Following the launch of 40506 LEGO Fabuland Tribute, Blocks suggests some other ways that LEGO House could celebrate the brick in future exclusive sets.
LEGO House in Billund, Denmark has launched a new exclusive set – 40506 LEGO Fabuland Tribute. It celebrates part of the LEGO Group’s history. Previous sets have included scaled-down dinosaurs, scaled-up pirates and a pioneering master builder.
But what else could LEGO House celebrate from the LEGO Group’s history? What makes a set souvenir material? In this whimsical wish list, Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine for adult fans, makes suggestions for what could next for the gift shop treatment…
The Icon – Classic Space Torch
LEGO House celebrates the history of the LEGO hobby, from wooden toys carved and hand-painted in Ole Kirk Kristensen’s original workshop through to the plastic craft of designers and fans in studios, bedrooms and basements around the world. The first in the current LEGO House souvenir set series combined the two, as 40501 The Wooden Duck uses slopes in rich dark red and green to capture the rounded silhouette of the vintage toy. The model also incorporates a simple pull-along mechanism to make the beak snap.
Some sets tell the story of the LEGO hobby in the form of a brand icons, such as 40504 A Minifigure Tribute, and this list could easily be five examples of upscaled minifigures that fans would enjoy – but instead, how about a minifigure accessory?
The Classic Space torch (element 3959) is one of the earliest examples of a minifigure utensil and while it has been superseded by newer designs and elements, its use as both instrument and weapon makes it a symbol of the LEGO hobby’s development.
The simple round head with the textured grip and bar connection gives it visual interest and versatility. Scaling it up to life size while maintaining that recognisable silhouette would be a worthwhile exercise in any medium (see master propmaker Odin Makes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFRyW6owdfw ), but in LEGO brick form, it would feel right.
The finished product would no doubt appear simple on the surface, but if a light brick were included so that it could become a projector, using outline images of Space on interchangeable tiles (similar to 80116 Trotting Lantern), it would be something truly unique.
The Place – Mini Chef Restaurant
As predicted by The Simpsons, LEGO House even offers food in LEGO brick form – kind of.
Mini Chef offers visitors the chance to build their own meals by plugging LEGO elements representing menu items onto a brick-built plate, which are read electronically and relayed to the kitchen. Meals are then dispensed on conveyors by animatronic servers Robert and Roberta.
Diners get to keep their menu selection polybag (40296) and especially lucky boys and girls get to take home the latest version of the LEGO House Chef minifigure, it seems a shame to leave such important personnel out of the experience.
A small shelf display piece representing the serving experience would be enough, with a spiral of LEGO food elements tumbling down to the waiting waldos of Robert and Roberta. Box elements topped with 2×2 plates could also represent the studded containers in which the food arrives and the robots themselves could be animated by Technic mechanisms for the builder to operate, for that futuristic flan-flinging experience.
The real-life Robert and Roberta are prefabricated animatronics decorated with upscaled LEGO elements and it would be nice to think that someday, you could get your Mini Chef to go.
Upgrade your LEGO hobby! If you take out a subscription to Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine, you’ll get each issue first and at a discount, plus other perks including a free digital subscription and the chance to win LEGO prizes every month.
The History – Homemaker to Heartlake
The LEGO Group has sought to craft products that appeal to girls for decades, right back to Homemaker in. Brick-built Homemaker figures were replaced by the minifigure-centric Paradisa theme, which in turn gave way to the more traditionally articulated and fabric-clothed Belville dolls, before the mini-doll launched in 2012.
The play pattern underwent a similar evolution, reflecting a changing societal perspective about gender roles, going from traditional domesticity to limitless possibility. The modern LEGO Friends theme, rebooted after 10 years to include a more diverse and inclusive cast, also broadens design options compared to the more traditional dollhouse style and pink-violet palette of earlier themes. Friends currently includes some of the most exciting LEGO sets with explosions of colour and bold modernist architecture.
A set that models the progress from Homemaker to Friends – not the ‘evolution’, as that would do those earlier themes a disservice – would make for an excellent tribute to a half-century of LEGO sets aimed at girls.
