Showing posts with label sembo brand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sembo brand. Show all posts

Friday, March 3, 2023

I made a Japanese style modular building from the Not Lego Sembo 601070 Crab Shop

 

Hello brick fans!  I'm here to show you my latest creation and yes, it's another modular building.

This set started life as the Sembo Crab Shop 601070 which were readily available on Aliexpress about three years ago.  The shop is one of four buildings in a series of Japanese themed facades.  The shops are harder to find these days, with only one or two stores on Aliexpress selling them.

This is how the set came originally before my modifications. It was basically a small building facade with a building that was about 8 studs deep with a minor interior setup.

As soon as I saw this set, I had to get it and turn it into a Lego style modular building.  Well, it's been three long years but I've finally achieved my goal.  

First off you will notice that I narrowed the facade of the shop from 20 studs wide to the standard 16 studs wide to make it consistent with all of my other 16 stud wide modular buildings.  The most challenging aspect of this was trimming off the sides of the fabric awning.  To get a nice straight edge, I used a paper cutter.  


There are four tan coloured arms that hold up the awning and they are attached by pre-made holes in the awning.  To make it fit 16 studs wide, I had to reposition the awning arms and then used a hole punch to put new holes to where the arms attached.

The tiled roof overhangs were originally only 2 studs deep on both the first and second floor. I expanded the roof tiles to be six studs deep.

The vertical sign was moved from the right side of the building to the left.

The entrance to the shop was relocated as was some of the signage.

After losing the one red crab that came with the set, I had to buy some replacement crabs and lobsters from Aliexpress.  That resulted in crab shop expanding its offerings to lobsters and fish as well, hence the new improved seafood setup in front of the shop.  

From the side, you can see that the building's proportions, extending all the way back to use up most of the 16x32 baseplate, which was converted to the MILS system.  To construct the shop building walls, I used a hodge-podge of bricks from various not Lego brands.  Definitely no colour consistency here!  

The first floor side wall can be popped off for picture taking, and the second floor can be removed entirely from the first floor.  The roof also comes off.

The rear of the building is rather plain looking, with only a door for deliveries and an empty crate to be returned to the seafood wholesaler.  I decided to make all the second floor windows asymmetrical, just because.

More unmatched brick colours, yuck!  The white patch of bricks is the background for one of the fish tanks inside.  Those black squares are actually dark tinted windows, courtesy of some set from Sluban.  The crab shop can be displayed either as a standalone building or part of a row of Japanese themed shops.


Before we tour the interior, I just want to say, this awesome crab is purely the reason why I was drawn to this set.  It reminds me of the actually crab restaurants that can be found in Osaka, Japan.  I had to extend the vertical sign out further from the building to make it more visible.  All of the Sembo stickers that came the set are bit too oversized for my liking.


Ok, here we are inside the shop, looking out.  As you can see we have the shop owner displaying his fresh seafood to anyone who will notice.  He's one of the original minifigures that came with the set and he even has a crab on the back of his uniform, which I didn't notice until just now, lol.

I built this giant tank of seafood for the storefront.  At the end of the day, you can actually slide the front door closed.  I borrowed that idea from the Cada Coffee shop.


As you come into the store you are greeted by a large fish tank on the wall and more crates of crabs and lobsters.  The main floor of the shop is divided into two areas. The front of the shop is where you can buy seafood to go, but also if you want to dine in, there is a kitchen in the back, where they will prepare the seafood how you like it.


The kitchen is comprised of an oversized sink to rinse off the seafood before cooking, a counter with various ingredients, a four burner stove, some kitchen pots and pans and a couple of steamers.  I managed to squeeze in some extra storage above the counter.

The original Sembo set provided a small second floor but no stairs to access it.  That's been resolved in my modifications.  More room for crates and stuff under the stairs plus access out to the back.


The fabric curtain that hangs in the archway is called a noren and it came with the Sembo set.  I've just moved it inside from its original location.


Coming up the stairs to the second floor, we find the dining room.  There's three tables with an entire seating capacity of ten customers.  


This restaurant has the traditional raised platform where you dine, sitting on the black cushions which are on the floor.

This picture was taken before I decided to add another window into building.  Oh, here's that beer that we ordered, Kanpai!   There were two other minifigures that came with the Sembo set, but I've repurposed them elsewhere, I think.  All of the figures shown here are from my own collection.


Here's the shop pictured with all of my Cada Japanese themed buildings.  Please check out my reviews for those if you haven't already.

