Friends

Surfer Beachfront

A breezy little seaside corner that gives you a grandma, an ice cream shop, and a car full of surfboards.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 41693 · 2021

Pieces685

Minifigs3

Year2021

Set number41693

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The verdict

The thing that won me over here is that it never pretends to be one big storefront.

It is a stack of small rooms you can pull apart and shuffle around, and the exterior texturing (all that sandy, coral, lavender layering) is genuinely lovely for a mid-price Friends set. The interiors are more standard Friends fare, and at 685 pieces this leans small for its old $69.99 price. If you love the beach-town Heartlake vibe, or you want a set with real rearrange-and-play value, it is an easy yes.

Best for: Friends fans who want a beach-town corner with genuine rearrange-and-play value

The full review

What it is

This is a two-story slice of Heartlake seaside life, and I fell for the concept before I even finished it. You get an ice cream shop with a rooftop terrace, a beach gear rental counter downstairs, and up top, Mia's grandmother's little apartment with a vegetable garden. It comes with an open-top car that Mia and Andrea can pile full of surfboards before heading off to chase the waves. The whole thing has that easy, sunny, salt-in-the-air feeling that the best Friends beach sets get right, and the color work on the outside (sandy tan, soft coral, a touch of lavender) makes it read like a real building rather than a plastic prop.

The catch

I want to be straight with you about the value, though. At 685 pieces this launched at $69.99, and that is on the lean side for the money. A fair chunk of the parts go into two big lavender base plates and the structure, so the actual detailing feels smaller than the box promises. The interiors are perfectly nice, but they are the standard Friends kitchen-and-bedroom fittings you have seen before, and a clear-background sticker sheet does some decorating that I would have loved to see as printed pieces instead. None of this ruins the set, but if you are chasing pure brick-per-dollar this is not the one.

Who it's for

So who is this really for? If you love the Friends beach-town world, or you are building a Heartlake street where this can sit next to other seaside sets, it slots in beautifully and the play features carry it. The removable, rearrangeable upper rooms are the real selling point, and kids adore being able to remix the layout however they like. If you mainly build for display and you want dense, clever engineering for your money, I would gently point you toward something with a heftier part count. But as a cheerful, playable beach corner with a lovely grandma character tucked upstairs, it earns its keep.

The parts story

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

The build runs across seven numbered bags and three instruction books, and it takes a comfortable couple of hours. It is not a challenging build, it is a relaxing one, the kind you can do on a lazy afternoon without much head-scratching. You start with those two 8x16 lavender base plates, then work up through the ground-floor shops and out to the rooftop terrace and garden, and it stays breezy the whole way.

The standout here is really the color palette and the accessory haul rather than any single rare mold. You get a lovely spread in sand, coral and lavender, plus a proper little pile of extras: three surfboards, two paddles, a guitar, a record player, kitchen bits and even a coconut-water drink. A clear-background sticker sheet handles a lot of the signage and detail, which is the trade-off for the price. If you part these out, the accessories and the softer beach-tone plates are the pieces most likely to end up in your own creations later.

Fun facts

01The set introduced Nora, Mia's grandmother, a warm new minidoll character who lives in the apartment upstairs.
02It ran from June 2021 to the end of 2022 at a $69.99 RRP and is now retired.
03The top-floor rooms lift off and can be rearranged in any order, so kids can rebuild the layout however they like.
04Alongside the minidolls it packs three little animals: a dog, a dolphin and a turtle.