LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car review

LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car delivers an excellent new take on modern life never before seen in this LEGO theme.

LEGO City’s typical lifecycle of two years before a new group of six-to-eight-year-olds enter the prime target market has, over recent years, resulted in a fairly predictable pattern of waves featuring police, fire and emergency services. Every four waves of releases from this theme have seemed to offer another police station, another fire station, a medical facility of some sort, and several scenarios involving crime, fire or disaster in need of their help.

Police and fire offer drama and immediate playable moments in LEGO form so, while the pattern of repeated releases of the same sorts of sets is frustrating for older LEGO fans to see, it’s logical for a theme that introduces a lot of us to the brick world to stick to what works so well.

And yet, this summer’s wave of LEGO City sets is entirely different. Amongst the plethora of releases we have a skate park, ski centre, downtown, mini-subtheme of arctic and sea exploration, a car wash, an ice cream parlour, an apartment building and a family house. Suddenly, LEGO City is not just a place where civilians lurch from one disaster to another – they can relax, go about their day-to-day routine, pursue a lifestyle, find somewhere to live and generally enjoy modern life.

The entire summer 2023 wave of LEGO City sets offers one avenue or another into this new direction to make for a truly fascinating creative turn from what was previously predictable, but perhaps nowhere is it better exemplified than in 60398 Family House and Electric Car.

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car set details —

Theme: LEGO City Set name: 60398 Family House and Electric Car Release: June 1, 2023

Price: £46.99 / $59.99 / €52.99 Pieces: 462 Minifigures: 3

LEGO: Order now

— Where to buy LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car —

LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car is available at LEGO.com right now in the UK and Europe, and releases in August in the US.

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car build —

LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car offers a change of pace for the theme, giving us a glimpse into family life in brick form. There are no police, robbers, firemen or injured City folk in need of rescue – simply a family of three with an Alsatian puppy. The set presents a modern, compact home for them to live in, complete with driveway, greenhouse, kitchen-diner, bathroom and two bedrooms all packed into a relatively small amount of real estate.

Efficiently designed with smooth angles throughout, this could represent a new-build property in any suburban middle-class neighbourhood you may recall. It’s a design of house that perfectly translates into LEGO form and is masterfully captured here thanks to a resourceful use of both colour and space. No single stud is wasted in packing aspects of family life into this model, but in a tasteful way that – thanks to the choice of bricks and their colour – is brought together so nicely externally, and carefully and playfully segmented internally.

This means that 60398 Family House and Electric Car is far more interesting to build, look at and play with than first appearances may have you otherwise believing. There’s a lot going on here and it is all expertly representative of a side to LEGO life we rarely – if ever – see in LEGO City.

There was a time not long ago when Creator 3-in-1 was the only place to buy LEGO houses, because it was a subject matter just never done in LEGO City. Indeed, one such 3-in-1 house continually outsold LEGO Group expectations, much to the company’s bafflement, until it was pointed out that it’s because we don’t get these sorts of sets in City.

Years later, then, here we are, with a fully-realised and wonderfully-captured LEGO house, front and centre of a wave of LEGO City sets completely exploring these other areas to everyday life for our minifigures. It’s interesting to build, fun to play with, and represents home life that is far more recognisable for a lot of us than police cars and fire engines. This set may not be the most attention-grabbing of a noteworthy summer City line-up, but it has everything to be a sleeper hit.

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car characters —

LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car comes with a presumed family of three – two parents and a kid, complete with an Alsatian puppy. When that dog grows to full size they may need to move…

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car price —

Priced as it is at £46.99 / $59.99 / €52.99, LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car is going to struggle to sit top of a lot of LEGO fans’ wishlists, particularly in such a varied and interesting wave as this summer’s. For its first impressions as a small and compact building, likewise it’s going to be difficult to convey how good and truly different this LEGO set is.

Yet good and truly different this is, delivering an intelligent and wholly unique LEGO experience capturing everyday suburban life in brick form in a way rarely attempted in LEGO City, and never before in such a modern way. It may not be your first purchase this summer from a vibrant LEGO City line-up, but it’ll reward you just the same when you do get a chance to visit it.

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car pictures —

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car pros and cons —

LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car is compact, comparatively a little on the pricey side and at face value rather plain. Yet, it takes an aspect of everyday modern life and expertly translates it into LEGO form, in a way that makes it wholly engaging and well worth a second consideration to any LEGO fan who has enjoyed LEGO City recently or long ago.

LEGO City doesn’t usually do family homes, so this sort of set represents a pleasant and rare change of pace for the theme and one that we can only praise.

60398 Family House and Electric Car pros	60398 Family House and Electric Car cons
Family home – a rarity for LEGO City	A little expensive
Clever use of space and colour	The car is nice, but doesn’t deserve top billing in the set name
Better than you may think	House too small for when that dog gets bigger

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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— Alternatives to LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car —

60398 Family House and Electric Car is relatively incomparable to much that has come before in LEGO City, but is pleasingly not the only taste of urban/suburban living that the theme is offering this summer. Two other standouts that do the same are 60365 Apartment Building (coming in at a higher price presumably as its location is closer to the city centre) and 60380 Downtown, which has everything, we love it.

— LEGO City 60398 Family House and Electric Car FAQs —