Ninjago City (70620) - Fish shop, phone booth and more banners!

Yesterday saw the addition of some "consumer oriented" amenities to our "Chinatown". Namely a seafood store, a walking bridge over the canal and a public phone "booth".

First is the public telephone. I used the term "booth" very loosely as it's really not a booth at all but just part of the outside wall of the seafood store. You'll also notice the colorful orange banner to the left (which was a sticker) as well as some ornamentation that hangs from the roof. I really wish that the roof ornamentation was colored instead of being poo-brown. Even a few small stickers would have really livened it up and made it an extraordinary addition in both color AND form. You can see there is a tight walkway just to the right of the phone. On the left side of that walkway is the seafood store which we shall check out next. On the right side is the maintenance shack that Sweep calls home.

At the present moment, the seafood store is fairly pedestrian. I am not sure if future building will see more activity and color in the space. It sits right on the waterfront, which makes sense as the fisherman has a minimal distance to travel to get his wares from his boat to his shelves.

Back to the street side, we see a set of stairs leading up to the canal bridge. There are a couple of brightly colored banners here, presumably advertising for the seafood store and perhaps some directions on what lies across the bridge.

The bridge itself is nothing too fancy. There are some wrought-iron rings hanging from the bridge as decoration - these are positioned on both sides of the bridge. The bridge is also high enough that the fisherman can pass under it comfortably (we tested!!).

Ninjago City (70620) - Introducing Sweep!

Any decent city needs some way of keeping its streets clean. And in Ninjago City, that is the job of Sweep - the robotic street cleaner!

Here he is perched on the side of the canal and ready for duty. In his right hand, he carries and extended gripper for picking up large pieces of trash - candy wrappers, soda cans, etc. In his left hand is a broom that he uses for sweeping up smaller bit of detritus that can't be picked up. A large straw hat keeps the sun and rain off his delicate electronics. Not shown in the picture is the large back basket he wears, in which he can deposit whatever trash he picks up to take to the disposal center.

When he is not out and about keeping the streets clean, he can be found recharging and carrying out self repairs in his very own maintenance shack. It's a cozy little room that is unobtrusive and fits well into the surrounding landscape.

We got to apply more of the stickers last night, including some very elaborate ones. This is the outside of the maintenance shack - as you can see, the sticker is very detailed and vibrant. It really adds a lot of color and character to the building.

The walls have started going up as well and there is a distinct Japanese feel to the construction. Aside from the very obvious Japanese vibe of the sticker, the white "glass" in the brown frames is distinctly Japanese as is the wooden slat effect of the bottom wall.

Ninjago City (70620) - We're going fishing!

Mum worked really hard on her Lego homework this weekend and finished Chapters 2 and 3. We are still very much laying the foundation for the set but a few notable things that got put in were a cute fishing sampan and the waterway for it to travel and fish along.

The sampan is pretty detailed. You can see what looks like comfortable padded cushion where the fisherman can sit as he waits for a fish to come along. It looks like he is a spear fisherman - which definitely adds more challenge to things! The one thing I couldn't quite figure out was what the portion on the back of the sampan was. Underneath the covering are some gears (which would lead one to believe that it was a motor) but from the rear, it looks much more like a hydrofoil as there is a big fan at the back.

The water detail has some real depth to it thanks to the varying colors of the layer underneath. You'll recall that the areas closed to the "shore" were a lighter shade of green while the deeper sections were either dark green or black.

There is a small bamboo dock nestled into the side of the building where the sampan can dock and the fisherman unload his catch. It can only accommodate one boat at a time so people will need to learn how to share!

Another item of interest that we started on is what I believe to be the elevator. It looks like there are some mechanical components that have been installed at the base of the shaft and the control panel has also been installed.

Something else that we were really impressed with is the sheer detail of the stickers that came with the set. Typically the stickers we see are fairly nondescript but these are super colorful and extremely detailed. We got to put the first 2 on - they look like signage for the canal.

We normally don't apply stickers because in the interests of re-playability, we want to keep the pieces as generic as possible. Often stickers also span more than one piece, which also either necessitates keeping the chunk of pieces of together or going through the messy prospect of trying to remove the stickers. However, in the case of this set, we felt that we had to use the stickers, otherwise we would be missing a lot of the detail and color that really make this set stand out.

In the picture below, you can see the two placards which presumably notify passersby of the entry to the waterway. These are not the most colorful of the stickers but you can definitely see the detail that has gone into them.