Friends

Downtown Flower and Design Stores

The Friends set that grew up and started borrowing tricks from the modulars.

4.0/5

Set 41732 · 2023

Pieces2,010

Minifigs9

Year2023

Set number41732

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

If your mate likes the look of the big adult Modular Buildings but wants something friendlier and less pricey, this is a genuinely easy yes.

At 2,010 pieces it's the biggest Friends set going, and it builds a lot smarter than the theme's reputation suggests. Just tell them to make peace with a chunky sticker sheet and the fact that a whole apartment somehow has no bathroom.

Best for: Friends fans ready to graduate toward Modular-style city building

The full review

What it is

Right, let's talk about the one Friends LEGO® set that made a bunch of grown-up Modular collectors do a double take. Downtown Flower and Design Stores is the largest Friends set to date at 2,010 pieces, and it's the first in the theme to carry a 12+ age rating rather than the usual younger badge. That's not just marketing. You get two proper buildings here, a two-storey florist with an apartment above it and a three-storey furniture Design Store, joined together by a little street section the designers named Unity Street. The whole thing splits into modular chunks so you can shuffle the layout around, which is a lovely touch for anyone who likes to fuss over their display.

The catch

Here's the honest part. If you hold this set to strict Modular Buildings standards, a couple of things will bug you. There are over thirty stickers, and while that's totally normal for Friends, it does feel like a lot of stickering when the building techniques are trying so hard to play in the grown-up league. The much-repeated complaint from reviewers is the missing bathroom. You get a kitchen, a bedroom, living space, two whole shops, and yet nobody in this apartment appears to wash. Price-wise it launched at 159.99 dollars, which works out to a fair but not thrilling rate per piece, and now that it's retired you'll likely be paying over that on the secondary market. Worth knowing before your friend gets excited.

Who it's for

So who's this for? It's a brilliant bridge set. If someone's a bit old for the standard small Friends builds but not quite ready (or not quite budgeted) for a 250-dollar Modular, this lands right in the sweet spot. It's colourful, it's genuinely fun to build, and it holds its own sitting next to the adult city buildings on a shelf, which is high praise for the theme. Skip it only if you're a hardcore purist who can't stand stickers, or if you specifically wanted a play-heavy set for a younger kid, because the 12+ rating and the display focus mean it's aiming higher than that. For pretty much everyone else, this is one of the easiest Friends recommendations out there.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build breaks across seventeen numbered bags and three instruction books, and it paces itself really well. You start with the florist and its apartment, which is the more traditional Friends portion, then move into the Design Store where things get interesting. That building leans into modern angled walls and some satisfying tile work across the front, the kind of technique that makes you slow down and appreciate what you just did. Because everything is built as separate modular sections that clip together along the street, none of it drags, and you get that nice hit of a finished module several times over rather than one long slog to the end.

For parts hunters there's real value in the box. New molds show up in the form of a fresh dog (Grace) making her debut in tan, a new flexible cable element with bar connectors that sits somewhere between a zipline and a string, and a sitting kitten that appears in nougat for the first time. There are around nine recolors handy for MOC builders, plus four new prints for the mini-doll head in warm tan. The nine mini-dolls include Liann in a unique variant and Olly, a busking musician in a new colour combo, and that landmark first Heartlake City police officer. As a parts pile alone, 2,010 pieces in this colour range is a strong donor set even before you build a thing.

Fun facts

01At 2,010 pieces this was the largest LEGO Friends set ever made at its release, and the first in the theme to carry a 12+ age rating instead of the usual younger recommendation.
02It introduced Heartlake City's very first police officer, a character type the Friends theme had somehow gone more than a decade without.
03The set debuted a brand new dog mold named Grace in tan, plus the sitting kitten mold appearing in the nougat colour for the first time.
04The three modular sections detach and rearrange along the street, a design trick borrowed straight from LEGO's adult Modular Buildings line.