Review LEPIN 16007 – Haunted House [Matthias Grunewald]

Just in time for Halloween LEPIN presents us with the wonderful “Haunted House”. Again such a set, which has become almost priceless by LE..G0 and in which even big LEPIN-skeptics should come into consideration. From announcement to delivery it was in my opinion very fast. It took less than 4 weeks for the LEPIN Haunted House and now the house is already on my table making a really sexy figure

First of all, I have to say that Haunted House is one of my most wanted sets of all. Several times I’ve bid on eBay for up to € 250 for the original and did not clog bad, as then 350 € or more were offered at the end.

At some point, I finally wrote it off, until then 1-2 years later LEPIN showed up and I secretly had hope that they copy the house. It is one of the last released sets and does the set very well: I could not find any quality defects in the sense of scratches or deformations. What exactly disturbs the overall picture, after all, you read below …

Delivery:

Like 12 other orders before, I also bought the Haunted House again at “Dream House”. (do you recognize the pun?) As always, everything was completely straightforward: When asked if he has it in stock, 2 minutes later get the answer “hi friend, tomorrow ready to ship”. Ordered and a week later it was set up in front of me.
Although I would have 7-8 € cheaper for 58 € including shipping can get, a serious seller is then worth a few euros more.

First impression:

Immediately after the holiday, DHL Express was at 7:32 am on my doorstep! 7:32 am! Almost in the middle of the night (I rang awake)
The package then surprised me a lot: a mini package I’ve already bought 9 LEPIN Creator terraced houses and even the smallest building of it came in a larger box.

In the living room opened the box and distributed the bags on the floor. Lo and behold, the bunch was quite clear. No 80 bags with 400,000 mini-small parts, as you would expect from the Creator houses, but almost only medium to large parts.
Of the nearly 2,000 parts, perhaps only 300 are small parts, the rests are real bricks or plates.

Assembly:

Since not many small parts are there, but rather large, the construction went very quickly. It only took me 15 minutes to sort out the parts in terms of color/size, then I was able to start directly with the setup. If I remember the UCS Millenium Falcon a few days back, it took me 2 hours to sort. I still get nightmares about it now
The first floor takes the longest, then it goes damn brisk. But you have to say too: the building is not that big either.

The construction took only 4.5 hours and thus 1 hour less than the smallest creator house.

Tip: I had loose 6-7 small triangular stones left. If you put one of them on the roof, you can easily prevent the entire house from being unfolded when worn. If you want to open it, just move the stone around 2 pimples laterally. Is a 2 second thing and makes the house overall more stable and easier to carry

Instructions & Figures:

For both, I can only give a thumbs up. The instructions are easy to understand and never was it unclear what to do.
The figures are for me at LEPIN and Co. always just an accessory and me prefer to put there original LE..G0 figures. But the characters of LEPIN are really okay because you can not say anything. Some faces and ghosts glow in the dark. Whether lighter or darker than the LE..G0 variants, I do not know.

Quality; missing & damaged parts:

The most important thing: Both yellow-brown bushes are missing. They are displayed on the promo picture (copied from LE..G0 1: 1), but they are not even listed in the LEPIN manual. Therefore, they will probably be missing.
One of the black slants for the roof was missing, so I had to improvise with dark brown from my collection. Are at least over 30 pieces in total, because of a part but I make no drama out.

The stickers could be cut out in the middle, so you have to stick them just 1-2 mm offset.

The stone quality is excellent, scratches or damage I could not find any. What I noticed, however, was that in a bag a bit of sand-green granules was in it. Definitely 5 to 10 small crumbs. But since no stone was damaged or deformed, as I had first assumed, this is not a negative point for me but should be mentioned.

Especially positive:

First of all, the Haunted House is really beautiful! The many details, the color scheme, the folding mechanism, the proportions, the interior, etc. are really outstanding. The figures are cool too.

In fact, the building looks a lot prettier than photos. The details like the crumbling walls, the (perfectly printed) wooden boards, the roof decorations, etc. are really great. The separate entrance gate is really great. Too bad that the fence does not go around the corner to completely enclose the front of the house. Since I have to try again Bricklink.

Especially negative:

The setup was unusually fast and the package was surprisingly small. 3 times you can guess why: The building is not very big. I imagined it a bit bigger. The “Green Grocer” looks very big next to it From the height, it dominates most creator houses thanks to the high roof, but it is not very wide.
The fact that the two bushes are missing I think it’s a pity because I think that vegetation makes almost every model prettier. But is not a big deal, 1.20 € cost 2 bushes at Bricklink.

Conclusion:

The wait was worth it. I’m a big fan of Haunted House and cannot stop fumbling around and watching it from all angles. In contrast to most creator houses, the Haunted House also looks very nice from the back and the sides and has one or the other detail there.
When lifting the house looks wonderfully massive and heavy and that’s exactly what I love about the high-priced houses of LE..G0 / LEPIN.

But it is also great for playing thanks to the dollhouse design. Accordingly, the Haunted House would also be a very inexpensive Christmas gift for kids highly recommended. As a little pupil, I would have been extremely happy about that back then

Can I give out a buy recommendation for the Haunted House? Let me put it this way: you would make a big mistake if you did not buy it someday.
And as I said: In nature, the Haunted House looks even prettier than on all the photos.

I’m still considering if I should show my mother the house. She’s one of those decoration madmen and would probably just cash in the house as a Halloween decoration and never give it back