LEGO Police Station

I've noticed from looking at my stats, that curiously most of the hits to my blog are probably not for the content on my blog, per se.  In fact, I think most of them come from Google image searches.  One of the most popular posts on my blog to date has been this retrospective of LEGO police stations, which I picked because it was one of the most consistent themes since before the debut of the minifigure even--since the mid-70s at least, there was pretty much always been a LEGO police station set of some kind or another available for sale.

In fact, there is now a newer version of the police station than the one I posted in that post--the newest then had a 2008 vintage.  The 2011 police station, in fact, is one that we just got.  My youngest son just turned 8, and that was what he wanted more than anything.

So, although big LEGO sets are pricier than we normally would like to pick up, especially considering that there were some other things we needed to get for him this year, we got the brand-new LEGO police station for him.  Grandma also got him the LEGO police truck; a kind of mobile command base (which is what I think its predecessor was literally called, if I remember correctly.)  I supervised him building the truck last night--the station sits still unopened in the box; a bit intimidating of a project for a kid that young, yet also one that he can't wait to have built.

Anyway, I'm adding the images as a kind of "add-on" to my other post.  This new set isn't quite as "homey" as the last one.  There aren't flowers and trees.  It's a bit more of a business-like operation.  It's got two garage doors, two cars/trucks, a bicycle, and a three story office building of sorts.  Above the garage is the holding cell.  Curiously, there's a helipad on top of the tower... but no copter.  Several of the past sets, if you look at the retrospective, have copters, but this does not.  Of course, there is a police helicopter set... sold separately.  The boys have been saving up some money for a little while now, unsure exactly what to buy with it; I imagine once this is built, my younger son will definately clamor for the police helicopter to move t othe top of the list.