First Impressions
As a newer AFOL I thought that this was a new set instead of a reissue which I added to another order. It took about two months to ship, which took me back to my childhood of waiting six to eight weeks for catalog orders and getting a surprise one day. Also, the disembodied finger pointing at the occupants of the bus as if yearning for their immortal souls on the back of the bus is fun.
Retail cost is $ 9.99 from Lego.com which seemed like a deal for a little set. It seems once the current generation road plates got released costs increased significantly.
Parts
Set contains 118 bricks.
So far this set has had the highest percentage of useful elements of any that I have reviewed. All good colors, and with the exception of the sicker set and tires, all parts I would probably use in AFOL builds. I know bright red might be considered by some to be a happy color but I assure you it is not. There are lots of 2x4 tiles which is nice, I thought initially it would be some of those hood bricks that I have no use for.
Build
Smooth build as one can expect from a small set.
Random Rant
I hate stickers. After sorting through a couple hundred pounds of bulk second hand Lego and seeing approximately zero well placed stickers I am always apprehensive about putting them on as they never seem to go on quite right. As you can see above the job on this one is acceptable but the long stickers on the white bricks are not centered vertically. I understand printing is very expensive and I'm thankful that minifigures are not stickered. That would be truly awful.
Please let me know in the comments if you have a good technique for applying stickers to the bricks.
Set Elements
Coming from a completely different place than the above rant about stickers, one of the best stickers I have seen from Lego is the the promo for "The Brick Separator" horror movie.
Frustrations
The only frustration I have for this one is as a reissue and how I found out. The back of the instructions have a ad for Lego Creator Expert 10253: Big Ben which has been retired and is probably not going to be reissued. You can find it on the secondary market for well over $ 500.00. Well, that and stickers.
Final Thoughts & Recommendations
Buy Several - almost all good parts for this AFOL. BrickLink has the part out sales at $ 14.66 as of this writing and until it was re-released, a new in box set sold for $ 39.99 in February of this year. This set will likely take off in value if they don't re-re-release it every few years, and even if they do, the set is not so focused that it being a gift to someone would be out of touch.
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