Miniverse Make it Mini Spaces by MGA Entertainment

It was so nice to hear your reactions to the My Twinn repaints that I've been working on!  Thank you so much for the encouragement.  Bolstered by your kind words, I've launched into another restoration.  I'll probably list the dolls on eBay at some point, since my Etsy store is hard to maintain.  Or, rather, it's hard to keep my Etsy store stocked, and there's nothing more depressing than an empty storefront!

I've definitely been in a project mood lately, though.  Perhaps it's because I have leftover energy from thinking that we'd be moving?  That was certainly taking up a lot of my creative brain.  So now I'm filling the void with any little project that I can get my hands on.  That's been fun, I guess, but it interferes with me actually sitting down at my computer and typing up a review.  But here I am doing it, finally.

Today's review was inspired by my recent project-seeking behavior.  I've reviewed Miniverse Make it Mini items several times on this blog, so they don't necessarily need any more commentary.  However, the new Spaces line is very similar to the Rolife Super Creator kits that I enjoy, in that both products are diorama-like rooms that need to be assembled.  There are also surprise Spaces capsules with furniture that needs to be built.  I was definitely in the mood for some building, so I decided to check it all out.

Chelsea in a Miniverse Make it Mini Spaces room ($19.99).

Because of the similarity between Miniverse Spaces and Rolife Super Creator, I'm going to be looking at an example from each company in this review.  I'll focus mostly on the Miniverse Ice Cream set, but then I'll compare it to the Flavorful Ice Cream kit from Rolife:

Miniverse Make it Mini Ice Cream (left) and Rolife Super Creator Flavorful Ice Cream (right).

The Rolife sets cost about $45, unless they're on sale (which they often are).  The Miniverse rooms were originally $22.99, but are now on sale for $19.99 at most retailers.  The capsules cost $10.99.

In order to keep my comparison fair price-wise, I decided to compare the Rolife set to a Spaces room plus two of the capsules.  These three items together cost about the same as a Rolife set:

Miniverse Spaces Ice Cream Shop plus two blind capsules, ~$42.

Initially, I wasn't exactly sure what role the blind capsules play in the Spaces concept.  But because the ice cream shop looks like it comes with very few accessories, I assumed that the capsules would help fill in the gaps.  We'll see if that's true!

I'll open up the ice cream shop first, and then investigate the capsules.  

The shop comes in a large, heavy, plastic, disc-shaped container with a partial cardboard sleeve:

MGA packaging sucks, every single time.

The front of the cardboard has a large photograph of the shop and a small advertisement saying something about collecting and connecting.  Let's take a closer look at that section:

It says "create, collect, and connect." And there's a picture of four different rooms, all connected at some level.

It seems that these rooms can be stacked to create a larger dollhouse-like structure.  Rolife offers exactly the same thing.

The back of the cardboard sleeve has another photo of the ice cream shop, a picture of all of the contents, and a tiny image of another available set:

The other set is a pizza shop:

Here's a better photo of the pizza shop:

There are two other rooms sets that I'm aware of.  One of them has a Hello Kitty theme.  It's not as versatile as the other options, but is currently on sale for $13.99 at Amazon:

The last set is a greenhouse, which has a dramatically different structure than the other three options:

I'm happy with my ice cream shop choice, especially because Rolife offers a similarly-themed set.

In true MGA fashion, the ice cream shop package is held closed with lots of plastic ties.  There are four on each side, in addition to some plastic bands that stitch the whole thing together around the edges:

Underneath the cardboard, the plastic container has a molded design with "MGA's Miniverse" written in the middle:

I cut all of the connectors and opened up the box.  Inside, I found two strips of brown cardboard randomly set on top of a pile of small packages:

Not the most elegant presentation.

The packages are all covered in paper, with a mostly pink color scheme.  Many of them say "fragile" on the paper, but I don't think they're actually that fragile:

Here's everything that was in the box:

In that last picture, I divided the items into a pile of plastic structural pieces, some paper items, and the wrapped packages.

