I have to admit, I have a rather soft spot for the annual modular set. When our family discovered that Adult Fans were a thing, back in 2009, we may well have picked up the modulars sets that were available at the time. Things have certainly changed over the years: faces have changed, flowers have changed, colours have exploded, and printed elements are more likely to replace a brick-built font on the building’s facade.

I was quite excited when the LEGO Group sent 11371 Shopping Street over for review, ahead of its January 1 2026 release. The set has 7 minifigures, 3456 pieces and will be priced at AUD 399.99/
£229.99/US$249.99/€249.99.

This new Shopping Street – incorporating a musical instrument store and a furniture store/carpenter – brings a few features that left me feeling nostalgic for the early days of modular buildings, while at the same time, feeling fresh and innovative. Let’s take a closer look.

I am on the road at present, in Denmark. I left my iPad with the review in its near completed form on the plane in Helsinki. It has almost made its way back to me. However, saving to the cloud can be somewhat ineffectual at 30000 feet! In the meantime time, I have reconstructed what I think I wrote, and then some.

You know you are in for a shakeup when you see that the box for the modular features a lift off lid, rather than some end flaps taped closed. We have seen this with some of the other ICONS builds released this year. This is a box design which is relatively easy to collapse, should you wish to keep your it for the future.

In a Modular first, the box art is presented in portrait rather than Landscape format. The cover features our hero model, along with the standard ICONS identification strip along the bottom. On the rear, the main image shows the set combined with the Natural History Museum and the Tudor Corner. On the side flap is a veritable Rosetta Stone, bringing the set number and shopping street to us in 16 languages. This is followed by “10350 and 10326 are not included.”

The set comes with a single manual in a large brown paper envelope, and has a bit of heft to it. The Modular buildings instructions moved from one manual per floor to a single manual format in 2021, as the branding shifted from Creator Expert to Icons. I miss the multiple manual format, which allows us to share the building experience with friends and family, although this can be easily outsourced to the digital instructions in the LEGO Build App. I see this decreased user friendliness of the paper manuals as further evidence of the LEGO Group driving us to request requesting electronic instructions.

The manual talks about the importance of the shopping strip in bringing life to a town, as well as some of the storytelling aspects of the story. There are also occasional call outs to ‘neat parts usage. ‘ I have opted to avoid highlighting the aspects of the underlying story in this review, as I’d hate to spoil the building experience completely. Let’s move on. If you wish to skip to my final thoughts, and avoid the spoilers of the building experience, click here.

The Elements

There are 32 bags of elements in this set: all of mine were in paper bags, except for the bright green baseplate, which was in a cardboard envelope of its own.

Let’s take a browse through the 23 bags of elements, thanks to the intrepid work of our Knoller-in-Chief.

Our first few bags are full of plates and tiles, which is what you might expect from the opening salvo in a modular building.We have plenty of Great, sand blue and tans – dark and regular, amongst others. a few reddish brown bricks finish this tray.

As we move up, we have a variety of Sand Green elements, in various sizes and shapes. We have a few printed 1x2x5 transparent clear bricks, as well as a half circle panel advertising “Brickley’s”

This is where I got a bit excited. This next tray reveals that the set includes twenty three 1×8 bricks in sand green, along with eight 1×2 bricks with a slot on the side. Neither of these pieces have appeared in sets for over a decade. They both command a premium price on the secondary market, as they were prominent in the 101858 Modular Green Grocer from 2008, and have been barely seen since! I’m sure they will make their way onto pickabrick in 6 months or so, and will likely be around $AUD6-8 per piece cheaper, going forward. Will this knock the guts out of the ‘used green grocer’ market, where the set has been commanding a premium price in recent times? Time will tell. Please remember that any ‘investing’ you make in LEGO sets or elements, relying on scarceity over time, can be ruined in a weekend, by an unanticipated new release!

The sand green experience is enhanced by the presence of 1x4x2/3 bricks with outside bow (they look a bit like an extended 1x1tile with semicircle/tombstone tiles), upwards 1×1/1×2 brackets, offset plates and 1×2 plates with curved ends.

Moving on, we have a couple of printed elements going forward: both part of signage for the furniture store – over the door, and proclaiming a Grande Sale. Sorry – Big sale. Melbourne residents in the 1970s and 80s will understand my reference. It’s not that important. We have wide and normal doorframes, as well as an interesting collection of occasionally mismatched wedge plates to build up subsequent floors.

