Welcome to the Playmobil Playroom, where we occasionally take a peek inside those impressive blue boxes and see what treasures await within. Sometimes we’ll have step-by-step photos walking you through assembly, maybe we’ll discuss and review a particular set or theme, or maybe we’ll have an unboxing video.

The City Life theme is probably the most versatile of all Playmobil themes. It’s a smattering of lots of different sets and is “generic” enough that almost all of the sets can be easily combined with any of the other themes (particularly Family Fun).

The Tiny Paws Pet Hotel is an adorable animal daycare set that comes packed with oodles of cute little animals. And your kids are like mine, that’s all they really need. For your little animal lovers, there are plenty of other current sets that complement the Pet Hotel, including Purrfect Stay Cat Boarding, Small Animal Boarding, Mobile Pet Groomer, Dog Trainer, and the Large City Zoo (which we’ve looked at before).

Specs:

• Product Number: 9275
• Number of Pieces: 154 pieces
• Number of figures: 2 adults, 1 kid, loads of animals

Ease of Build:

On a scale of 1-5, this set is about a 3. The pet hotel itself is fairly easy, and there are lots of little pieces that require the dexterous application if teeny tiny stickers. My kids were so taken with the animals, they started playing with them immediately, and I was left to assemble this one myself.

Coolest Features:

• The animals, obviously. The set comes with EIGHT different dogs and two birds.
• There are a lot of unique little doodads in this set, including dog toys, treats, and snacks.
• The outside fencing is composed of 12 different segments, so you can set it up in a variety of shapes and sizes.
• There’s a swinging doggy door!

Playability:

Like I said, the City Life sets easily lend themselves to working with any other Playmobil set. And if you have any other “generic” city sets (but especially one of the zoos), this is a great addition. My kids adore any set that has animals, so this one was a real winner. It would’ve been nice to have a couple cats included – it’s a PET hotel, after all, not a DOG hotel – but that’s a relatively minor gripe. We have plenty of animals (of many different species) in our collection that have dropped in and stayed at the pet hotel.

Kid Verdict:

I don’t know how many times I need to say it: it has animals, so it’s a guaranteed winner. Two very happy thumbs up.

(Disclosure: This Playmobil set was provided free of charge for review purposes. All opinions remain our own.)