Here are the paper items:

These include some sheets of double-sided sticky tape, decorative stickers, a few panels of yellow and white striped wallpaper, and the instruction booklet.

The instruction booklet isn't stapled or bound in the middle, so it falls apart easily:

The structural components include two hard plastic walls and a plastic floor, some brackets for the shelves, and a few sheets of thin plastic wall coverings:

The two walls, with their pegboard-like grid of holes, look very familiar:

They mimic the Rolife design in many ways:

From my review of the Rolife Super Creator Happy Meals Kitchen.

From what I've observed, the Rolife Super Creator sets are extremely popular.  So I can see why MGA wanted to use this concept for their own line.  Still, copycats like this tend to irritate me.

Last but not least, here are all of the wrapped packages:

I wasn't sure which of these I should open up first, so I turned to the instruction manual for some guidance:

The first step is apparently to tile the floor!  So I found the two bags of loose tiles and the big floor piece:

It never occurred to me that the floor would be made up of individual tiles.  I'm conflicted about how I feel about this.  On the one hand it'll probably look really great when it's put together, but it also seems like a tedious chore.

There's one pink tile with a hole in it.  This is to accommodate the support bar in the right hand corner.  I started by placing this tile and the support bar.  I also covered the rest of the floor with strips of double-sided tape:

Laying the tiles was straightforward.  It was a monotonous task, but there was also a zen-like satisfaction to the whole thing. 

The end result looks pretty good, although my tiles are crooked in some places:

The tape bond isn't very strong, so it's easy to make adjustments.  However, that also means that the tiles can fall off pretty easily, too.

The next step was to cover the walls.  The instructions say to use the yellow striped wallpaper on the left wall and the turquoise plastic sheet on the right wall:

So that's what I did:

I hate that you can see the holes in the wall through the wallpaper.

The yellow wallpaper has a clever application system.  Each piece of wallpaper has an adhesive backing covered with a protective sheet.  But the protective sheets come in two pieces: a small strip at the top that can be removed in order to position and anchor the wallpaper, and then a larger sheet that pulls off to expose the rest of the adhesive.

The system worked pretty well, but I got a few little wrinkles in my wallpaper.

For the right side, I used the double-sided tape to adhere the turquoise plastic wall covering:

I don't like this as much as the wallpaper.

This plastic wall covering can fall off, and in my house that means that the exposed tape will get dog and cat hair all over it in about 30 seconds.  And then the hair makes the tape even weaker, so the wall covering falls off more often.  It's a vicious cycle.  But at least the holes in the wall are covered.

Next, I was supposed to apply some pink plastic wainscoting to the yellow side:

This didn't go very well for me, though.  The wainscoting piece was too big for the wall:

What??

I cut it (clumsily) so that it would fit flat against the wall:

I was rushing at this point and should have slowed down to think.

The next step was to attach the two walls to the floor:

This didn't work well for me, because the yellow wall didn't fit into the grooves on the floor.  It was at this point that I realized my mistake.

The walls have an indented side and a flat side.  The coverings are supposed to go on the flat side, but I put the yellow wallpaper on the indented side.  

That's why the wainscoting didn't fit:

Duh.

I went back and looked at the instructions, to see if I missed an obvious tip about which side of the wall should be covered:

It's still not clear which side is which from those pictures, even though I know what's going on now.  But I'll share the blame, because I should have been paying more attention.

Fortunately, the set is designed so that you can put each of the wall coverings on either side of the room.  That meant that I had an extra sheet of turquoise plastic for the left wall.  This time I put it on the correct side:

The two walls snap into depressions on the outside edges of the floor:

My wall coverings aren't even with each other, which doesn't look very good at the top.  I'm not sure what went wrong there.

The walls gape apart at the corner, too, but to remedy this there's an extra plastic piece that snaps onto the top: 

This is the exact same system that Rolife uses.

Here's the completed room:

That left wall covering is already bubbling out in the middle.

I don't like the plastic wall covering as much as the yellow wallpaper, so I really wish I hadn't messed things up.  Also, the turquoise plastic doesn't stick to the wall as well as the wallpaper.