Wedge plate in tan, dark red and dark grey continue as we move onwards. We get a collection of while bricks, along with 1×2, 1×3 and 1×4 plates with rounded ends, brackets and SNOT Bricks. A collection of Curved plates 3×3 and 5×5 look like they will help hold things in shape a little later.

Our next level looks like it will include a few dark tan bricks tiles and plates, including a ‘plank’ print. We have some white decorative elements, and the first of several collections of sand green window frames.

Another floor and a new collection of less than completely matched wedge plates in white, while the tan collection appears a little more balanced. There are a lot of white bricks here, along with brackets, baby bows and inverse slopes. We also see hinges and 1x4x2/3 bricxks with an outward bow… and more sand green window frames.

As we approach the final backs, white plates are plentiful, including many elbow plates. And more sand green window frames! We start to see a smattering of dark blue, which will become more important soon, I am sure.

Dark Blue slopes and dark grey plates (including wedges) dominate the last couple of bags. We get 28 1x2x2 slopes in dark blue. Common enough in small quantities in recent years, but this feels like a bonanza. More white plate, bricks hinges and Sand green windows to go together. We have a couple of F1 roll bars in white, and another 16 in dark grey. A 3×3 gold dome, along with some micro figures and tiles.

Our final tray has lots of grey – medium and dark, some leaves and flowers along with the 1×1 bricks opening up to adjacent arch elements. to cap of the model are a few dark red corner slopes – these have appeared in only a few sets in recent years, so their presence here is welcome.

There are a few animal elements present: we saw a rat a little earlier, sand we have two pigeons – one white and one grey – these appear to be dual moulded (beak), as well as having fixed printing. We also have a white cat with no markings. Could this be a tribute to the cat that originally appeared in the Green Grocer?

The Minifigures

There are 6 minifigures included in this set, appearing one by one as we progress throughout the build. Let’s look at them, in no particular order.

The Twins love to play in the Brass Band, and spend lots of time at Brickley’s Brass Band Bits n Pieces. They have slightly different expressions on their face – and the one on the right has appeared a few times before.. While the girls wear their hair differently, it is hard to tell them apart when they put on their band uniform and hats. Their heads are single sided, and the hat is a decorated, medium lilac version of the hat traditionally worn by the Imperial Soldiers in their battles with the LEGO Pirates.

These 3 have reused daces, with single sided prints. The delivery man (Left) wears the ribbed knitted jumper, and seems to have borrowed a cap from the LEGO City police force.

The bearded plumber wears a traditional hard had, and has a fresh new denim overalls print on his torso, including some golden detail. The young lady is using a single crutch for support. Is this after an injury? An ongoing disability? She carries a small crossbody bag and wears a denim jacket over her music-lover’s T-shirt.

The final two figures have double sided head prints that have both cropped up in about a dozen sets each over the past few years. She has a new variation on the reddish brown apron, being more indicative of her woodworking/carpentary practice. Mr Brickley wears a buttoned up vest that is relatively new – first appearing in LEGO City in 2024- and has a matt silver coin labelled ‘5’.

The Build Experience

If you wish to avoid any potential spoinlers in the build process, skip to the end, now!

Ground Floor

We start off at the beginning. As with so many modular buildings in the past, it is the footpath. A light grey strip by the roadside, some grille tiles and offset plates, to ensure our figures don’t fall off when challenged by a light bump. We also build in some decorated portions with coloured quarter tiles. A Splash of trans light blue might suggest at the underlying story, so I shall never mention it again. Unless I have to.I was surprised to see a quarter circle grey 1×1 tile tucked into the base layer of the angled steps above, with no actual stud connection, and held in place by an overlying plate! We have also added in floor tiles for both buildings, hinting at some of the activity within.

Moving up on the left building, we see a lot going on: not the least of which is building up a wall with lots of big sand green bricks., as well as the slotted bricks around the front of the window.

Within the music store, we build a sousaphone, using a combination of macaroni elements, while the steps rise up using sideways studs as they go upwards

We move on to complete the stairs to the first floor, clipping onto a vertical pole, allowing them to gently rotate as they ascend. We add a trombone to the front window and a trumpet to the wall. The bay window effect is achieved using a printed curved window, along with some window panels that fold inwards.

The Angled wall follows a 3-4-5 Pythagorean triple – and is mirrored on the other side, with a combination of these elegant constructs forming the outline of the furniture store’s walls.

While we are inside the furniture store, we should add some good for sale. The contemporary parts palette is well exploited to bring us interesting designs of tables and chairs – some of which have inverted studs – adding a degree of difficulty in pinning them in place.

