Lookout banker man, there’s a robber behind the lamp post!

Today we’re going to feature another clone of a LEGO modular building from the last few years. A few years ago the LEGO modular building theme really hit its stride and the sets began to use some pretty advanced building techniques and they began to incorporate much more playability than the early buildings such as the Grand Emporium or Green Grocer, whose interiors are practically empty of detail and furnishings. Today’s review, the Brick Bank, is one of the more clever sets for both detail and playability, incorporating many advanced and fun features. Whether you’re in it just for the build to display it as part of your city or for play by children (or kids at heart), the Brick Bank is a fun addition to your brick building collection.

As you’d expect, 15001 is a straight-up clone of the discontinued LEGO 10251 from 2016, currently retailing for close to 300 USD on the after-market. As with all cloned sets, the price difference between the discontinued major-brand set and the copy is substantial, here about one-fourth the price or less, in the West. Of course, all cloned sets can be obtained in shops in China and elsewhere for a much deeper discount still, when there is no shipping involved.

There is a bit of a story line you can play out with this set, which features a bank and a coin-op laundry. Among the mini figures is at least one who can dress up as a robber, to break into the bank’s safe through a clever “backdoor” (chimney, actually). But the nefarious deeds don’t end there, because your brick town can now play host to some white-collar criminals as well through this handy-dandy money laundering operation, through which your seemingly respectable businessmen mini figures can launder cash through one of the coin-op washers, straight into the bank safe. We’ll take a look at the building features that allow this story to be played out, along with photos. In addition to the criminal aspects, you can also play out a story involving a very innocent-looking young woman who is the winner of a huge check, which she can hopefully cash (provided the bank hasn’t yet been robbed of all its cash).

The bank robber comes with a tether to help lower and raise her through the chimney.

“Oh fiddlesticks! I forgot my mask!”

“Why yes, this machine ONLY takes hundreds!”

To begin, this is a pretty average-sized modular building, with 2,418 pieces, 5 mini figures, and it is built on a 32×32 base plate. The building contains two storeys and a roof, complete with a roof access door. The Brick Bank and Laundry occupy a corner lot in CloneLand, which is always fun to build because of the additional external details permitted by building two out-facing sides.

The exterior of the Brick Bank features a pleasant colour scheme including some nice sand green windows to accent the white and two shades of grey. Special architectural features include columns, some clever details built of unusual pieces such as pastries and winches, and a micro-figure statue with wings. The ground floor has printed window panes, gold rods for the main entry door handles, and forward-facing “gold brick” tiles (in grey) to give the appearance of large bricks. This bank looks like something straight out of early 20th century New York City or any other American city’s Main Street. You could easily imagine Mr Potter sitting in this bank, plotting how to further vex George Bailey and the rest of the honest citizens of Bedford Falls.

As a corner building, the Brick Bank is a perfect location to house a large, prominent analog clock facing both directions on the sidewalk. The assembly of this clock is surprisingly involved.

The laundry sign uses a pair of legs (trousers) and a low-profile washing machine. The awning over the laundry entry is a nice two-tone yellow and orange, with staggered bricks.

“Honey, where are my pants? Oh never mind. I’m folding them.”

Inside, the bank is full of interesting builds including the teller’s counter, which utilizes a SNOT method for the desk itself and some clear doors for the windows behind which the tellers count out their banknotes in safety. As with many sets that have been cloned, the larger window panes tend to arrive looking a little less than ideal. It’s a flaw many brick fans are willing to overlook, given the price difference. As always, parts that don’t meet one’s needs can be sourced from Bricklink or the like. The bank vault has a big round door with a lock, and inside the vault, safety deposit boxes and stacks of cash, as well as jewels galore. It is into the safety deposit box that one of the four washing machines in the laundry allows for a variation of “direct deposit”. The floor is a nice tile pattern utilizing some of the newer five-sided smooth tiles, including some in the ever-lovely sand blue colour. The floor of the laundry is much less elegant, and looks exactly as you’d expect a coin-op laundry’s industrial-tiled floor to look. You’ll have to add your own detritus, however: lint balls, used dryer sheets, and laundry soap slicks are not included.

“Stampy stamp stamp, I love my red stamp! What? Someone’s behind me?”

The minifigures include a teller, a bank president, a banker, a woman (who can double as a bank robber!), and the robber’s innocent child–a young girl who wears an adorable little ribbon on her lapel. All we need is a Clone Ed McMahon mini figure to deliver the huge check. Outside the bank we also have a park bench and a street lamp, of the sort found on every corner in CloneLand modular part of town.

I also rather enjoyed the chandelier in the bank lobby. The bank contains an upstairs, that occupies only half the footprint of the building, with the other half of the building containing an elevated ceiling complete with a skylight and a crystal chandelier.

Because of the placement of lighting elements in the lighting kits available for this set, I built an LED kit into mine during the construction phase, rather than afterwards. This was particularly important for this set because of the arches which have lights inside, and which are so structurally integrated. If you’re thinking of lighting up your Brick Bank, I suggest acquiring the LED kit and building it in at the same time as the original build.

This past year I began my brick building adventures with a new modular set (the 15019B Assembly Square with LED kit) and I am closing out the year with a modular, the Brick Bank. In general, the newer the modular building, the more features and the more furnishings it has. Brick Bank was originally released by the big Danish company in 2016 as set 10251. As one of the newer modulars, it has a back story, plenty of playability, and is full of furnishings.

The green “stained glass” and flower boxes add a bit of colourful flair to the outside appearance of the grey building.

My verdict is that the Brick Bank is a fun set to build and has many hours of play within its vaults. It’s a very attractive set on its own, and that factor is increased further by the addition of one of the aftermarket LED kits one can obtain from various sources. The quality of bricks was what I’ve come to expect from cloned sets: pretty solid overall. My set, bought in the original retail box, had no missing pieces or bags. The baseplate was slightly warped (as every one I’ve gotten has been, likely a result of the plastic cooling process), but once the heavy building has been constructed on top of the base, I’ve never noticed the warping at all. The quality of printed pieces here was once again very good. My main complaint with this set is similar to that of other sets I’ve built: the windows are usually either a bit milky or a bit marred. Here, they are made of very clear plastic, but scratched up a bit, as mentioned above. In very new clone sets, the plastic windows often come in a separate little zipper plastic bag, which seems to help. If you obtain a newer manufacturing run of the Brick Bank, perhaps it will have the windows thus packed. But that alone is not enough to make me unhappy. This was a great set to build and it looks fantastic in my modular town!

I’ve placed my bank and laundry across the street from another modular corner build, the Palace Cinema. So go get some cash, buy some movie tickets, and drop off the laundry: CloneLand’s gaining some great new amenities. As always, I am happy to recommend you obtain this set from our friends at BuildingToyStore. As it is a discontinued major-brand set, the clone presents a great opportunity for even a LEGO collector to get the Brick Bank into his or her collection without paying a small fortune, as many brick fans feel less guilty about acquiring clones of discontinued sets.

If you’d like to help support Alt-Blocks, a purchase from our partner BuildingToyStore not only gets you great service and a set complete with the retail box, it also helps keep these reviews coming to you. And to sweeten the deal, our friends at Building Toy Store are offering a coupon for $10 USD off your order, exclusively for readers of Alt-Blocks, in addition to other discounts on their site. Just go to BuildingToyStore.com using this link, create an account (which gets you a 10% discount), and use coupon code K7CXYREL. You may also find a coupon code on their site for an additional 5% discount.