Another disappointment is that the outside of the room isn't decorated.  I mean, the outside of my left wall is decorated with yellow wallpaper because of my mistake, but the set isn't designed to have the outer walls covered; none of the wall coverings will work on the outside of the right wall because of the doorway.  Rolife sets have detailed wall coverings on both the inside and the outside of the structure.

The next step was to anchor the shelves to one of the walls.  To do this, the instruction manual recommended that I hold a light up to reveal where the holes in the wall are:

Seriously?  That feels primitive.  The Rolife sets have pre-punched holes in the wall coverings so that you know exactly what's going on.

After shining the light, I was supposed to mark where the holes go, and then punch through the plastic wall covering with what looks like a nail:

Don't make me work that hard, MGA.

Those steps looked complicated and slightly dangerous, so I just lined up the shelf brackets where I wanted them, and forcefully pushed them through the wall covering:

As you can see, the "forcefully" part of that approach caused a lot of the floor tiles to pop off.

I did the same thing with the other side, and managed to get the shelves in place:

I like how the pink shelves match the floor, but that support bar in the front was bothering me.  I guess it's there in case I want to attach another room on top of this one.  But for a single room, the bar looks silly.

Step six involved building furniture, which sounded a lot more fun to me than laying tile or messing with sticky wall coverings:

I found the instructions clear and easy to follow, and in about two minutes I'd built this cute little ice cream freezer:

I guess this is formally called a "dipping cabinet."  I did not know that.

The dipping cabinet feels nice and sturdy, with three bins for ice cream on top, and an adjustable shelf underneath:

I was excited to get my shop all set up, but that support bar at the front of the room was still irritating me. I removed the bar, but it left behind the pink tile with a hole in the middle:

That looks bad.

The set is supposed to come with an extra pink tile to use if you don't want the support bar, but my set was missing this piece:

Bummer.

Here's my little shop:

It's got some imperfections here and there, and I don't like all of the turquoise.  But it's bright and inviting.  And it's ready for some ice cream!

The last step in the instruction booklet is to decorate:

Fun!

Before I decorate, though, take a closer look at the bottom of that page:

It shows the room designed in four different ways, including with the turquoise wall covering on the floor and the tiles on the wall!  It took me a while to realize that there was this kind of creative freedom designed into the set.  It's pretty cool, although I'm skeptical that the tiles would actually stay on the walls--at least not with the double sided tape that's provided.

And because the wallpaper can't be removed once it's stuck down, I'd have to buy a completely new set if I wanted to try a different design.  At $20 a pop, that could get expensive really fast.

These were the items I had left for the decorating step:

Not much.

The syringe-looking thing is what I was supposed to use to poke holes in the wall covering.  I didn't realize that until too late:

Oops.

Inside the paper bag, I found two cartons of ice cream, a box of waffles, and an ice cream scoop:

Finally!  Some minis.

I love the Miniverse food items, so I was very happy to find these.

There's mint chocolate chip ice cream:

With an awesome little nutritional facts section on the back:

And the carton opens to reveal four scoops of ice cream:

Here's a closer look at one of them:

There's also some Neapolitan ice cream:

This carton has a different nutritional information section:

Inside, I found two scoops of vanilla, and a scoop each of chocolate and strawberry:

I've gotten a box of waffles similar to this one before:

It has 100% of crunchiness, buttery goodness, and vitamin crunch!

Vitamin...crunch?  Ew.

The box had two little waffle bowls inside:

These are adorable, and they make me hungry:

The scoops of ice cream pile up nicely inside the waffle bowls:

The ice cream scoop is cute, too, with some realistic molded detail in the handle:

So here's my decorated room:

The ice cream dipping cabinet is the highlight of the space:

I forgot to use any stickers, so I went back and added a few.  They don't make a huge difference, but I guess they help break up all of the turquoise:

We know from Lena's explorations that a lot of the Miniverse food is 1:6 scale, or a good size for Barbie dolls.  However, the Spaces rooms are about 7.5 inches tall, so they're only suitable for Barbie children like Chelsea.  

