Small, but a perfect set.
This is my review.
Building: The building was hard, but this was the highest grade of me building(so far).
Parts: Few are common, but many were new to my city.
Playable: This would be a low grade if the rescue net and the tree with the cat weren't included.
Money: A set with nearly 700 pieces for $80(in the U.S.) is extraordinary. It is unbelievable Very low.
Additional comments:.- There are a LOT of stickers, which bothers some people, but not me.
- The set has 4 minifigures, which is very unusual for a $80 set.
- They should have have added a dog, like the 2013 version.
Grades:
Building:A(97)
Parts:A(92)
Playable:A(94)
Money:A(100)
Total:A(96)
3 out of 3 people thought this review was helpful.
Excellent fire station, better than the last one
With a growing arsenal of fire fighting apparatus in my City, I needed a place to park them other than the Fire Brigade building, and the new Fire Station seemed to fit the bill.
The structure seemed to fit the modular build of the Police Station by allowing the garage build to be completed before the rest, or the office area done first. In between the buildings is a small courtyard area that connects the office and garage bays. In addition to the building, you get a small fast-response truck and a larger ladder truck. You also get an old-school tree and a cat to rescue.
I was impressed with the garage bays, despite the open sides. It makes getting the minifig in and out of the truck much easier. It was stronger than I thought it would be, too. The office area was nice, complete with gear storage on one floor, an operations center on another floor and a bunk house with an LCD TV on the third floor. With no ladder between them, I suppose my minifigs will have to teleport or use jetpacks to get between floors. The weak point, in my opinion, is the courtyard between the structures. It makes for a very flexible building when you try to move it.
The trucks are nicely done. The smaller response truck is a quick build and has lots of storage for extrication tools that weren't included in the set. The larger truck is a nice ladder truck with a telescoping ladder to reach the taller buildings in my City. Both chassis were unique builds, so there was no repetition.
Minifigs are pretty standard firefighters and the obligatory coffee cup was included.
All in all, this is a nicely done set. Bland minifigs, copious stickers and a lot of red are the only drawbacks. There's no mistaking this as a Fire Station. The ability to fully store the trucks in the bays makes this a better choice than the prior version. If you haven't gotten it yet, get it. There will probably be another one out in the next couple of years, but this is the best one for now. Good luck!!
5 out of 5 people thought this review was helpful.
great addition
After I opened the box, I realized that this set is better than expected anyway. Although you will feel 7945 has better value at first glance...
Pros:
NEW rescue net made of rubber, it can be curved at your wish which looks realistic
The fire car has 2 seats, better than the one from 7945
Nice design of the windshield with the piece from the bus
The garage! You can store tools in it
Commander's van has more space for storage compared to 7945
A new face of minifigure
Flat HDTV??
Cons:
Stickers... Especially you found your sticker was folded!
Will be a little bit expensive for $80... $70 is more appropriate
Building doesn't match the style of fire department
You may have to get both this and 7945 to complete the whole fire line... 7945 as the command center and this one as a "action center"...7 out of 9 people thought this review was helpful.
Fire Station Review
If you collect City/Town and are trying to fill out your Emergency Response teams and Public Services sector.... a Fire Station is a must have.
Box/Instructions
There's not much to say about the box other than that it's cardboard and shows a clear illustration of what you're getting. There are four instruction booklets that break down this set into sections with clear, illustrated step by step instructions. The biggest thing for a set this size is that it will be time consuming to put together.
Parts
At 662 pieces, I don't think the value of this set is worth the piece count though unless you're accounting for the number of minifigures and specialty pieces such as the ladders, rare cat and net piece.
There are a lot of red pieces and "garage pieces" so I suppose with the high number of rare and specialty pieces the price might be worth it.
There is a total of 8 numbered bags so it's easy to separate this set out for building. Love them are hate, there are also stickers to placed on this set.
Minifigures
You get a grand total of four Firefighter minifigures. Something in retrospect that I would have liked to have seen is that one of these be a female character, but perhaps later in a newer Fire Station set there could be one. And besides, nothing prevents switching out the heads on figures anyways.
Still, four figures to fill out this station, coupled with those from any other sets that a person may or may not have been picked up and there's a good fire fighting crew.
The build and completed model
The build is fairly simple with a lot of repetitiveness in it. As a modular build, you'll build this set in various stages.
You have two fire vehicles, one of which is a hook & ladder truck. Both are standard vehicles builds from LEGO themed towards Fire Trucks. The hook & ladder is a classic truck that many think of when they see/hear sirens blaring as firefighters race towards a burning building to put it out.
The building - Fire Station itself one one hand it baffles me the way it's build in sections and isn't on one large base plate and it's final layout.
You start with the garage section one, then you build part of the interior of the building. Next than is garage section two and the other half of the building's interior. Both of which are built on small base plates then connected together using technic pins, with towards the end, a larger plate for the roof connecting it all together for locking. The final result looks good. I just find it baffling building it in this type of sections while building this set.
The next baffling part for me is the location of the next build for the fireman's pole. That it's off to the right of the building and not in back to try and convey being inside. Continuing to build off to the right and elongating this building further out are the "main office" and sleeping quarters. To me, it would have made much more sense if the "fireman's pole" and the sleeping quarters/main office section had been built so there was a hinge for swinging it out away from the back of the building creating this elongated look when it's opened up.
