6, an unnumbered bag of parts, and a thick instruction book. The unnumbered bag has parts for step 1 of the build. The instruction book curiously has the cover oriented horizontally while the contents are oriented vertically.
Wienie cart
The first build is the wienie cart. It is quite fanciful in design and has rolling wheels. Also in the time-honored tradition of the meat being packaged with a unit count differing from that of the buns, we get two wienies and one bun. Ketchup and mustard are available as sides, but no relish or sauerkraut, so obviously this is not a New York City vendor.
Cafe
Next is the cafe. The build is not at all complicated, which is good if the stated age for this set is 9+. There are some fun details on the exterior: an elaborate window treatment and the coffee mug over the doorway. The interior is spartan with a bench seat, single table, and a stool for guests. There is a simple cashier stand for the shop, but no one is around to tend shop. Virus protocol, no doubt. And golly-gawsh-amighty no coffee maker present anywhere. This is a noticeable absence in a coffee shop. Perhaps even more noticeable than the lack of coffee shop personnel. What is present, though, is a wedge of cheese on the floor, atypical of any coffee shop I’ve ever visited, and I’m quite sure this would be a violation of health and safety codes in most regions.
Townhouse Kitchen
Bag 2 has parts for the townhouse kitchen, second floor, over the coffee shop. Again the build is uncomplicated. As with the coffee shop below, the exterior elaborate with a fancy balcony, window detailing, and flower boxes. The kitchen interior has lots of delightfully charming, if nonsensical detail. The stove is in front of the window, meaning all the grease from the stove will cover the window and obscure the view of the lovely flowers in the flower box. The oven door appears to open horizontally and not vertically. Maybe this is supposed to be a backwards-opening microwave oven door, with the controls adjacent the hinge instead of the door handle. There appear to be drawers under the sink. I’m glad not to be the plumber here.
There is an HVAC unit over the window on the street-facing wall, and a decorative plant in a vase by the door. On the wall opposite the stove is a sideboard. There is no refrigerator or table or chairs. Stand-up eating it is!
Functionally, the balcony door opens into the kitchen, allowing a minifigure to pass from the interior to the exterior. There is also a hinge pin located next to the balcony, but no use of it is made in this build. Maybe this piece has some other functionality in one of the other two builds for this set.
Rooftop Garden
Bag 3 contains parts for two sections: the rooftop garden that sits above the kitchen and the outdoor cafe area. The roof garden, as the sections below, has a delightfully detailed exterior.
The interior is spartan by contrast. So spartan, that the garden scissors don’t have a proper place and are sort of just thrown in a corner. We also get the set’s second minifigure at this point, a little girl. Amusingly, she is pictured in the roof garden on the box art, because, where else in a city would one expect to find an unattended child?
Outdoor Cafe
The outdoor cafe is charming. We have brick-built dog who appears to have a collar, so we may assume doggie is not a refugee from the pet shop. Attached to a kneewall is the cafe’s extensive menu. No idea where all that great food is coming from, as the cafe has no kitchen but, trivia, I suppose. Whoever the designer at LEGO had the marvelous idea to position the bird in the shade tree directly above the croissant on the table should be highly commended. That’s hilarious.
Pet Shop
This is one sad pet shop despite having a very cute sign. Let’s look inside. The shop has exactly two pets for sale. One giant goldfish, so old that it has grown to the point it absolutely fills the aquarium it is in. So big poor fishy can’t even turn around. And there is a toucan. Well, everyone wants a toucan. Not. So toucan sits in the window and pines for Froot Loops. Finally, plaster is coming off one wall and is showing exposed brick. The pet shop owner is no doubt in dire straits!
Maybe the dog on the street has escaped and figures a life on the street is better than living in here.
There has been something bothering me about the build since the first building module. A 1 x 3 arch has been used in the baseboard of each ground module. That oddity, and the cheese-on-the-floor is finally explained here in the pet shop.
Of course! All these arches brilliantly align. They’re mouse holes from the cafe, through the outdoor patio, and into the pet shop. And, voilà, in the pet shop is the mouse. The mouse has now grown to gargantuan proportions from eating all the cheese that has been strategically laid out by the cunning pet shop owner. Mouse is so large that it can no longer fit through the mouse hole and is trapped in the shop. Now the pet shop owner has a third “pet” to sell!