Here's my Chelsea doll, Rebecca, visiting the shop:

The walls match my back brace!

She looks right at home in this space:

This mint ice cream matches my brace, too!

And without wasting any time, she made herself a little sundae:

I got two scoops so we can share.

This set had some frustrations (like the wall coverings and the shelves) and some satisfying build elements (like the dipping cabinet and the tile floor).  And the finished product is bright and colorful.  But it looks a little empty to me.  I wish there were more miniatures to fill the shelves, and maybe another piece of furniture to invite more play.

I was excited to see if the blind capsules would fill some of these voids!

Here's my first capsule:

Miniverse Make it Mini Spaces capsule, $10.99.

These containers are bigger than a traditional Miniverse surprise ball, and they're decorated with pictures of some of the different sets:

I see a bunch of stuff that would work with my ice cream shop, which is great, but there are also some crates with veggies in them.  I hope I don't get those!

There's almost always a way to cheat and find out what you're getting with this kind of toy, and these capsules are no exception.  On the back there's a lot of text:

And there's a small slash next to one of the lines of text:

That slash, next to the word TOYTAP, reveals which set this is.  But I wanted to be surprised, so I didn't look it up.

When I took off the plastic covering on this capsule, it fell apart and all of the contents spilled out:

The cardboard center of the capsule is decorated with photos of the ten different available sets:

These same ten sets are also shown in the collector's booklet, which I'll look at in just a sec.

Here's everything that was inside the capsule:

This little foil-wrapped packet grabbed my attention right away:

It advertises a free downloadable game, which is interesting.

Inside the packet, I found a little card:

This card can be scanned to unlock items in the game.  I guess the foil packet prevents it from being scanned in the store?  Could it really be scanned through all of that packaging?  I don't know.

On the back of the card there's a picture of the vegetables crates:

Oh, wait.  Does that mean I got the vegetable crates?  Probably.  Sigh.  How's that going to work with an ice cream shop?

I decided to download the free game and give it a try.

I didn't play for very long, because the game kept crashing and losing my progress. But the basic idea is that you're given a challenge, like "build some cupcakes for two!" and you have various items available with which to complete that challenge.  As far as I can tell, you can gain new items by completing challenges, or by purchasing the capsules and getting more cards.

The base screen has a cute ice cream shop background:

That looks like my ice cream shop, but with an extra freezer and more minis.

I started to build my cupcakes:

I wasn't exactly sure what "cupcakes for two" meant, so I made four cupcakes, two for each person.

I got the cupcakes covered with whipped cream, some toppings, and ill-placed rainbow sprinkles:

I tried about ten times to get the sprinkles to look good, but it was impossible.  There's no precision.  And then the game crashed for the fourth time so I rage quit.

I managed to finish an earlier pizza challenge that I didn't photograph, and it was reasonably satisfying.  Once you complete a challenge, you can vote on other entries, which is kinda fun.  And it probably gets more fun when you have more items at your disposal.  So maybe it's a diverting game, but my phone and my patience level couldn't tolerate it.

Anyway, in addition to the game card, the paper items in the capsule are a collector's booklet, some stickers, some cardboard signs, and a "read me first" pamphlet:

Ever the rules follower, I read the pamphlet first.  It's basically a battery safety sheet:

Do some of these sets require batteries?  That's interesting!

Let's look at all of the different sets to see which ones might need batteries.

First up, there's a taiyaki counter and a salad bar:

The taiyaki counter would fit in really well with the ice cream shop!  And the salad bar looks awesome and could work, too, like if somebody wanted to get lunch before having their ice cream.

Incidentally, taiyaki is a fish-shaped cake that's usually filled with bean paste.  I guess in this case it's a fish-shaped cone filled with matcha?

The next two sets are a farm stand, with all of those veggie crates, and a plant stand:

I like the plant stand.

These go with each other, but not with the ice cream shop.

There are also two cold food cases:

These look great and I'd be psyched to get either one of them.