We build the dark orange walls up, and add a small window garden

The front wall inserts as a seperate construction, with elegant signage and detailing. – with bull horns being used to emulate some wrought iron decorations. The decoration on this printed tile reminds me of the Viking tile seen over the door of the Green Grocer, from the earlier days of modular builds. The two buildings are joined together at the top of the ground floor –

First Floor

The first floor for the two buildings is constructed as a single unit – beginning with seperate triangles of plates, and joining them together with the walls. The complex shape of the floor is constructed using two mirrored right angled triangles. Plates with curved ends, and curved tiles aid in joining these formed, hiding the areas where poetical Euclidean geometry must give way to the more concrete aspects of the LEGO system, previous restricted to progressing along the grid. While the curved plates provide the hinge points, the edge of the wall is completed using 1×4 curved bricks, which follow the profile of the curve.

We cover up part of the join with a dual layer carpet, before extending through to the first floor of the furniture store, joined by a corridor. As we build up with white walls, we had the percussion section to the marching band: drums, drumsticks and cymbals. There is even a music stand in front of the of the window.

Instead of continuing the bay window, there is a balcony overlooking the street, with a bit of overhanging greenery. As we build the walls up,

we add a door through to the passageway, and start work on the carpenter’s workshop. There is a classic LEGO wooden duck under construction in one corner, while a broom and bucket are here to sweep up the sawdust.

In the opposite corner, there is a chair under construction on a workbench and a piece of wood in the vice. As we move outside, we fill in the windows – to say nothing of the ornate decoration over the top. In bygone days, these were brick built details, while now the wheel arch ends in a flourish, as inverted studs with bars gong through them feel like moulded circles, and the dumpling element under the peak of the arch adds a delightful form. We fill in the windows around the front of the music shop ( I think I forgot to mention the large trumpet over the doorway initially), and we move around the back.

We added a blue dumpster a little while ago, with an iconic minifigure chair being consumed. I have some thoughts about this which I might elaborate on in my summary.

After adding a little ivy to the wall, we see a letter and red box outside the workshop’s rear window. Accessible to only the keenest of abseiling postmen, I suspect workplace health and safety might prevent this mail from being safely delivered unless, of course, there is an alternative solution for the carpenter to receive and deliver her mail?

Second Floor

Only the Music store goes up to a second floor, this time incorporating a residential space with a small bathroom incorporated in the bay window. We again see the use of compound triangles: wedges facing each other. Throughout the model, these off grid angles are held secure through the use of the plates and tiles with rounded ends.

Before building up the walls of the apartment, it is time to furnish it. There is a single bed, potted plant and bedside lamp, fully exploiting the LEGO Friends Cupcake element. Meanwhile, on a carpet with muted tones, a table put together with an inverted tile and a Minecraft crate element is held in place by a bar from a round tile fitting into the hole in the stud of an offset plate on the floor. No longer does it have to rely on careful handling and nerves of steel to remain in place on the floor.

The armchair has yellow cushions, with arms formed by the unique shape of unikitty tails, appearing in reddish brown. On a small side table, sits a radio – a call back to the designer’s LEGO Debut, the 10744 Retro Radio from 2024.

As we build up the rear and side walls, we also add a small bathroom into the bay window. A teeny tiny technic panel is used to represent the toilet paper, demonstrated to be facing out from the fall. If you feel the resident owns a cat, feel free to turn it around. The side panels of the window are again mounted on their sides, and attached to a couple of hinges, allowing them to fold in towards the window frame. I’m not sure how I would feel sitting down, and contemplating the world from this place (and I fear the repercussions of a plumbing failure onto the balcony below). I am glad to see that such features are taken into account when mini figures set out to get themselves accommodated in the modular street.

Roofs

Each building takes a different approach to its roofline.

The music store builds up a frame around the shape of the walls, and strengthens it over the course of a couple of layers using some internal branching, attaching either side using horizontal hinges. Along the inside edge, we see a collection of slopes, alternating in their height offset by one plate. This technique has been used from time to time in modular buildings to keep the rooftop interesting over the years, and I don’t think it ever gets old!

The bay window is built out, but is a fraction of the size seen on lower levels. Inside, a small purple pad and a piece of cheese suggests that a rat may have moved in here. This reminds me of the rat hidden under the stairs in the 10185 Green Grocer, only seen during construction, and then virtually inaccessible once the first story is completed.

