I had been indecisive about this set since it first came out. I liked the building, but I really didn't think that I wanted the contents. There is some sports equipment included, and an ice-cream seller, but otherwise it is all clothes, hats, bags, and bridal. And I'm absolutely not into clothes, hats, bags, or bridal gowns.
Then I decided to finally buy it. Why? Because:
- I did very much want the building parts.
- Those click-on dresses had grown on me, and I wanted some.
- I needed more ice-creams.
The building parts are all I hoped they would be, and for these alone I am happy with the set - but, of course, I still put together the Shopping Mall the way it is supposed to be, and here are my thoughts on the set as a whole.
The back of the box gives the 'information for parents' that the set takes about 210 minutes to assemble. That's three and a half hours! I thought it would take me a lot less time than that, as I'm accustomed to building with Playmobil, but it actually took both Mr Raven
and myself working together three hours in total.
The first 15 minutes were spent sticking the stickers onto the front steps. Mr Raven is usually fine with stickers, but these ones were very tricky. We nearly gave up at one point, until realising that probably the best way to get them on is very very slowly, one millimetre at a time from the centre.
The instructions were not very easy to follow in places, and several times I had to undo a couple of pieces that I had put in wrongly, and correct them. Though sometimes I did make silly mistakes - note the stripes on the upside down doors:
You will notice in that last photo that there are gaps in the walls at each side of the building. On that side, the gaps are presumably for the ease of adding extensions (or to
entice one to add extensions?). Oh, and you may also wonder about the strange high door-to-nowhere. So did I! But more about that later!
The gaps on the other side seem to be to allow little hands to operate the lift from the inside.
Mr Raven and I put together the building in one and a half hours, and the remaining one and a half hours were spent on the contents. There are a
lot of contents.
They are divided between two boxes (within the large set box) and each box is supposed to correspond with a set of instructions. They don't. The pieces one needs are spread between the two boxes, despite what the instruction booklet says. So we needed the whole lot of bags out at once, and it took so long to find parts in order that we gave up on that, and instead picked out things, located them in the instruction book, and put them aside until we found the other parts that went with them. We found it amusing, but then we didn't have an impatient child at our elbows. If a parent asked me about getting this for their child, I'd say put it together when they are in bed or at school; expect to take a long time; try to keep an attitude of fun; and know that all those unrecognisable parts do go together in the end!
I was looking forward to seeing the 'working' ATM. The yellow bank card turns a wheel at the side, allowing the front to open so one can put the money (bank notes) in.
It must have taken me twenty minutes to stack those bank notes in! The space is small for adult fingers, and the bank notes are small and rebellious and like to do awkward things, and then the whole company of bank notes thinks it is funny and all jump out, and in my mind I kept hearing (American 'Survivor' host) Jeff Probst's voice saying, 'You'll have to go back to the beginning and start again...'
I couldn't get a good photograph of how the notes stack, so here's a bad one:
Anyway, notes stacked, the front of the ATM closed, then one can insert the bank card in the slot....
... And out shoots the money (quite a distance).
I'm usually really keen to start furnishing a building, but as I wasn't really very interested in the contents of this Shopping Mall, I did kind of just shove things in anywhere.
(Oh, and the assorted dinosaurs and baby penguin are
not included in this set. They just happened to be on the table and then they intruded into the scene.)
However, once I'd got it all set up, I noticed that a lot of the contents are actually very nice.
In the sports department, there's a useful saddle rack, some saddle blankets (which I've currently left flat, because I will later fit them to some horses), a nice tennis racquet in a case, and a wonderful sports bag. The sports bag is plain on the other side, so it can also be displayed as a less sparkly version.
I like the clothes mannequins so much that I
will have a clothes shop some time. The bridal headress/train is nice too, if one wants a wedding scene; and, of course, the floral headpiece can also be used for fairies.
The heads for the hats display can take any sort of hat, so are very adaptable. There was a sticker for the changing room door, but I left that off, because I intend to also use it for a swimming pool changing room.
The ice-cream seller is very strange. He appears to have escaped from the 3200 Supermarket - he's wearing the Supermarket uniform. That's fine by me, as I have the Supermarket too, and I'm happy to have a new employee there, but I will give the ice-cream counter a different seller.
The lift is very nice, totally enclosed by a sliding door which easily opens when the passenger has reached their floor. I like the miniature trees too - there are four of them in total, in two styles of orange pots.
The Shopping Mall looks good from the front too.
And I do love the light-reflecting steps.
Remember that strange door-to-nowhere, though? What was that about? I had this image of a woman coming to buy a dress....
Taking it to the changing room....
Trying it on....
Thinking, 'I look AWFUL!'
Depressively returning to the changing room....
Pushing open the doors from inside it....
And then thinking, 'There, that fresh air makes me feel me better!' (And then going off to buy a nice purse, which you'll see her do later.)
It wasn't until quite a few hours later, that I noticed a picture on the side of the box:
Ah! The doors are so that a child can walk a klicky into the changing room, secretly open the door and change the klicky's outfit, and then open the changing room door again and have the klicky walk out wearing a different outfit! (When I was changing the klicky's clothes for the above photos, I never thought of doing this. I sent her into the changing room, then took her out again through the
same changing room door, then put her in again, then took her out again...)
Thinking of children playing with this set, though - at first, I wondered what play value it had. It's hard for me to imagine. When I was a child, adult clothes shops and (worse still) handbag/purse shops were places of Sheer Boredom, so I would not have wanted to play-act such places at home.
But - the more I looked at this set over the next few hours as it sat there on the table, the more I could imagine a creative child having great fun with this. Even with just the accessories that come with this set, there are so many different ways they can be arranged.
That ice-cream seller, for example, fits perfectly into the semi-circular window upstairs. And if a child has
other Playmobil, then there is no end to the possible types of shops or departments they could make.
Just rearranging the plants creates different scenes.
So I do think that it has got play value - great play value with unlimited possibilities if a child has any other Playmobil at all. If they haven't, then I guess they'll need to like clothes and bags.