I also love the bakery stand, but the produce stand has more of those crates:

The last two items are a bakery display case (yum!) and a sunny marquee:

The marquee is apparently rare, and looks to me like the only thing that might require batteries.

The other side of the collector's sheet has the instructions for how to build my specific set, which is, indeed, the produce stand:

Boo.

The building requirements for this set were very basic.  I had to assemble a stand for the crates:

This took me about a minute and a half.  Here's the finished product:

There are yellow plastic bars on the fronts of the stands that keep the crates from falling forwards, but there's nothing to stop them from sliding out the back...which they do frequently:

There was one mystery bag with this set:

Inside, I found some corn tied with string, and another type of veggie wrapped in brown paper:

The paper wrapping is nice, with a little Happy Sun Farms sticker on the front:

And inside the paper, there was a bundle of carrots:

Cute!

The carrots are all separate, and are held together with string.

The two pieces of corn can also be separated, and taken out of their husks.  But I thought they looked really nice like this, so I left them alone:

It's too bad that there isn't a different vegetable for each of the four crates, because the empty crates look sad:

The produce stand doesn't fit with the theme of the ice cream shop, but the crates can be squeezed into the space:

That looks cramped, and I don't like the dipping cabinet facing away from me.  So I tried this layout:

That's better, I guess, but there's still a lot of empty shelf space, and empty crates.  And the crates look really out of place to me.

The produce stand items can also be used on their own, converting the shop into a completely different kind of destination:

Mostly-empty vegetable store.

It's sparse and unexciting.

I inspected the stickers to see if I there was something I could use to liven things up a bit:

Some signs and stickers help somewhat:

But I didn't want to put any of the veggie posters on the walls of the ice cream shop because, well, it's an ice cream shop.

Let's see if the next capsule is better!

This one has the cheat mark in a different location, so at least it's not a duplicate:

Here's everything that was in the capsule:

I was excited to see the box of waffles!  These will go perfectly on the shelves of my ice cream shop:

Score!

I think I've gotten these exact same waffles before, but they're very cute:

They are conventional waffles, not waffle bowls:

Still makes me hungry.

The set also comes with two Bear Pops and a bag of sweet potato fries:

I love sweet potato fries.

These items would be lame if they were just plastic packages with stuffing filler (like what we saw in that American Girl advent calendar...), but they have actual miniatures inside!

Here's a closer look at the sweet potato fries:

Snacky snacks!

I cut open the bag and found a bunch of individual plastic fries inside!

Whoa!

Here are the two Bear Pops:

And each has their own little bear-shaped popsicle inside:

Incredible.

It's a little sad because once the bags are open, it's hard to seal them up so that they look new again.  But it'd be a shame to never open them and miss out on the minis inside!

This set comes with signs and stickers that would actually work well in the ice cream shop:

If you haven't guessed by now, I got one of the frozen foods sets:

This set required me to build the freezer:

This was equivalent in time and difficulty to the dipping cabinet, and it looks good when it's all done, with adjustable shelves on the front:

And some intricate molded detail on the back:

I like that the freezer doesn't look too empty when all of the items are placed inside:

This freezer is so big, though, it's hard to fit it into the ice cream shop:

No room for customers.

I think it's especially irksome that even though I got the same blue freezer that's featured in the game backdrop that I showed you:

It doesn't work that way in real life:

The freezer blocks half of the doorway, and the dipping cabinet hangs off the edge of the floor.

I don't think Rebecca was too worried about the crowded space, though!

Look at all of the new frozen treats!

She made a beeline for one of the Bear Pops:

It's so big!

It's a perfect treat, especially now that the temperatures are creeping into the 80s:

The bear face is too cute to eat, though.

The capsules are fun, especially the frozen food set, but they don't help me out very much with the ice cream shop.  I'm able to use the box of waffles and some of the stickers, but the freezer is too big to fit easily with the dipping cabinet, and the cute Bear Pops and sweet potato fries looks silly without the freezer.  So blah.

I wish the ice cream shop on its own was better.  And at this point in the review, I felt like I hadn't really given it a fair shake (no pun intended).  I was too hasty with my assembly (trying to put everything together on the floor of my workroom), and ended up making an irreversible mistake with the wallpaper.  My resulting room has a color combination that I don't love, with plastic wall coverings that look cheap.