We have small windows in the attic which is more of a floor space that a fully developed floor, and the window is framed nicely using a F1 collectable vehicle roll bar in conjunction with a couple of feathers, with their pins inserted into the pinholes.

After we fill in the roof with grey plates, we enhance the detail with more rollbars, jumping from polo stud to polo stud while we build up a small gold domed turret, with a small spire, above the bay windows.

The furniture store has a small rooftop garden, incorporating a trellis. as well as ventilation from the workshop below. There is a pigeon coop built up using small arched elements, but only one grey pigeon is in residence.

Finally, we have some accessories to fill in detail at ground level: a chair on a delivery cart – I love the use of diver’s fins to form the back of the chair – a fire hydrant and lamp post built to the modular city’s tried and true designs, and a small statue of a cat. I am seem to keep reference in the green grocer here – and I wonder if this statue is a tribute to the small cat that appeared in that set, 15 years ago.

We add some detail to appear over the door to the music shop, as as a hanging plant from the balcony of on the first floor.

My Thoughts

The final result was a delight for me. I really enjoyed the build process, with aspects of the story unrolling as we progressed through the build. The two buildings feel relatively compact, but the high level of detail that we see throughout the build demonstrates some of the ways in which LEGO elements and building techniques have evolved over the 17 years that modular buildings have been in the catalog. Where we once may have seen a drainpipe made of stacked 1×1 round bricks, we now see bars, clips and minifigure arm plaster. Staggered plates replaced by bowed bricks, mudguards and domes.

The storytelling within the set is palpable, from the broken pipe and rat, through the children looking to get their band instruments. And then there is the carpenter, not just hand crafting wooden toys, but also employing a carrier pigeon messaging service. The use of traditional ancient messaging techniques almost guarantees that you wont be swamped by excessive unreasonable work demands, while potential customers swear and curse in their quests for a phone number, email address or online webstore.

The brick built musical instruments bring a level of charm that can’t be achieved using their own specific moulds, especially for a magnificent beast like the sousaphone. [I am writing this up from a hotel room in Denmark…I can’t believe I failed to take a picture of the kids testing these out.]

On the whole, I find the minifigure selection works well. Only a few of the torsos are new, and the faces are all reused (although the twins faces are typically on opposite sides of the same head, so technically, these are new Elements). I don’t expect dramatic new artwork and I probably had to look a couple of times to realize that the lady with the denim top and crutch is the mother of the twins – her denim jacket probably made me think she was a few years younger than intended. I do appreciate the fact that having her using a crutch helps to raise the profile of mini figures with a disability.

The Chair in the Dumpster: Profound metaphor, or throwaway joke?

I feel the chair in the dumpster needs to be addressed. The yellow chair’s first appearance in modular buildings came with the 10185 Green Grocer. (And 10190 Market Street, if that fits your modular buildings canon.) While it has been seen since it last appeared, I was a little disturbed to see it thrown away in the dumpster.

I wonder if this is a symbolic message: is there no longer a role for the classic minifigure chair in modular buildings? Is it now time to embrace an era of brick built chairs, irrespective of the level of comfort to be experienced by the minifigure?

Certainly this set features no fewer than six brick built chairs, as well as another few tables. And then there is a dumpster, rather than a regular rubbish bin: are we getting more wasteful as a society? Happy to throw away the old while embracing the new? Or did the designer just want to include a dumpster such as that seen in all of the Marvel ‘technically not modular’ buildings? Or was it just funny to have mass produced factory chairs in the waste, behind the workshop and store of the bespoke craftsperson?

Great Green Grocers!

As I build the Shopping Street, I found myself repeatedly referring back to the Green Grocer. This was one of first Modulars that we owned in the Rambling Brick household, soon after discovering that adult fans were a thing. The sand green walls, bay windows and yellow chair all draw parallels from that earlier build.

The unique floor plan gives the feeling of an excess of open space on the plate, but in reality, the perimeters of the buildings are much as we might have seen with the earlier modulars.

One thing that did surprise me at the end of construction was the height disparity between floors, when compared with the earlier Modular’s – particularly the green grocer. This new model appears to average one prick per floor less than the original modular standard implied. That said, we can see this type of variation when we look down just abut any Main Street.

The model might feel smaller, but this set has the greatest part count of any single 32×32 base modular to date. With 3456 pieces, the part count is only exceeded by the 10326 Natural History Museum(4014 pieces) and 10255 Assembly Square (4002 pieces). In comparison, the original 10182 Cafe Corner had 2056 pieces, while the 10185 Green Grocer used 2352 pieces. This is certainly driven to some extent by the need to substitute multiple elements (curved plates, tiles, brackets, bowed elements) for regular bricks while achieving the ‘off grid’ look.

