I remember seeing this set in the catalog when I was about 6 or 7 and immediately wanted it. I had some smaller sets, so I imagined someone spending 150USD on a Lego set was ridiculous. But my mother surprised me with it and it's what started my collection of Lego City and town-themed sets.

This was a commemorative set for the 50-year anniversary of the Lego Brick, and the eponymous set released in 1958. You definitely feel the 1950s and 1960s in this set, with the architecture, design, and vehicles.

It features a cinema, with marquee, popcorn stand, candy dispenser, and theatre with two rows of seat.

The service station has a garage, a car wash, and a convenience store. It also features two gas pumps on a separate baseplate.

The church has a gorgeous exterior, but not much inside; just the altar, the chairs, some frond leaves. The leaves made for play inside a bit difficult.

The fountain is really the major focal point of the set, especially with the three golden bricks.

The blue car has retro written all over it, as well as the oil truck.

It's a great value of a set, with some unique features and styles that a diehard Lego collector or City fan must get their hands on.

We have been building up our city with the relatively new sets and began to collect the modular buildings. We saw this online here in Taiwan cheaper than the beasts on Amazon carry it for, so we picked it up.

The box arrived factory-sealed in shiny plastic and in excellent shape. I began to feel guilty for wanting to crack it open and build it. I considered buying a second set for building, but the prices had already jumped, so we cracked it open.

Three separate buildings and some "accessories" complete the Town Plan. A service station, town hall and cinema are the main structures, while a fountain, car and gas truck finish the set.

Throughout the build, I ran across elements I used as a kid in the 70's, some that are present on the newer City sets, and some that I haven't ever seen before. Not just one or two, but several! There are some really ingenious build sequences that left me wondering just what it is they feed the LEGO engineers so they can come up with this stuff.

I'll try to list my pros and cons below, but it's mostly going to be pros.

Pros

• 1. Hinged service station allows for play in the service bay as well as the car wash.
• 2. Car wash is awesome (except for convertibles)
• 3. Service station sign is incredibly complex and well thought out.
• 4. Fuel island is very realistic and was a lot of fun to build
• 5. Little blue car had a LOT of parts!
• 6. Service station tree is cool.
• 7. Cinema sign was cool to build and looks great!
• 8. Popcorn stand? How cool!
• 9. Theater seats are cool, projector was ingenious
• 10. Cinema marquee was fun to build and well thought out
• 11. Vertical area behind marquee is really complex
• 12. Town hall flower garden is cool!
• 13. Stair case was new to me - fun to build.
• 14. Hadn't seen the trees inside the town hall before
• 15. Mini figs are ALL great! From the bride and groom to the fuel truck driver. All of them are great.
• 16. Fountain really adds detail to my city!

Cons

• 1. Most of the glass panels for the cinema had some kind of sticky oil on them that made them all stick together. Good thing the movie premier poster stickers covered them up.
• 2. Service station sign stickers cover up really intricate build. It's a shame.
• 3. Kit was missing 5 white 1x1 flat tiles. Fortunately, I had spares.
• 4. Price! I wish I had picked this up when it was for sale. Bummer.

All in all, this is an excellent set! It really goes great with the modulars and even fits with the newer City sets (my City truck is delivering packages in front of town hall). Plan to add it to your City, but make sure you have sufficient real estate available. This really makes a big addition!

There's nothing I can say here that hasn't already been said by others about this set in their reviews, so perhaps I can just describe a bit of the fun I had putting together each building.

The gas station by far is my favorite, and offers the most play value. The detail that went into this set truly makes it appear like it is from the 1950's. You have your snack shop, old fashioned gas pumps, garage with skylight, a really cool old sign out front, as well a vintage gas truck. The garage is big enough for smaller vehicles, but todays' standard style vehicles which tend to be on the larger, wider side will never fit.

The cinema is a masterpiece in its own right. I would have loved to have had this when I collected Legos almost 30 years ago. The signage out front, as well as the movie posters on the outside of the building are incredible. The snack stand is wonderfully detailed, and the theater itself has plenty of room for minifigs. One feature I appreciate most is the ground tiling out front will allow you to easily include amongst your modular buildings for a seamless sidewalk and style. This set truly belongs amongst the modulars.

With that, I wish I had more good things to say about the town hall building. It has a magnificent outer facade and has a real presence in your town, but the interior leaves something to be desired. You could perhaps mod the interior to something more appealing, and you almost need to display it from the front at all times, as the open-ended back is not very flattering. I bought an extra green baseplate and put the fountain in the middle with this building attached. This really makes the building a meeting place of sorts for townfolk.

The 50's style car that comes with the town is another nice touch but with such low headroom, only certain minifigs will fit in there. Since I have road plates connected to all the buildings in my town, it is difficult to achieve the look of the Town Plan that the picture shows, which is a quaint little setting. I basically have the buildings across the street from each other or very nearby so they do not lose the "Town Plan" purpose.