Well, that concludes our tour of the modified Sembo Crab Shop.  If you want to buy the original Sembo crab shop, you can find it on Aliexpress by clicking the picture below or searching for the term Japanese Streetview.  Thanks for looking and see you in my next post! Bye!

Friday, December 31, 2021

Here's Every Not Lego Modular Building I Built in 2021


Hello alt Lego brick fans and welcome back!  This will be the  final blog post of 2021!   It's certainly been a busy year, with me building so many brick sets during the pandemic lockdown.   

This blog post only focuses on the modular buildings I built this year, but I probably built just as many non modular building sets, such as the iconic Blade Runner spinner moc, the Qunlong rapid transit trains, the Lego Ideas garbage truck by Mochimaster and so many more. 

So here are all the modular buildings that I built throughout the year, some of them are sets, some of them are sets that I subsequently modded or rebuilt and some are my own custom builds, all using not Lego bricks.   The alt Lego brands were quite varied this past year with many new names I'd not heard of before.  They include Zhegao, Happy Build, Panda Burning Incense, Juhang and Jiestar.  I do seem to be buying a lot of Sembo branded sets lately.

Other than the Jiestar Jazz Cafe which I purchased from now defunct www.brickkk.com, all of the other modular buildings were acquired from Aliexpress.   


The Zhegao Hill Tavern set was a dollhouse style building, meaning that it didn't have a back wall.  Also it sat on a much smaller 24 stud wide baseplate.  I ended up rebuilding and expanding the entire set and converted it into a full size (32 stud wide) modular building.  The main floor is tavern with washroom, booths for seating and the second floor is a VIP lounge.  The tavern owner lives in an apartment on the third floor.  Every floor is fully furnished.

March 2021:  My Hsanhe 7-11/KFC Moc (picture review pending)

The Hsanhe branded sets started my addiction into modular buildings.  I bought all 6 of the original series, which were copies of a Lego Ideas submission.  There was a 7-11, a KFC shop, a McDonalds restaurant, a Starbucks cafe, an Apple store and a Dunkin Donuts shop.  Over the years, I kept rebuilding the sets and making them larger and more and more detailed.  For this MOC, I consolidated two of those buildings and merged them into the modular building you see above.  The space over the 7-11 hosts an after school centre for kids and there is a bike share stand in front of the KFC.


I'd never heard of this brand called Happy Build/Xinyu before, but was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the set.  The front and rear facades are completely different but both sides could be displayed as the front.  It is unique in that it features swing out walls, so you can easily access the interior, which is fully furnished.  The main floor is the office and the second floor is the photography studio.  The third floor houses the photo editing room and washroom.


Sembo branded sets are some of the best quality alternative Lego sets out there, so I had no qualms buying this set for the front facade.  However, it turned out to be a lot smaller than I expected.  Plus the fact that the storefronts were only about 6 studs deep x 24 studs wide.  So I had quite the challenge to convert this into a full size building.  
The new modular consists of two separate buildings sharing a common stairwell.  The building includes a new baseplate, all new walls, windows, doors, floors, new roof, stairs to each floor.  The old storefronts were completely replaced. On one side is the Qman bun shop, while the other store is currently vacant, as are the apartments above them. 


May 2021: Panda Burning Incense 10201 Book Shop (picture review pending)

I bought this replica of the Lego Bookshop (set 10270) off Aliexpress, but didn't know what brand it was until I received it.  It turned out to be this obscure brand called Panda Burning Incense.  The quality of the set is decent and I've already started to mod it by increasing the townhouse height and relocating the birch tree to another one of modular buildings.  Not much more to say about this set as it is identical to the Lego version.

June 2021: Happy Build YC20008 Music Studio (picture review pending)

This music studio modular building is by Happy Build, the same company that made the Photo Studio and the quality remains consistently good.  This building has a unique appearance and includes a lot of details inside and out.  Like the Photo Studio, the rear walls swing away to reveal the interior which has a record store on the main floor, a music studio with instruments on the second floor and an apartment on the third floor.  As a future project, I'd like to expand the second and third floors of this building.

July 2021:  MOC 3906 Flower Shop by Mestari (picture review pending)

I made a flower shop modular building MOC a long time ago, but this one looks way nicer than mine.  There's a flower shop on the ground floor and furnished with an apartment on the second floor.  Because this is a MOC set, there's a slight deviance on the colours of the various bricks.  This building is only two storeys tall, so another future project will be adding a third floor to the building.