I am curious about this adjustment in floor height. It might exist in other Modulars, but I have not actively placed them all side by side. Last year’s Tudor Corner did not have this affliction. Was this done to prevent the interior of the relatively small buildings from looking too deep? To save costs? Or just to beep the geometry of the bay window’s SNOT Techniques working smoothly.

LEGO is a better investment than gold. Except when it isn’t!

Finally, I need to express my joy in seeing the return of Sand green 1×8 bricks, as well as the 1×2 bricks with the groove, after an absence of many, many years! The availability of these has been a major challenge for anybody looking to rebuild the original Green Grocer. With an average 6 month price on Bricklink of AUD8.29/EUR4.75 for used 3008 1×8 bricks and and $AUD6.20 for the 4216 1×2 brick with channel elements, the future availability of the elements on pick a brick will make a lot of people looking to reconstruct the Green Grocer according to the original instructions very happy. Less so if they have already paid market rates out for those elements in quantities of around 50 (3008) and 56 (4216). This in turn will probably cause the price to drop for the second hand (and new) Green Grocers. [Those two elements add up to around $AUD761 (434 EUR/505USD) Now roll them out at around AUD 0.36 and 0.17 respectively: the upper price for similarly shaped elements on brick a brick, and you are looking at a new price of around $28AUD/18EUR/18.61USD]

In Conclusion

There are so many things to enjoy about this set: the novel footprints of the buildings, the storytelling, the architectural details, the musical instruments and the chair designs, nostalgic callbacks to the Green Grocer – probably my favorite build of the first 6 Modular buildings. The minifigure selection is nicely executed.

I had a bit of a feeling, however, that for all that the model comes with, it lacks the feeling of grandeur that we used to get with modular buildings. It looks great, with wonderful architectural details, but next to the original Green Grocer, it just feels…petite.

These days, the modular building is no longer in the top 5 sets (for parts count) released in any given year. This makes it hard to be the most impressive set for the year, on size alone. The older Modulars occupied a large part of the 32 x 32 baseplate’s space, and featured relatively sparse interiors.

Ultimately, recent building design trends and additions to the LEGO building system mean that a greater level of detail can be achieved in a more compact space.

This is slightly shorter that some of those earlier buildings, yet seems to pack so much more into the build: probably more a sign of the evolution of building techniques and the element palette rather than anything else.

In a world where large LEGO sets for adult builders is now the norm, rather than a special, twice yearly treat, it is getting harder and harder for the modular buildings to ‘blow you away’: in those early years, their very existence would stun newcomers to LEGO building. In this post LEGO Masters, ‘Adults Welcome’ era, newcomers to the hobby might almost be excused for overlooking modular buildings in what now seems like a weekly onslaught of bigger and better.

While licensed products might be regularly churning out bigger sets set on the background of know stories, the modular buildings still remains an annual highlight: an oppportunity for designers to flex their muscles and demonstrate what can be done within the confines of the LEGO at any given moment in time. This set contains no new moulds, and shows us what can be achieved in the ‘traditional’ LEGOLAND play space of houses and downtown scenes.

I really enjoyed the build, and the set, and am happy to give this set four out of five arbitrary praise units. The set is more expensive than other ‘single plate’ modular buildings in recent years, but introduces a fascinating collection of new techniques for the MOC builder.

The storytelling, detail and greebling are top notch, although the relative compactness of such a detailed build next to the older Modulars seems a little odd. It does leave me wondering: If the Green Grocer was re-released today, what would it look like?

LEGO ICONS Set 11371 Shopping Street has 7 minifigures, 3456 pieces and will be priced at AUD 399.99/£229.99/US$249.99/€249.99. It goes on sale on January 1 for LEGO Insiders and January 4th for the rest of the world (which seems to include Certified Stores).

This set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

If you have enjoyed this post, please feel free to share it with your friends, families and communities. You can also keep up to date with us by following The Rambling Brick on our socials: Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr (or just sign up for our mailing list) and find some extra content on Instagram and TikTok.

We really value your feedback: please let us know what you think about the sets we review, and the articles we post. And if you wish to support the Rambling Brick, consider clicking on our affiliate links before going shopping at LEGO.com. The Rambling Brick receives a small commission, and it costs you nothing extra.

Until Next Time,

Play Well!