So, I decided to buy another set and take it up to my kitchen table where all of the serious building takes place.

When I opened this set, everything looked more organized than it did with the first one:

There are two white cardboard dividers that separate the contents into four neat sections.

The instruction booklet also looks different, although it's still not stapled together:

This time I put the yellow striped wallpaper on the correct side of the walls!  Yay me.  The paper stuck out over one edge a little, but I just folded it down:

Here's the completed room with the striped wallpaper on both walls, and the pink wainscoting:

I like this color combination so much better!

There's a bit of a gap at the corner of the room, but it's not a huge deal:

I added a few stickers to make the whole place even more inviting:

I also cheated a bit and added some of the Make it Mini food items that I've collected from other reviews:

In other words, I raided Lena's fridge.

Rebecca seems much happier with this shop!

Look at what I got this time!

I'm a lot happier with this version of the ice cream shop, so even though I had to spend another $20, at least I got a sense of the toy's full potential.

Feeling happier with my experience, I decided to play around and test out a few different dolls inside this shop.  Since the room is larger than a Rolife room, it fits a different assortment of dolls.

As I mentioned earlier, the ice cream shop is way too small for adult Barbies like Petra:

Even though a lot of the food works for her.

I feel like the furniture fits 1:12 dollhouse dolls pretty well, but things like the waffle bowls and ice cream cartons are way too big:

She's dressed for the occasion, at least.

The 1:18 Lundby doll that I bought for my Rolife kitchen can fit through the doorway of the shop, which is nice, but she's dwarfed by all of the furniture and accessories:

Did I shrink?

The Li'l Woodzeez are so unrealistic, it's hard to know what kinds of spaces work for them.  They're certainly too short for a lot of the furniture:

But I wouldn't hesitate to display some of my Woodzeez in this shop:

The ice cream scoop fits me just fine.

Littlest Pet Shop Blythe dolls also work in this room, mostly because their heads are so big:

I really like how the Hey Bestie dolls look with both the furniture and the accessories:

That's a good fit.

Hannah was certainly excited to find a Bear Pop!

Who wouldn't be?

I tried a few of MGA's dolls, too, like this Rainbow High Littles girl, Indigo:

I think she looks okay with the accessories, but she takes up a lot of space in the room!

Here's a Na Na Na Surprise Mini doll:

She looks right at home, with her brightly colored outfit and big head.

And L.O.L. Surprise dolls work for the same reason that Li'l Woodzeez do:

They're so unrealistic, you can imagine they fit in almost anywhere.

So there's a wide range of different dolls that could be used to play in this space:

Ice cream party!

I think my favorites are the Hey Besties, though:

Their cheerful clothing, big heads, and Chelsea-like bodies work really well with both the size and the aesthetic of the room:

I like the ice cream shop for its bright colors, realistic ice cream dipping cabinet, and excellent miniatures.  I also like that its size is compatible with a range of small dolls.  I had a few snags with the building experience on my first attempt, though, and was not able to correct my mistakes.  I also feel like the room doesn't come with enough accessories, and so it looks empty.  The additional items from the two capsules that I bought helped fill the void a little, but they seem designed as a way to transform the shop rather than enhance its original theme.  I had better luck stocking the store with Miniverse items that I happened to have on hand from other reviews.  So these rooms are a good way to sort and display an existing collection, but not very good as stand-alone toys.

It's hard not to use the Rolife Super Creator sets as a benchmark for this type of building toy.  I couldn't help but have some preconceived notions about what the Miniverse Spaces rooms should be like, based on my experience building a few Rolife sets.

So let's take a look at the Rolife set with an ice cream shop theme, and see how the two products compare:

Rolife Super Creator Flavorful Ice Cream set, $43.99.

These kits come in cardboard boxes with a protective plastic wrapping.  I find this presentation so much more attractive and wholesome than the all-plastic Miniverse packaging.

