As part of the upcoming LEGO VIP and Black Friday weekends, big spenders will be able to get the special 40563 Tribute to LEGO House for free. This curious little sets reimagines five previous LEGO House sets at a smaller scale.
40563 Tribute to LEGO House is coming to LEGO.com for VIP weekend (December 19 and 20)and Black Friday, when you’ll be able to get the set for free with a £250/$250/€250 spend.
LEGO House is located in Billund, Denmark, just steps from the LEGO Campus, where the company’s staff work and make the blocky magic happen. Also known as Home of the Brick, LEGO House is a place where fans can get uniquely immersed in the idea behind the System.
Since opening, LEGO House has offered exclusive sets so that visitors can take home a special souvenir from their trip, which makes a lot of sense. 40501 The Wooden Duck pays tribute to LEGO history, 21037 LEGO House celebrates the venue’s exterior, while 4000026 LEGO House Tree of Creativity, 40366 LEGO House Dinosaurs and 40502 The Brick Moulding Machine all relate to things found inside LEGO House.
40563 Tribute to LEGO House set details
Price: Free with £250 / $250 / €250 spend at LEGO.com
Minifigures: 0
Pieces: 583
LEGO House is based on the LEGO idea, which is intrinsically linked with LEGO bricks. These sets then use those bricks to offer a memento from a visit. It’s rather meta and rather fun… but then basing a promotional set on the souvenir sets based on the venue that’s based on the bricks… it’s all going a bit far.
The biggest problem is that there’s no connection to the models contained within the set if you have never visited LEGO House. If you imagine how many people shop at LEGO.com during this season though, this is a relatively cheap and effective way to promote LEGO House to consumers around the world. That may not be the reason behind it, but it seems the most logical one and also seems disappointingly cynical – something that cannot usually be said about anything to do with LEGO House.
Each of the five models is fun to build – the wooden duck and dinosaurs are neat examples of creating organic shapes at a small scale, while the moulding machine is impressive in how accurately it captures the shape of the brick-producing kit. The Tree of Creativity just about works at this scale but has to fudge things somewhat, while LEGO House requires some careful aligning of tiles.
Despite this being enjoyable enough builds though, they are only really going to hold appeal for LEGO House die-hard fans, and even that constituency probably already owns the full-sized sets. This is simply a really strange set distributed in a way that doesn’t fit the subject matter. Hopefully the deals during VIP weekend and Black Friday weekend will be good in and of themselves, because it isn’t worth spending £250 just to get this set.
SCORE: 45
VERDICT: You’ll be happy enough to get something for free, but subject matter isn’t enticing enough to encourage you to hit the high spend threshold.