I'm especially interested in the buildings, which feature some clever techniques and are often on hinged bases so you can open them and inspect the interiors. Many of them are from the “Modular” series, meaning they're built with some common dimensions and can be connected with each other to construct a street scene or a town. Each set also comes with instructions for three variations on the theme, again emphasizing the versatility of the parts inside. For instance, the Winter Vacation kit also allows you to build part of a bobsled run, or a scene in which a yeti (the Creator buildings often include lovable brick-built animals) menaces a snow-bound cabin.

Here's one of my favorites from this series, the Lakeside Lodge:

Fishing, chopping wood, doing some astronomy, writing letters with a quill pen, at his cabin in the woods? I feel a tremendous kinship with this mini-fig.

Amazon is a good place to buy these sets. As a public service, I've compiled a table of some of the currently available ones, the parts count, price, and most importantly, the bricks per dollar ratio. This changes all the time of course, so get 'em while they're hot!

At the moment, Parisian Restaurant is expensive but relatively good value. At the other end, Lighthouse Point is bad value, a shame as it's a very fun kit, with a working light and a brick-built orca included. It's interesting that there isn't an obvious discount applied to larger kits with more bricks. I note also that the number of bricks you get for your dollar can vary by more than a factor of two. I'm sure there are no surprises here for more experienced Lego builders but I would have expected a more obvious bulk discount and a smaller variation in the cost ratio, at least within the same series of Lego kits, although I'd expect to pay some premium for licensed products like Star Wars or Harry Potter sets.