The back of the box has a photograph of a whole collection of Super Creator rooms, a piece count, and some basic instructions:

I love how all of these sets can be connected together to make a dollhouse:

I'm actually collecting several of the rooms with the hope that someday I'll have the time and space to assemble a doll house like this.  I find it incredibly appealing--especially since all of the rooms have lights.  Can you imagine how cool a house like this would look lit up at night?

Since I've talked about Rolife before, I won't go into much detail with the building process today.  I carried everything upstairs to my kitchen table for assembly, having learned my lesson with the first Miniverse set:

I like that this instruction booklet is stapled together.  And all of the steps are clear and well-described:

I noticed two differences in construction right away.  One is that the Rolife walls notch together at the corner, which prevents a gap from forming.  Also, the cardboard wall coverings slot into position on the plastic walls.  They don't require any adhesive whatsoever:

This makes it easier to disassemble or redesign a room.  It's also very simple to fix any mistakes that might be made!

The only difficult step in the assembly of this set was adding little cardboard price tags to the ice cream dipping cabinet.  I had to use the included double-sided sticky dots, and these didn't fit the available space well.  Nor do they hold the price tags up straight:

Everything else was straightforward and smooth.  The whole project took me about an hour, which is 30 minutes more than what was required to build the Miniverse set.

This set has so many little details, too!  Here's the furniture at the back of the room:

On the far right, there's a soft serve dispenser.  This has three little handles that actually move up and down:

It also has two ice cream containers at the top, with tiny lids that lift off:

The other side of the room has a countertop covered in stuff:

There are three topping bins, all with removable lids and actual colored blocks inside:

There's also a cute drink dispenser with strawberry and orange juice inside:

The counter itself has working doors and drawers:

In front of the counter, there's a small seating area with a table, chair, and huge ice cream sundae:

The miniatures in this set have nice detail.  For example, the whipped cream can has a removable lid and a detailed label:

No nutritional information, though.

And look at these two ice cream cones!

I especially love the bear.

I don't think I've ever seen bear-themed ice cream in real life, and yet both of the ice cream sets in this review have it!  Weird.

The ice cream dipping cabinet sits at the front of the room, and is beautiful to look at:

Aside from the crooked price tags, everything is awesome.  There are even sliding doors in the back, for easy ice cream access:

Here's the room with everything set up:

The ice cream blocks look like skeins of wool, but I love that they're all different colors and have different toppings mixed in:

The back walls of the shop are decorated, too, which is not something we saw with the Miniverse set:

There's a battery compartment for the light, and the window decoration shows the actual scene inside the store!

The Rolife sets are about an inch smaller than the Miniverse sets:

I like the size of the Miniverse rooms since they're easier to play with, and they accommodate a wider range of dolls.  But the Rolife shop packs in ten times more detail, despite its tiny size.  And the smaller size makes those rooms easier to collect and combine. 

The Rolife shop works for a few different kinds of doll, including the 1:18 Lundby woman who I showed you earlier:

I feel like my normal size again!

The Unicorn Academy mini dolls also fit in this space, and can even hold the ice cream cones:

That's gonna spill, Sophia...

I think my favorite dolls for this shop are the 3-inch Polly Pockets.  Here's one of my Pop 'n Swap girls:

I'd like the cutest ice cream you have, please!

Oooh!  It's a little bear head!

Of course with the Pop 'n Swap crew, you never know who might show up:

Is that a c..c..cat head?!

My tummy is rumbling for some ice cream!

I like the look of this one right here...

She went for the ice cream that matches her eyes, I guess.

And it's delicious.

Bottom line?  Well, I love the Rolife Super Creator Flavorful Ice Cream set, so we can get that out of the way right now.  It has slightly fewer pieces than the Happy Meals Kitchen that I reviewed in 2024, but it was a smooth build, it looks great on display, and it has a ton of detail.  My favorite pieces are the soft serve dispenser and the big ice cream dipping cabinet.  The design and engineering on these sets is outstanding, and I can't wait to build my big modular house.

