One of the new LEGO Friends summer sets that I have been eyeing for some time and it finally became available in North America is the #41428 LEGO Friends Beach House. It’s a medium-size set with 444 pieces, retailing for $49.99, and features a lovely two-story beach house with beautiful colors, nice accessories, and even several new and rare pieces.
My main interest in this set was the extensive use of one of my favorite colors, light-aqua. Light-aqua was introduced back in 2011, but it’s mostly used for accessories and as an accent color, although there are a few LEGO Disney and LEGO Friends sets that uses it more prominently. I think it’s a beautiful color that should be utilized more often, so I was happy to see that in the #41428 LEGO Friends Beach House light-aqua is one of the main colors. Plus, the set has many other positive attributes and looks very nice overall.
Building the #41428 LEGO Friends Beach House starts out with a 16×16 tan plate, which is then extended with additional plates for a larger layout. The overall layout is 26 studs wide, which provides plenty of space for the beach house, the small pier, the beachfront, the hammock and even a palm tree. It’s actually surprising how much activity this set crams into a medium-size footprint. The house has a kitchen and toilet (brilliant use of the clam piece!) on the first floor, a bedroom with bunk beds, desk, and storage space on the second floor, and the roof can flip up to reveal a DJ terrace complete with speakers, lights, and a keyboard.
And there are lots of suggested activities outside of the house too. Steps from the second floor terrace lead down to the small pier where the girls can watch the sunset, or hop on the included speedboat. There is an outdoor shower and a snack bar with two seats under the second floor terrace. And a cloth hammock is stretched out under the palm tree on the side of the building. The medium-azure curved slopes are perfect to suggest waves coming up upon the sand, and there is also a small sandcastle.
The set is beautifully colored and decorated just with the included parts, but if you want more, there is a sticker-sheet with additional decorations. This is the way I think all sticker sheets should be; not necessary but optional.
As far as characters to play with, we have Andrea and Mia as the two mini-dolls in lovely summer attire, a flamingo which is new creature that only appears in two other 2020 LEGO Friends summer sets, a baby dolphin that only appears in four other sets, and a crab. There are also a bunch of accessories, the most noteworthy of which are the still fairly rare suitcase in lime-green, and the cloth hammock, which is exclusive to this set.
As I mentioned, the light-aqua parts were the main initial reason I was attracted to this set, and I was not disappointed by the selections in this color. There are four 1×1 bricks, 5 1×2 bricks, three 1×4 bricks, six 1×6 bricks, and five 1x1x5 bricks in light aqua. The Light-aqua 1x1x5 bricks only appeared in one other set, and the 1×4 bricks only appeared in three other sets so far.
I was also surprised and very pleased about some of the other rare parts I wasn’t even aware of until I built this set. I mentioned some of them already, but there is a 2×4 two-stud double jumper plate which is a new part for 2020 and only appeared in eight other sets. Here, you get one in dark-orange for the top of the desk on the second floor. Then, there is a dark-turquoise window frame, which only appeared in two other sets, and the 1×1 corner arch which was introduced in the #71043 LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle from 2018, but was only used in a few other sets since. It’s an incredibly useful piece for castle building as well as for micro-builds (like the sand castle here).
I’m very happy with this set overall. It was a pleasure to build, the parts-selection is excellent, the colors are beautiful, and the whole thing is pleasant to look at. And as I already mentioned, the playability is great as well. I would have loved a set like this as a kid, and I like it even as an adult. If you want to check it out, it’s currently available at the LEGO Friends section of the Online LEGO Shop.
What do you think? Haw do you like this LEGO Friends set? Do you have it already, or are you planning to get it? Are there any other recently released LEGO Friends sets that you like? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below!
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