It’s time for another ‘brick toy’ set by a LEGO competitor. This times it’s this ‘Medieval Apothecary’ by a company called FunWhole:
I bought this a few months ago for about $60 on Amazon, although the price seems to have gone up a bit since then. I chose this because the reviews were excellent, it includes lighting, and due to its similarity to the medieval blacksmith set from LEGO.
Opening the box reveals a lengthy full-colour instruction manual, 21 bags of pieces, and a box for the light elements. As with today’s LEGO sets, this one is built in numbered stages so you only open two or three bags at a time.
The large instruction book is very nice. Heavily influenced by LEGO, the illustrations are clear and easy to follow, and include elements like alternate angles to make the fiddly steps of inserting the wires for the lights easier.
The light elements themselves are bricks with built in LED lights connected by very fine wires. The finished model has about ten lights in total, and I was surprised to see it’s a single circuit powered by three AA batteries.
While there are a lot of aftermarket sets to add lights to existing LEGO kits, LEGO themselves rarely includes light bricks. My guess is this is due to difficulty: I suspect younger children would find installing the lights in this set quite challenging.
The above shows how the wires are installed in and around the other pieces, and on the finished kit they are mostly invisible. The set contains male and female bricks with matching +/- terminals so the top floor of the building can be removed with affecting the wiring, which is impressive.
The above photo shows the (unfinished) top floor, and you can see three of the light elements have become candles in the chandelier and a flame for a stove.
Even more than the UFO set I reviewed a month or so ago, the bricks in this set feel exactly like LEGO. They have the same grip and are in most cases identical, although there are a few I’d not seen before including ones designed to allow the tiny wires to run under them.
The set includes a few stickers, and these were much better than LEGO. While LEGO uses simple vinyl stickers, this set had decals that are rubbed on and then almost seem like they have been printed on the piece when the plastic top layer is removed. This is exactly what LEGO needs to switch to!
It’s not all as good (or better): since LEGO still has a trademark on their minifigs, the competitors need to design their own and these guys just look a bit… wrong. I’ve chosen to display the finished building without them 🙂
Here it is displayed in our curio next to the LEGO Medieval Blacksmith, and you can see they are the same scale and match nearly perfectly.
The lighting is truly impressive and although I’ll never really use it as you can see it looks great especially in the dark.
Many of the lights are interior and illuminate the well-detailed rooms of the apothecary. This kit has a lot of play value for kids and I would have loved this when I was young.
This is a phenomenal kit. The instructions showcase other sets made by this company and they have some themes – like ‘steampunk’ and ‘wild west’ – that LEGO has barely touched. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I buy more from this company.