I get that for play, a child has an easier time with the open back and moving figures around and accessibility. The logic baffles me as I could have seen this accomplished by having hinge pieces to swing the back side out for easy access. Otherwise the building looks just way too long and creates a sense of "taking longer" for the fire crew to descend down the pole and get to their vehicles in an emergency.
Summary
I got this particular Fire Station to fill a gap in the overall layout of the LEGO City/Town collection I have. So whether you pick up this Fire Station, have picked up a different one in the past or are going to wait to see any new ones that LEGO may create in the future kind of doesn't matter. It's like a good hospital set or Police Station, get at least one building to flesh out the City/Town.
This particular Fire Station isn't that bad, just a bit baffling in some of the logics for building in sections and planning. I've seen other pictures of Fire Stations though that appear worse than this one for being too simple for my tastes or at the time, a lack of money meant I just hadn't picked them up at the time and thought I'd wait til a later reintroduction of the Fire Theme.
5 out of 5 people thought this review was helpful.
A very nice Fire Station that should be more publicized
The Fire Station is a classic set of LEGO, as well as the Police Station, it has been present for a couple of decades in the LEGO catalog and is renewed every three or four years. In this case the set 7208 was introduced in 2010 and is a "must" for those who collect the series CITY. It should be noted that recently the policy LEGO seems more oriented towards the Police rather than the subset Firefighters, and in fact at LEGO website, all the CITY videos are related to the theme Police and Robbers, while unfortunately the Fire Department are limited to extras. In my view, this gap should be filled because, from personal experience, the videos are of great ideas to invent stories to play with as well as have a big impact in the purchasing decision.
The set consists of:
- Fire car
- Fire truck with ladder lift
- Two garages for a car and truck
- Building with office and fire apartment
- minifigs and cat
Wanting to follow the pattern proposed by LEGO, we start with the assembly of the car of 01 firefighters, this requires no special effort and assembles easily. The result is a truck with no doors that when the minifig must be entered has to be opened by pulling the roof, on the back there is a big gear compartment, and on the right and left side two other small compartments.
Then we assemble the car 02 of firefighters, in this case it's a big fire truck with a retractable ladder to rescue the people. The van appears to be well designed, the front has a windshield that is built on three sides (front, left and right), leaving a broad view of the driving area, also find place in it, with two special seats, two minifigs put in a row who may enter and exit through the roof hinged (much more elegant solution than simply attacking the roof off as in the car 01). In the rear of the truck there is the motion the mechanism that ensures the scale, this is almost 360-degree rotating, lifting, and extendable to allow a good range and is made with various solutions including the pistons Technic, which gives it a solid feel not only visual but also tactile when handling, in addition the latching mechanism of the scale plate is much stronger and more durable than that used in the set 7239.
Completed the two cars, you pass the assembly of the barracks, starting from the garage 01 and 02, in this case must have noticed how the same structure is very important, that many parts have open side but are also well finished, with example, the shutters of the garage are almost completely transparent, and on top of every garage, there is a fairly large skylight accomplished through the use of two juxtaposed plates windshield (very nice to see). Another thing I appreciate is the different length of the garage due to the different length of the fire truck, it should not be underestimated, since in the case of the police station garage 7498 both have the same length and consequently the cars can not stay long in its entirety.
The two garages are assembled separately and then joined two 16x16 baseplate by means of pins technic also gives a union local at the center with access door and front window that serves as a storage and dressing room for the fire brigade.
We then proceed with the construction of the building of fire starting from 8x16 plate resting on the ground floor where we find an office with front access door is completely transparent, a PC workstation built with flat tile and a coffee machine both very well made and accurate.
On the first floor there is the apartment of fire, containing two bunk beds and an LCD TV placed in front of a swivel chair, in addition, there is a transparent door that allows access to the roof and the classical pole descent of the firefighters, emergency, leads quickly to the ground floor.
On a positive note the great use of transparent plate for the building, giving it a nice shiny appearance, although I would have liked to see the same spread over three floors to provide a visual impact even more impressive, also in this case as for the Police Station of 7498, I would have preferred to find a structure for connecting stairs between two floors of the building of Firefighters.
After the building, this unit has to be united with the garage by means of pins technic returning the complete fire station, from an overall look, I think that something more must be done in terms of playability of the set, for example, I would have liked to see the pole down firefighters more centered in the structure of the building making this a typical circular hole in which to slide the pole through the Fire Department plans.
I conclude with a note of color, indicating the possibility of recreating a typical setting for the rescue of firefighters with the equipment set, in fact using, the white cat, the tree and the ladder can stage the rescue by firefighters climbed the cat tree that can no longer get.
After assembly I believe are worth noting:
PRO
- Firetrucks well made and solid
- Garage of different lengths with no problems hosting the van and truck
- Structure of the two garages very nice to see
- Extensive use of transparent doors and vertical plate that give brightness to the structure
- Well-designed accessories of offices
AGAINST
- Car firefighters 01 with the front that could be improved
- Fire Building could be improved (I would like to have liked an additional plane)
- Pole down Firefighters outside the building
- No comics in LEGO sets or videos on the website relating to firefighters who create ideas for the game
Conclusions:
This is a set of very nice that you can not miss the collection of small and LEGO AFOL. It has some weight in the construction of the building that the fire could be more impressive, but at the same time the fire trucks in support is really well done and worthy of being sold separately.
Overall rating:
+Good
Please note that, Here you can find the complete review with all the photos:
http://brickreview.blogspot.com/2012/01/7208-stazione-dei-pompieri.html#more
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Thank you3 out of 4 people thought this review was helpful.