Review: Hospital [7892]

This week’s review is going to be a throwback! Not too long ago, while browsing Kijiji, I came across two sets from the 2007 City theme. I was really happy with the price I paid for the two. The seller assured me that they were complete sets, but sadly one of them was not. This is the second time that I have bought LEGO from Craigslist or Kijiji, and it is also second time that the seller has not been honest with me. So, beware when you buy things from these online garage sales! In any case, the set was 90% complete, and I can live without the missing bit. I only paid $40.00 (which was talked down from $50) for both sets anyway, and they would have cost me at least $60.00 at full price, so I am still satisfied with my deal. But, since this set is an old, retired one, I will not be reviewing it with my usual criteria and averages. I can’t really compare the original cost of this set with today’s brick prices, and I don’t have the data from 10 years ago. So, this review will be opinion based alone.

Set Summary

Name: Hospital
Set #: 7892
Theme: City
Cost: $53.18-ish CAD
Brick Count: 382
Minifigures: 4
Release Date: October 24, 2007

Review

I was not able to find the original market price for this set in Canadian dollars. In the US, it cost $49.99. In 2007, the exchange rate between the Canadian and US dollars was about $0.94 (as in $1 CAD was equal to $0.94 US). So, if I had crossed the border and bought this set States-side, it would have cost me about $53.18. No doubt the price would have been higher north of the border. If I had paid $53.18 for this each brick would have cost $0.14. That is right on par with the current average price per brick. Given that there has been inflation over the last decade, and the fact that City sets are generally more pricey per brick than other themes, I am going to go ahead and assume that this set was not a great value for the time. A quick look on Bricklink and eBay shows this set can go for a lot more these days on the secondary market, so I maintain that my $40 for two sets was pretty good.

The build for this set is okay. It comes on a raised baseplate, which is not something that you see much of anymore today. There are three instruction manuals, the first is for a little medic’s car. This was the portion that my set was missing. I am not crying too much about that since I probably would not have kept it built anyway. The pictures of it online are not that impressive. The second manual is for a helicopter. It is nothing we have not seen before in LEGO city helicopters. The stretchers that comes with the set can be attached to the side of the helicopter. I would not want to the be patient transported on that…

The third instruction manual is for building the hospital itself. The first section that you build is the roof under which the ambulance parks. Overall, it looks nice, but it has some pretty big flaws. First, when the ambulance pulls in, there is no room to open the doors and unload the patient. The second problem became apparent as I was photographing this set. The whole structure is very weakly attached to the base, and breaks/comes off with little effort.

The second structure is the hospital proper. On the ground floor you have reception, which can be accessed from the exterior by being buzzed in, or using the keypad next to the door, I suppose. A staircase leads down from the raised platform to ground level. Inside reception, there is not much going on. A desk, a chair, and a computer terminal is all you get. Some waiting chairs would have been nice.

The second floor has some beds for patients to recover in. There is a little stand with some fluids to drip into a patient, and a couple of cups. Each bed has a little screen with vitals showing on it. For the space, it is not a bad design.

The top floor is the operating room. It does not come with a bed or second stretcher. You have to take the stretcher from the helicopter and put it in the center of the room. There are some pretty hardcore tools on the side of the room that would straight-up freak me out if I ever saw them in a doctor’s hands… but I have luckily never had to have major surgery, so I really have no idea what is actually in an OR. There is also a lamp in the room. When you put the stretcher in, the room is pretty full.

The final section of the hospital is the helipad and ramp leading to it. It is a little odd that the ramp exits from the patients’ room, and that there is a pretty huge step up to the door from the ramp. It doesn’t make it easy to push a stretcher through. Otherwise, it’s not that bad.

You get four Minifigures in this set. Sadly, I only got three with my purchase. There should be two medics, one driving the car, the other piloting the helicopter. I got one of them. He is pretty generic. He wears a blue cap, and does not have a double-sided face. He has sunglasses printed on his face. His torso is printed on the front, and there is no printing on the legs.

You naturally get a doctor Minifig as well. His torso print differs from the medics in that he has a printed stethoscope. He has a brown hairpiece, no double-sided face, no rear torso print, and no leg printing.

The final Minifig is the patient. Oddly, all of the characters in this set are male. This one wears plain grey pants, and a blue plaid shirt. His face sports a moustache, and he has a pretty cheesy haircut reminiscent of Guile from the old Street Fighter video games.

All of these Minifigures are pretty generic. But, that tends to be the case with City sets nowadays as well. They make good town fillers if nothing else. I wouldn’t give them more than 60% for design though. This hospital does gain points for its brick-to-Minifigure ratio though. It originally came with four Minifigures and 382 bricks, which translates to one Minifig for every 96 bricks. That is actually amazing.

This set took me an hour to build. I paid $40.00 for this set, and another smaller one. The smaller one made up about 24% of the bricks in my purchase. With that in mind, this hospital cost me about $30.40. That is $0.51 per minute of build time, which is a great value in my mind. At full retail price, the build-time value would have been more like $0.89 per minute, which even by today’s standards is pretty bad.

Would I keep this set in my LEGO city as is? No, I would not. Don’t get me wrong, I do like it. As a kid, it would have been a lot of fun to play with. But, in general, I don’t like the open-backed design of many City theme sets. The set has a lot of great parts, and gave me some ideas for my own custom hospital. But, I will be modifying it quite a bit for my town. Mainly, it needs an elevator, and it should be modular to fit with the rest of my city. I’ll probably add more features to the interior as well.

Do you have the LEGO hospital from back in the day? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Until next time!

-Tom