It is with great pleasure that I bring you a review of set 40145 LEGO Store, an Exclusive promo set only given away during a special offer period during Lego store grand opening events. I obtained this set from the recent grand opening of a Lego store in Seattle, WA. It was available on Saturday only, during the weekend event, if you were one of the first 300 to make a purchase of $99 or more that day. I actually couldn't be there personally for the event, as I was in Alaska working. But upon finding out of the schedule of giveaways I informed my brother the morning of and, since he was going to be purchasing the new Ferrari F40 (set 10248) anyway, I suggested he might head down to the new store to check it out. I held my breathe that he might get there soon enough to secure one. Despite being greeted with a very long line of people holding large sets when he arrived a couple hours after the store opening, I received a text saying that he got one and it was all mine when I returned home. Needless to say I was beyond thrilled!

Box

The box was much larger than I expected, wide and deep. It's the largest promo set I've ever experienced. Roughly 10 in. wide by 5.5 in. tall by 3.5 in. deep. (Sorry for the non-metric info most of the world.) I have pictures of the front and back so I will let those speak for me regarding the look of the packaging. One thing I was a little disappointed about was that it didn't have tape seals on the box, it used the perforated thumb punch found on small boxes. Tape seals are nice and clean and easy, perforated boxes can get messy and tear if you're not really careful opening them. For an Exclusive set such as this, where people are most likely tentative about opening them in the first place, it would have been appreciated to get tape seals that are clean to keep the box nice after opening.

Parts

This set contains 413 pieces, along with 25 extra pieces (a lot of small pieces). All of the parts for the build are pretty common. The only rare piece is the dark brown wig for the mini figure. It is only found in 2 other sets, the most recent being 10246 Detective's Office. There are a lot of white bricks which are very useful, but I don't imagine anybody is using this for a parts pack. ;-)

And of course the small sticker sheet is pretty rare.

Minifigures

This set contains only one minifigure, a woman with red and white blouse print on the torso and plain black legs, along with the aforementioned dark brown hair piece. She is also carrying a brick built Lego bag, clearly out shopping for her husband like a good brick wife would. :-)

I feel like this set needs one more minifigure, a store employee for example. Luckily I had, like many of you probably do from previous giveaways, the Lego store employee minifigure from polybag 5001622. This was the perfect opportunity to use him and make this set feel more complete.

The build

So after opening the box carefully and dumping out the contents we start with 5 unmarked bags, 3 loose base plates, one small sticker sheet, and one instruction booklet.

It was kind of fun to just dump everything out in one pile like the old days and get to it. The build was pretty straight forward, nothing too complex really. It begins with laying out the foundation on the two dark grey base plates, using a hinge plate to connect them so the split in half building opens up.

The build continues with building up the walls of the right side, or the back of the store, along with a pick-a-brick wall, and then building up the store front on the left side with some display items in the windows. It feels very much like a modular build, just in a miniaturized version, so it was quite fun! The only repetition came in the form of the Lego set display walls, with stickers on 1x2 bricks in different colors to represent various Lego set boxes. (Apologies for the poor lighting/shadows in this picture, not sure what happened.) Obviously the stickers is what you would need to make this set authentic and complete, otherwise you could do the entire build with basic bricks.

A nice touch was added to the outside front of the building, the iconic green dragon! From what I understand, "Brickley", a Lego built dragon can be found at various Lego stores as well as Lego theme parks around the world. He even has a small set of his own, 3300001.

Here is a look at the inside of the store opened up, just prior to adding the roof top for each side, which completes the build.

The completed model

It is a very nice little set, which like I said before, feels very much like a tiny modular. It has nice interior details, four walls, exterior details, a small sidewalk, roof, and opens up for access. The store front looks really good with large window pieces on each side of an inset clear door, so good visibility into the interior. The mainstays of a Lego store are represented well here, it feels like your local Lego store, along with the added flare of the dragon decor. And if you happen to have the Lego store employee minifigure, well, I can think of no better place to keep him.

Overall opinion

I really enjoyed this set. It's not just the bricks and the build, it's more than that. It's the story of how you came to own this special set. It's the fact that it's an exclusive offering and hard to come by. For me, when I was building it, I was enjoying it so much knowing that probably not many people actually open it up and build it, because it's so exclusive. I'm sure many keep it unopened in mint condition incase they want to sell it sometime, which I can understand. It's tempting to sell a small set like this because of what you can get for it on eBay, but I believe Lego is to be enjoyed, and I fully enjoyed building this set and am very proud to have a gem like this in my collection. A very special thanks to my brother Tim for making that happen.