LEGO® Set Review: 6372 Town House
6372
|
[Photo not currently available]
|
Town House (us)
Villa (uk)
|
Town System / LEGOLAND Town
Ages 6-12 / 211 Pcs
One page spreadsheet (front & back), 18 steps.
©1982
Price Range: Estimated $21.99-$24.99 U.S. at current prices
Review Written: 12 July 1996 by Kevin M. Wang
Special Features / Compatibility
|
Extra Elements
|
Decals: Yes
Scale: Mini-Figure compatible
Errors:
|
|
Ratings:
|
Set: Must-Have
|
Models: Excellent
|
Playability: Excellent
|
Conclusion
By reading this review you all should know that I strongly recommend this set, so should it appear in an auction, bid on it, you won’t regret it! Be advised though, that the striped awning decal will most likely be long lost, so you’ll most likely have to live without it or recreate another one. Besides being a great set to own and display, obtaining old sets when you’re used to the current stuff can be quite a shock. I had forgotten about the slip cover boxes The LEGO Group used to issue, and it’s always great to see a yellow boxed-set. Plus, for all you newbie collectors (I’ve been a collector since I was in diapers, since 1975) getting old sets like 6372 is a great chance to explore LEGOLAND’s past and see what we all mean when we yearn for sets of the past. Don’t the older town sets look and feel more European and show better quality and workmanship design? A lot of the new and recent sets (like the Sail N' Fly Marina, Century Skyway, Wild West, etc.) are great, but in my collection, they can never replace or outdo the classic sets of the past.
Description
6372 Town House is a blue single family home with yellow windows and doors and a red roof. The first floor features a living room with two white chairs, a table, a lamp (made with a clear Mini-Figure head), a large picture window, and a fireplace.
The yellow door outside leads to the kitchen, where there is an oven/refrigerator/stove/cooking range unit made of two 2x4 bricks, two 2x2 smooth flats, and 4 decals depicting the refrigerator door, oven door and controls, and three stove top burners.
The second floor consists only of a bedroom with two twin beds, a nightstand with a decal drawer, and a lamp made of a clear 1x1 cylinder.
Outside, there is patio with a red, white, and blue porch umbrella, a table, two white chairs on 2x2 plates with rotating sections, a barbecue pit with a hood connected to a red chimney that runs the height of the house, a mailbox with the traditional gold bugle/white envelope LEGOLAND® postal insignia, seven bouquets of multicolored flowers, a porch light to light the front door (made of a 1x1 clear yellow cylinder), and a large awning (a decal) over the first floor picture window.
The house and its patio sit upon a 16x32 stud green baseplate.
Impression
6372 Town House is one of the best LEGOLAND® town sets ever released, and a true winner in terms of design and originality.
It’s a survivor of a time when Town System was more than race cars and police stations, where originality, diversity, creativity, and realism were far more important than action and selling to a certain market (young boys). It was also the last town house set to be available on the general U.S. retail market. Other town house sets have been available since this set, but only for a very short time by the LEGO Shop At Home service and none of them seemed to match my liking for this set.
I obtained 6372 through a LEGO-for-LEGO trade with another rec.toys.lego poster a year or so ago, and it was very refreshing to see a yellow box with “LEGOLAND” and “Town System” written on it. I don’t know why, but blue boxes for the Town System and “LEGO System” just don’t do it for me. I had also forgotten that The LEGO Group used shrink wrapped slip-cover boxes for many of the intermediate sets back then.
Ratings
Set Rating:Must-Have
Model Rating:Excellent
Playability Rating:Excellent
Likes
Styling, color scheme, European looks, variety of yellow doors and windows, several clear elements (1x1 cylinders and Mini-Figure heads), lots of red 45 and 25 degree sloped roof bricks,it’s a LEGOLAND classic, and a great set with lots of good pieces!
Dislikes
No vehicle for the mini figures, the awning decal, the scale is a bit too small... as with other LEGO buildings the interior is cramped and is a tight squeeze for the Mini-Figures, especially in the upstairs bedroom. The fact that this was the last town house set issued to the general public outside of the LEGO Shop At Home service.
Elements
Mini-Figures
Two, with classic smiley faces, of course! There’s a man with black hair, a red zippered shirt with a pocket, and black pants. The lady has the classic pig-tail hairdo with a red, white, and blue striped shirt, and red pants.
Decals
The biggest drawback of this set, and the worst possible decal situation you can have in a LEGO set! Five decals are used and four of the five aren’t that bad. There’s a drawer decal that only covers one brick on the bedroom nightstand, a stovetop burners (3 black dots) decal that covers one 2x2 tile, and the refrigerator door and oven door decals cover two 2x4 bricks in the kitchen. The awning decal over the first floor picture window covers three of the 3x4 stud 25 degree sloped roof bricks and looks like it would easily be damaged once removed. Mine is missing the original decal... I’ve recreated another one using colored pencils and catalog pictures, but it just isn’t the same. Decals that span multiple bricks like this awning decal deteriorate badly over the years (at least in my collection), so I question why The LEGO Group didn’t use a painted element for this.
A few days ago I posted to the newsgroup asking whether or not you guys would like reading reviews of older sets from the 1980’s. From the responses I’ve gotten in the newsgroup as well as in my mailbox, the answer is an astounding yes! The purpose of my doing this is to revive discussion of older sets, as older sets have for the most part have been pushed aside for discussion of the more current stuff. We have to remember our “roots” and pay tribute to our past and LEGOLAND’s “Golden Era”. I’d like to hear your comments and criticisms of my reviews, as I’m doing this for you as well as myself
and my collection. What would you like to read about? Is there anything crucial I'm forgetting? What do you like and not like? If this review is successful, many more will follow, as I have a whole collection of
old town sets I’d like to review.
This is a fan created web site. LEGO® is a registered trademark of The LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site.
All views expressed in the reviews on this site are those of the review author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Joshua Delahunty or the University of California.
Set names and photos are copyrighted materials owned by The LEGO Group, used according to its Fair-Use Policy. Set photo scans courtesy of Pause Magazine.
Background imagery supplied by and Copyright © Todd Lehman. Used with permission.
3-D Element bitmaps supplied by and Copyright © James Jessiman. Used with permission.
All product line and theme banner graphics hand-drawn (not scanned) and Copyright © 1996 Joshua Delahunty.
Send comments on these pages to the editor at dulcaoin@alumni.cse.ucsc.edu.