I think that this building is called the Nordic Coffee shop on Aliexpress, if I remember correctly.  I must have been bored back in June 2021 to buy this modular building as it's not photogenic at all.  While the quality is top notch because it's Sembo, the exterior design leaves a lot to be desired.  In some respects the colour pallete used on this modular almost resembles the Happy Build Photo Studio.   Chinese building block manufacturers must have an excess of dark yellow/burnt orange bricks, lol. The interior is fully furnished with cafe on the main floor and seating for patrons on the second floor, with a small bedroom on the third floor.

It didn't take too long for me to redo the front facade.  It's kind of ok for now, but I have plans to convert this building from 16 studs wide to 32 studs wide.   Yet another future project.


September 2021: MOC 11224 Blooming Blossoms by Kristel (picture review pending)

I've been a big fan of the modular buildings designed by Kristel and was surprised that one of her buildings was reproduced as a MOC on Aliexpress.  The Blooming Blossoms is a small 16 stud wide sand green coloured modular building that is supposed to be a flower shop, however I had just recently bought the Flower Shop MOC by Mescari, which was also sand green.  

I re-clad the Kristel MOC building using tan and brown bricks and converted the exterior signage to a coffee shop, although I didn't put any interior finishings inside other than to tile the floors of each level.

As I was building the this MOC, I realized that I already had a lot of the same brick pieces in my spare parts stash, so I created a duplicate building but using different coloured bricks and windows. I made the second building slightly different from the first for originality.  It's also empty except the floor tiles.  That's another two buildings I need to furnish at a future date.

September 2021:  My Motorcycle Shop/Apartments MOC 

Here is another of my custom buildings.  It started life as Lepin 02047 Service Station (clone of Lego set 60132) which  I bought in 2017.  Two years later in 2019, I bought a second Lepin 02047 cause it was cheap.  The intent was to create a modular gas station out of the two sets, but nothing ever happened.

It wasn't until this year that I dusted off the sets with the idea of creating a motorcycle sales and service shop on a 32x32 stud baseplate.  But just creating a single storey building was too boring for me, so I wanted to create a colourful apartment block above the shop.

The motorcycle shop has a display floor and a shop area with garage where repairs are made to customers bikes.  I have quite a few Lego style motorcycles in my collection, but there's still not enough room to house all of them in this modular. 

The second and third floors contain completely separate apartments accessed by a stairwell from the back of the building.  Each apartment has its own living space including kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

I would say that this modular is only about 80% complete with the goal of creating more parking for my bike collection.  I'm already thinking of increasing the size of the base footprint from 32 studs to 48 studs wide.   Look for an update to this modular building in the new year.

This year, I've learned of so many alternate brick brands and Juhang is another new brand for me to try.  The Garden Street modular is one of three buildings in a series, all mostly white and black exteriors with purple flowers.  The building gives off a mediterranean vibe and I liked the side turret on this model.   This set uses more panel pieces than typical bricks and the brick clutch is extremely tight.   The impression that I get is that this modular is supposed to be a hotel, but the sparse interior says otherwise.  I've already completely deconstructed this model and at some point in the future I may rebuild it as something else.




The Jiestar European Jazz Cafe is the only modular building that I didn't buy off Aliexpress.  Instead, I got a really good deal for it from now defunct www.brickkk.com.  Shipping was super quick, so I've no hesitation from ordering from them again.  

This modular building is someone's MOC who created an alternate build by using only the bricks found in the Lego Assembly Square modular, set 10255.  The Jazz Cafe modular is certainly appealing with it's Sand Green exterior contrasted with white and light gray accents.  The first floor cafe looks great too.  The second floor of the cafe is a stage with seating off to the side, where patrons could listen to performers while having a drink.  The third floor houses the light fixtures used by the stage and provides extra seating for audience members.

While the exterior design is unique, I found it a bit schizophrenic given that there are two different facades for the corner building.  I completely deconstructed the Jazz Cafe, and using parts from this set and my own, I created two distinct modular buildings.  

The first modular building I built sits on a 16 stud wide baseplate and this is where I relocated the cafe to.  It retains the sand green colour scheme, while retaining the original design elements of one of the facades.  The second and third floor are presently empty for the time being.

The second modular building retains the size, shape and central shaft of the jazz cafe MOC, whereas the facade is reminiscent of the Corner Cafe modular building.  I used a lot of my own bricks and blocks to fashion the exterior, but I haven't decided what the interior will look like yet.