Homemaker figures employed head elements that have long since been retired. Additionally, the size disparity between Homemaker figures and mini-dolls is glaring, with the modern figures resembling toddlers by comparison. One way to overcome this would be to use a third option:
2024 saw the introduction of buildable figures, in Wicked and Wednesday. These most doll-like of LEGO figures employ System elements to create everything from head to toe, with novel limb elements making their debut with the first waves. By pairing a brick-built Homemaker figure (with brick-built head) with a buildable Friends figure, the LEGO Group could pay homage to this vital part of its history.
A backdrop that morphs from rigid doll house pink to the smashed-Skittles aesthetic of modern Friends would be nice, too.
The People – Designers In Play
Dagny Holm, sculptor, model designer and pioneering woman presence across the early years of The LEGO Group, was immortalised in the brick with 40503 Dagny Holm – Master Builder. This set featured a Miniland-scale version of Dagny Holm at her bench, surrounded by some of her career-defining creations. To recognise the designers, artists and engineers that work on bringing LEGO sets from stray thought to store shelves, a similar diorama featuring a more modern peek behind the curtain would be perfect.
Brick-built prototypes being studied and amended. Drawers full of elements becoming refined models. Model coaches taking sets through their final checks before they lands at the feet of lucky little builders… depicting all of this in minifigure form, with printed schematics, plain elements and microfigures to represent prototypes and finished sets would make for a fantastic shelf piece).
An aside – on FOMO
Reading over the list of exclusive products and attractions at LEGO House is liable to get you looking at flights to Denmark. The sets alone range from admirable to magical. But when aftermarket prices can reach utility bill levels, that’s a great time to remind yourself that fear of missing out can drive you to make bad spending decisions – or worse, feel lousy about not being able to make any spending decisions at all.
eBay alerts and regular monitoring of aftermarket channels can help. An alternative, if all you want it the build, is to part the sets out. Find parts in your own collection and complete the set via Pick and Build or third party sellers. These sets rarely seem to contain anything more exclusive than a printed tile and those will always turn up on BrickLink.
It might take you some time to assemble. It may still end up costing you more than you’d like. But it’s sure to be satisfying and hopefully cheaper than paying aftermarket prices. And if nothing else, it’s better than feeling bad about being unable to get to Billund. The only true Home of the Brick is where your bricks are.
The Magic – City in a box
40366 LEGO House Dinosaurs takes a trio of three-metre T. rex sculptures built in the three LEGO systems (Duplo, Technic and System) and miniaturises them for the shelf. Each dino evokes an aspect of the original, even though out of necessity, they are all built on the LEGO System.
4000026 LEGO House Tree of Creativity makes the more massive more miniature, condensing over fifteen metres and six million LEGO bricks worth of tree bark, leaves and hidden detail into fewer than eight hundred and fifty elements… but what if you could go bigger still?
One of the longest-running concepts in the LEGO hobby is the idea of building real-world locations or a close facsimile as a backdrop for play. Children build police and fire stations to act out emergency rescue and high-speed car chases. Older children build construction sites and airports to replicate the world they’re growing into. Adults come back to the LEGO hobby and build all the places from their childhood, plus all the hospitals, hotels, diners and more that they’ve seen in the interim, often resulting in sprawling collections of buildings, sometimes assembled into their very own LEGO city. Now put that city in a box.
Microscale buildings are nothing new – they appear in everything from polybags to other LEGO House sets. But as seen with the recent 21265 The Crafting Table from the Minecraft theme, when assembled in the right way, with the right backdrop, they can evoke not just the spirit of the thing they’re downscaling, but the spirit of the theme itself.
A LEGO city in a box could incorporate classic LEGO buildings alongside modern efforts. It could be modular, mounting components on jumper plates so that buildings could be rearranged or swapped in and out entirely, to let builders be their own urban planner. A microscale City would have advantages over Minecraft, such as the addition of vehicles (boats on trans-blue water, planes held aloft on trans-clear bars) and rounded elements (domes for observatories and round tiles for windows). A plate-built microfigure could be included for each of the classic LEGO City character types – Police, Fire, citizen, criminal and EMT. The piece count (and therefore the price) could be comparable to the Crafting Table.