The one complaint I have about the entire set is the STICKERS. Holy cow, are there stickers. But, this is just part of the building process. There always were some stickers with Lego's, going back to the 80's, but Lego also used to include more pre-printed bricks.

Since this set is no longer available in stores, and the sellers on Amazon are blood-thirsty vampires, you may get lucky to get this set at a reasonable price (or perhaps the buildings individually) on Ebay. At any rate, if you are thinking about getting this set, you really can't go wrong. Aside from maybe the 1980 Main Street set, there is/has been no other set that gives you an instant start or boost to a town than this.

I got this set for my Birthday 2 years ago, (it was kindly given to me by my parents) and I've had no end of fun with it since! This set is good for good for both play and display, an as I say in the title of this review, it's hard to find fault here: a great set at a great price.

The Cinema:

Firstly, I'd like to say that (to my knowledge), there's never been a cinema in an official Lego set before, but this meets any and all expectations I had of a lego cinema: movie posters, seats, a huge (well, for minifigures. :) ) screen, a ticket vendor, and oversized sign, and even popcorn! Although I've never used it in this context, I imagine it would also be useful for a premier, or similar event.

The Town hall:

This is another great building, which serves the purpose of town hall very well. Although it hasn't got a huge amount of playability inside, it's fun to build, and in my opinion looks really nice. I think the large "pillar pieces" (yep, each of the pillars is made from only to pieces) are relatively rare, too, although I would have preferred lots of those small, circular prism pieces (sorry, I don't know their names). Nice printed (I think) clock piece, too.

The Service station:

My favourite building in the set! It has a little shop, a unique curved design, a place to repair cars and even a car wash, but that's not my favourite part of this building. It's actually on two plates rather than one, which are attached together like a hinge: therefore, you can alter the service station's layout. Apart from changing the service station's look, it has an application in play: you can only get to certain parts in certain layouts. At first, this might sound like a bad thing, but in fact it prevents the need for an open roof, which I think is a good thing.

The service station also comes with a little traffic island with petrol (gas to those of you in America) pumps. You can "fill up your cars" with the nozzle, which moves, and the lights near the pumps look really good. I've recently expanded this so that it's larger and has a phone booth and railings, but it's fine on its own.

The Fountain:

A nice little extra here, especially with the exclusive "golden" (gold coloured rather than pearl gold) bricks and benches.

The Vehicles:

The set includes a really nice looking 1950's car, and a truck, with petrol/gas for the service station. The truck has a nozzle that can be used to refill the petrol/gas pumps at the service station, and the car fits nicely through its car wash.

The Minifigs:

Brilliant Minifigs here! Every single one is unique to this set. Of particular note are the bride and groom and popcorn vendor: the first two come with "smart" clothes, which can be really useful in other contexts as well, and the Popcorn vendor makes a really good chef.

Conclusion:

A really nice set that I highly recommend. In my opinion, this is going to be quite the collector's item in the future.

One thing I might advise you to look out for is the fact that the set comes with a letter from Kjield Kirk Christainsen, which may not come with the set if you're buying it secondhand, so if you're interested in the letter, I recommend you make sure it comes with the set.

I hope you enjoyed my review!

Let me start off by saying, if you are going to by this, wait no longer. Buy this! It is a nice set, completing my city. If you still aren't sure, read on but don't say that I didn't warn you that its long. Now that I think of it, I didn't warn you. Well, its long.

The Cinema

I loved this part, too bad it broke in my closet when I had to clean my room... anyways, it is the perfect little movie theater. I like the big sign. Its unique. Inside, there are two rooms. One is your snack stand, with a worker included. The other room is your movie showing room. An old movie is showing. There are 5 or so seats there and high up on the wall in the back, is a little movie projecter. Neat!

Town Hall

I do think it is more of a church than a town hall but its really around the same thing. You can use it either way. The building design is too cool. I like everything about this set. The town hall has a little podium for the guy who works there to stand and greet people. In front of the town hall is a little map. Isn't that handy?

Car Station Place

My favorite part, personally, is the car wash. I am not sure all cars fit in it but its still cool. There is 2 gas pumps to the side of the building. Your lego minifigures can just drive on over and get some gas or get their car fixed. It has a store inside. The car station place is a really nice touch on this set.

The Rest

The small golden brick fountain is cool. Minifigures can just sit and read the paper in peace before or after work. The minifigures themselves are cool. There is a newly wedded couple, 2 workers at the cinema, numberous workers at the car station, a guy at the town hall who I think is supposed to be the mayor, and a guy reading the newspaper at the fountain. Did I miss a guy? I don't know.

The Overall veiw

The overall veiw for this set is...its worth your money so buy it. Lego did an amazing job making this masterpiece. I am glad I saved up 150 dollars for it. Its easy to play with. The buildings are cool and the minifigures are nice. Its worth the many hours of putting it together.

Lego, you did a great job! :)