Friends

Friendship House

A converted firehouse turned clubhouse, and the fire pole is the whole point.

Brick Rated Score

3.8/5

Set 41340 · 2018

Pieces730

Minifigs3

Year2018

Set number41340

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The verdict

The idea here is what got me: it is an old Heartlake fire station that the friends have taken over and made their own, so it comes with a real spinning fireman's pole, a slide, a garage with an opening door, and a heart-shaped hot tub on the roof.

That converted-firehouse premise gives it way more personality than a plain dollhouse. It is not the most elegant Friends building LEGO has made, and the sticker count is genuinely high, but as a play set it is packed. If you love the Friends world and want maximum places to invent scenes, this delivers.

Best for: Friends fans who care more about play features than a polished shelf display

The full review

What it is

The Friendship House is the big anchor set of the early 2018 Friends wave, and the premise is what makes it worth a look. This is not a fresh new house, it is an old Heartlake City fire station that the friends have converted into their shared hangout, a bit like a pint-sized Ghostbusters HQ. That single idea earns its keep. You get a real spinning fireman's pole running down through the floors, a slide off the side, a garage with a sliding door, and a working pulley winch to haul things up to the top deck. The unpainted medium nougat siding with a few brighter painted stripes gives the whole thing a cheerful DIY-clubhouse look, like the girls patched it together themselves. It reads less as a doll's house and more as a place where all five of them actually come together, and I think that is exactly what LEGO was going for.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the caveats, because there are a few. The sticker sheet is a lot. You are looking at 30-plus stickers, and some of the ones people most wish were printed tiles, like the sleeping bags in the bedroom, are stickers you have to line up yourself. If crisp printed parts are your thing, that will nag at you. There are a couple of genuinely odd design choices too: there is no staircase connecting the first floor to the second, which is a strange gap for a multi-level building, and while the house has plenty of doorways, only one of them gets an actual door. So you end up with a lot of open frames. The colors are a touch subdued next to some of the brighter Friends builds, and at the original 70 dollar price for around 730 pieces the value was fine rather than outstanding.

Who it's for

Here is who this is really for. If you are already invested in the Friends characters and you want the most play value per level, this is a strong pick, because the number of little interactive spots per square inch is high and kids find endless scenarios in it. It is a set built to be played with, not admired from across the room. If you are coming purely as a display builder or you want the most elegant architecture in the Friends line, this is not the one to chase, and the sticker load will test your patience. But taken on its own terms as a bustling converted clubhouse, it holds up, and it now sits fully retired, which has pushed the secondhand price well above where it started.

The parts story

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

Building it is a breezy, feature-first experience rather than a technical one. The box splits into six numbered bags plus an unnumbered bag with the larger plates and slide sections, so it moves along at a good clip and never bogs down. Each floor adds a new gimmick to assemble, the pole, the winch, the sliding garage door, the spinning TV, so there is a steady little hit of satisfaction as each play feature clicks into place. The biggest time sink is the stickers, not the bricks, so budget your patience for lining those up cleanly rather than for any tricky engineering.

The parts palette leans practical over rare, but there are nice bits in here. Those two smooth slide sections and the pair of fireman's poles (LEGO helpfully includes a spare pole) are the fun functional pieces, and the heart-shaped hot tub tile and the assorted printed screens add character. The medium nougat siding and brighter accent stripes give you a useful stock of earthy wall pieces, and the three animal molds, Dash, Rumble, and Cinnamon, are lovely to have loose in a collection. It is not a parts-monster set for MOC builders, but for a play-focused house at this size the mix is sensible and the functional pieces pull their weight.

Fun facts

01The Friendship House is a converted Heartlake City fire station, which is why it ships with two working fireman's poles (one is a spare) and a slide.
02It was the largest set in the first Friends wave of 2018 and carried a launch price of about 70 US dollars.
03The set retired in January 2019 after roughly 23 months on shelves, and its value has since climbed well above the original RRP.
04Play features are stacked across four levels, including a TV that spins around to reveal a secret mission screen and a heart-shaped rooftop hot tub.