The Miniverse Make it Mini Spaces Ice Cream set is an interesting imitation of the Rolife concept.  It does some things better and some things worse, so I'll try to summarize those differences.

First of all, the build experience with Miniverse was not great.  The basic design of the room is similar to the Rolife concept, but the devil is in the details.  I struggled with the wall coverings, in particular.  While Rolife offers detailed cardboard backdrops that neatly slot into the plastic walls, the Miniverse wall decorations all require adhesive.  The adhesive doesn't work very well with the tiles or the plastic wall coverings, and it works too well with the wallpaper.  I stuck the yellow striped wallpaper on the wrong side of the wall, and there wasn't anything I could do to fix it.  The adhesive also prevents me from re-designing the same room in multiple different ways, which is advertised as being one of the perks of this set.  I guess I'm meant to buy multiple versions of the same room and design each of them differently, which would get expensive really fast.  I also didn't like the instructions for mounting the shelving unit.  I struggled to punch through the wall coverings in the appropriate areas.  Rolife makes this kind of thing extremely easy with their pre-cut holes and clear instructions.  Last, the quality of the decorative elements isn't great.  The plastic wall coverings look cheap, and the yellow wallpaper is semi-transparent.  The floor tiles are the exception here, because they have a nice weight and look good if they're placed carefully.

My favorite part of a Rolife build is assembling the furniture.  It feels similar to a Lego experience, with satisfying snap construction and a highly rewarding outcome.  The Miniverse set doesn't have nearly enough of this.  The majority of my building effort was put into tiling the floor, which was repetitive and somewhat calming, but not especially interesting.  With both the ice cream shop and the capsules, there was only one simple piece of furniture to build, and this took less than five minutes.

Overall, I found the Spaces capsules underwhelming.  I assumed that I'd buy the ice cream shop and then use the capsules to fill and decorate the space.  But in reality, each capsule has a different theme, and those themes aren't necessarily compatible with an ice cream shop.  Perhaps the point is to be able to transform the room into a number of different shops, swapping out one set of furniture and accessories for another?  That's fine, I guess, but it isn't nearly as appealing to me as building a single, compete, well-stocked room that I can sit back and enjoy.

One advantage of the Miniverse ice cream shop is its size.  It's an inch bigger than the Rolife room in all dimensions.  This means that it's easier to play with, and things don't tip over or fall off the shelves as often as they do with the Rolife sets.  The larger scale can also accommodate a wider range of readily-available dolls.  Whether kids collect Chelsea, Hey Besties, Li'l Woodzeez, L.O.L. Surprise, Mini Blythes, Na Na Na minis, or even Rainbow High Littles, they'll have the ability to use this room for their dolls.  Some dolls work better than others, for sure, but there's still great versatility.  The exception to my size argument is that for people like me who are looking to display and not play, the Rolife scale is better.  The rooms take up less space, making them more collectible and less cumbersome.

I also really like the Miniverse Make it Mini foods.  They're cute, realistic, and often interactive.  It's fun to be able to scoop bits of ice cream out of the carton or out of the dipping cabinet and then pile them into a waffle bowl.  And it's mind-blowing how things like those Bear Pop and sweet potato fry packages had realistic miniatures inside.  I've always said that the best thing about the Make it Mini toys is the pre-made miniature food, and that assessment holds true here.  As a bonus, these Spaces sets are completely free of resin, which makes them safe for a broad audience.  My only complaint about the miniature food is that the sets don't come with enough of it.  The ice cream shop looked pretty empty with only the items that were included, making it a mediocre stand-alone toy.  I had to rely on items from earlier reviews in order to fill the space and create a scene that I was happy with.

But perhaps relying on an existing collection of Make it Mini food items is actually the point here.  For people who have been amassing Miniverse toys for a while, these rooms offer a bright, engaging way to store, display, or play with those collections.  So the building experience, level of detail, and overall quality of the Miniverse set is not as good as it is with Rolife, but when I see my stash of delightful Make it Mini items filling the shelves of the ice cream shop, and being enjoyed by a variety of my favorite dolls, I can absolutely see the appeal.