Outside the Pet Shop, the owner has installed an ATM (toucans: cash only) and a display of dog treats and balls. This is to lure the dog back to the shop, no doubt. Now I wonder if pet shop owner is also trying to lure that yellow bird by using the croissant.
Townhouse Living Room
In sharp contrast to the elaborate ornamentation on the cafe building and the deteriorating condition of the pet shop below, the living room module is a sleek modern design.
The interior is again fairly spartan with a sofa, potted plant, and a media console, upon which sits a monitor.
One outside wall sports a big coffee cup…a sign, no doubt…for the cafe. A 1 x 2 brick with pin anchors the cup to the wall, and gravity does the rest to get the cup hanging at an angle.
The other two walls are all-glass windows; the street-facing window has a sort of sliding exterior window shade that covers about two-fifths of one side. The final bit of ornamentation on this section is a traffic light that projects sort of maybe almost over one side of the street. One wonders if the sliding window thingy is enough to block out the undoubtedly annoying nighttime blink of the traffic light while attempting to watch the TV.
The traffic light is a nice build detail, but I don’t know how effective that thing is. It is clearly not centered over the street, and it is at a dubious height, and maybe there are other issues depending on whether or not you drive on the right or left side of the road in your country. And if Jack and Parker L. decide to drive by in their rig, some insurance adjusters are sure to have their work cut out for them.
Townhouse Bedroom and Roof
As with the living room section, this section has a sliding shade. This time, there is however, less glass to cover.
Similar to the coffee cup of the living room section, this section has a fan and a lamp connected to the outer wall, this time by a pin tile. Unfortunately, without the weight and shape that the cup has, the fan can find itself in all sorts of positions, and usually does. The lamp is connected by a bar-and-clip connection, as opposed to a locking finger like the traffic light, so it tends to easily get bumped and droop out of position.
The bedroom features a bed, nightstand with lamp and phone, and a door that opens onto the balcony. The balcony features a couple plants, a glass perimeter, and a slat roof. The main roof features a solar panel which can be positioned to a degree.
Summing up
On the pro side, this is a beautiful, easy, breezy build filled with fun and charm. There are many clever and inspired touches everywhere. The building modularity allows for some repositioning of the main elements; the pet shop can be placed adjacent the cafe, the outdoor dining can be moved to the other side of the cafe, the kitchen module can be swapped with the living room, or stacked…lots of possibilities. Going further, the wall assemblies are simple enough that they can be swapped or flipped fairly easily to offer even more alternate configurations. There are a lot of options for display variations. Blessedly, the decorated elements, few though they be, are printed and not stickers.
On the con side, for a set with a 9-year-old target age, this is a bit lacking in the play value. In this respect I would have liked to have seen another two figures at least…someone to be a customer, parents to the little girl, cafe worker, something. I would like to hear LEGO’s rationale for making one of the figures a little girl. She obviously can’t be the customer or cafe worker. Well, I guess she can be if you’re nine years old and are making stuff up. But a little girl playing alone on a rooftop is going to really require the addition of firemen, police, child protective services, and potentially an ambulance to be included to truly round out the set properly.
After the little girl is rescued, the Emergency Services workers can all have coffee and croissants at the cafe, adopt the dog, and go home with a sense of a good day’s work having been accomplished. Somebody might even buy a toucan.
Fantasy aside, the environments are mostly small. Open “floor” areas are often quite tight, walkways are too narrow to easily affix a figure, and in general a lot of spots where one might want minifigure action to take place allow for very limited positioning options.
Summarily, the building sections are great to look at, fun and easy to build, but are a wee bit minifig hostile in terms of fantasy play, and even in terms of static positioning.
All in all, the set is waaaaay more fun from the…er…Creator…side than from the play side.
In closing I’ll see fit to forgive the two-wiener, one-bun thing. This time.
Thanks to LEGO for providing this set. All the very, very clever thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone and you better not share any of them or else.
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