December 2021: Lepin 07107 Sanctum Santorum Mod (picture review pending)

So I bought the Lepin 07107 (copy of Lego set 76108) Sanctum Santorum way back in early 2019.  But it wasn't until this month that I finally got around to making a modular building out of it.  I took the original design and made extensions on either side to expand the width to a full 32 studs.  I built all new floors, walls and rooftop, but right now, the interior is totally empty.  Furnishing all three floors will be a project for next year. 

Well, that's a wrap folks!  As you can see I built a lot of modular buildings over the course of the year, but I still have a lot more work to do, to finish off many of the interiors.   And I really should update my blog with all the reviews I've gotten too lazy to write.

Hopefully in 2022, I'll try to cut back on buying new modular buildings and just focus on updating the ones I already have.  As it is, I've pretty much run out of space on my Ikea tables and book shelves.

Thanks so much for hanging out with me on my blogs this year. Hope you all have a great 2022!   Keep on building and see you next year, bye!

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Honey, I Shrunk the Sembo Japanese Shops (Not Lego)!

I modded my Sembo shops!



Hi brick fans, thanks for dropping by!  In case you are new here, my blog BricksandFigs is about reviews of not Lego minifigure I find on Aliexpress and showcasing my custom brick builds or as sometimes referred to, MOCs.

In today's post, I will show you the three changes I made to the recently acquired Japanese shop sets made by Sembo brand.   For my initial build pics of these shops you can find that post here.   Ok, let's go!

Change #1 - Adding a roof to the sushi shop



In this before picture of the sushi shop, you can see it has no roof, whereas all the other three shops do have roofs.  To be consistent, I wanted to add a roof to the sushi shop.  The easiest way to do this is to put another post on the right side and then attach a cross beam across the top.  This will then provide support for a new roof plate covering the entire shop.

Change #2 - Adjust the counter heights

Sembo made the shops bigger, so you can appreciate all the little details but one thing I noticed is that they are slightly bigger than minifigure scale.

 In the case of this before picture of the takoyaki shop, you can see that the counter height is nearly the height of the girl minifigure.  If that was in real life, the counter height could be close to 5 feet tall.

 The counter height of the ramen shop is ok, until you realize those ramen bowls will probably be too high to eat out of, while sitting on the stools.  This is also a before picture.

Lastly, the shaved ice shop is also way too high.  There's no way the girl minifigure is going to reach the kakigori without her wearing it in the before picture.

 On most of the shops the counter is 3 studs high, so I'm going to reduce it to 2 studs if possible.  This should make the shops more minifigure friendly.

 Change #3 - Adjust the shop widths




All of the shops presently sit on a 16x8 stud plate, so when you display two of the sets besides each other they take up 32 studs, which is the size that is occupied by a normal modular building.   This would be fine, except I want to add in sidewalks to make the appearance consistent with my other modular buildings. Pictured above is how the shops looked before I modified their widths.

My sidewalks are about 8 studs deep.  If I subtract 8 studs from 32, I get 24 studs remaining.  So the challenge is to get 2 shops side by side within 24 studs.

The results


Here are the Japanese themed Sembo shops with all the changes applied.


The sushi shop underwent the most changes, but I still couldn't get the counter height as low as I wanted.  I was able to add the roof and move the signage to the front.  The width was significantly reduced from 3 seats to only 2 seats.  The ramen shop counter height was reduced and the shop width was only slightly decreased.  The red lantern of the ramen shop was shifted from the side to the front.

Here's how the shops look around back.


Here's the newly modified Takoyaki shop and shaved ice shop.  As you can see, the counters are much more accessible.  The biggest challenge on these two shops was preserving the fabric banners.  They take up a lot of room, so there's a bit of overhang.  The red lantern on the takoyaki shop was also moved from side to front.

Here's the rear of the two aforementioned shops.

For most people, they would probably stop here, having accomplished the ambitious challenges, but I decided to go one step further and placed the shops on 16x32 baseplates complete with sidewalks and a brick wall.

 Some WIP pictures



I really wanted that Asian feel, so I completed the display with a large cherry tree placed in a central courtyard.

The entire display is comprised of 3 16x32 baseplates, two for the shops and one for the parkette/courtyard.

I don't have the baseplates permanently attached, because sometimes I'll want to display it this way.


Well, that's it!  I hope you enjoyed looking at how I modified my Sembo shops and made a display for them.   Please note that you cannot simply take the shops as they are and downsize them.  I had to pull a lot of bricks from my brick stash and basically re-design and re-construct each shop from scratch.