LEGOs are among the very few things that everyone in our family appreciates. For years, we’ve enjoyed flipping through LEGO catalogues together, strolling through the LEGO store whenever we went to the mall, and stopping to look for new LEGO sets in Target’s toy department. We have always considered LEGO sets to be some of the best toys to buy for our kids. However, the coolest stuff – larger, more expensive sets – has been seen as too much of a luxury that we couldn’t afford.
2020 flipped everyone’s world upside down, and it broke that invisible barrier in our minds with regard to these fancy building blocks. On one of those fateful days when Target was still out of toilet paper, we were admiring the largest set for sale (London Bus), Hong suggested that it would be fun if we built it together. We didn’t put that box in our shopping cart that day, but it opened our minds up to eventually purchasing $1,000+ worth of LEGO sets over the next three months.
We justified these purchases with two reasons: (1) with everyone quarantined at home through the pandemic, we needed something more substantial than ever before to kill time and to bond as a family, and (2) with COVID-19 cancelling so many of our vacation plans (8 itineraries and 11 flight segments… who’s counting…), it wasn’t unreasonable to repurpose just a portion of that leisure spending. At the end of the day, though, it was a dream come true for Hong and I (maybe the kids, too?) to finally own some of the coolest LEGO sets.
Background Collection – Minifigures
Before getting to our 2020 collection, I should mention the minifigure collection that I had started several years ago. I operated with the mindset that LEGO minifigures were some of the most unique and interesting items to collect, and they take up no space relative to their value. It was a way to consolidate different genres of interest, because this was a platform where Buzz Lightyear, Storm Troopers, pirates, and Batman could all be compatible.
I’d sometimes buy specific ones from second-hand sellers at a premium, or I’d acquire an entire set and more or less throw the car/boat/house into a drawer. I’ve purchased individual blind bag minifigures, or in the case of the Disney series bought the entire sets. It was quite a journey to complete the 4 Ninja Turtles and the 3 LOTR heroes, and the kids still haven’t figured out what to do with Yoda’s space ship without a Yoda in it.
By this time, I had well over 250 unique LEGO minifigures displayed on two towers, plus a few must-have animals such as T-rex, camel, and sharks. I’ve always dreamed of one day building a LEGO universe where these diverse LEGO characters can call home.
LEGO Speed Champion Nissan GT-R Nismo (76896) – $20 / 298 pieces
This wasn’t exactly a “big” LEGO set like the rest of the list, but earned a spot here because it modeled after my dream car. I bought two, sent one to Phil, and we built them together over Zoom. Xuan was the one who first came up with the idea of virtually playing LEGOs with friends, and I thought it was brilliant.
While the Speed Champions line had been around for a while, and I’ve had a few of those cars (Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren), the GT-R was among the first two-seater models. Compared to the one-seaters for $5 less, these wider models had much more realistic proportions and better aesthetics. Both Phil and I decided to tweak the assembly and put the steering wheel on the right side, as it would be in this car’s home country.
LEGO Creator London Bus (10258) – $130 / 1,686 pieces
The London Bus was an Expert Creator model with realistic details. It was our very first LEGO project exceeding 1,000 pieces, and everyone worked on it together for an entire afternoon. Compared to the other large sets we later acquired, though, it was a rather tedious build. 26 identical seat assemblies? 21 windows? Putting this LEGO vehicle together felt like constructing a real bus.
While the bus was meant as a standalone display with no minifigure compatibility (e.g. no pegs on the seats or aisles), its dimensions happened to fit LEGO people fairly well. As such, we declared it our first part of the LEGO universe, and immediately relocated a part of my minifigure collection into it. With the enclosed space, it even served to dust-proof the minifigures within! Unfortunately, with the lack of pegs on seats, they’d fall all over the place at the slightest tilt of the bus.
LEGO Ideas Tree House (21318) – $200 / 3,036 pieces
Speaking of childhood dreams, Hong’s was unquestionably a tree house. Coincidentally, LEGO had released the exact thing not long ago, except that it was out of stock everywhere due to high demands and supply chain disruptions under the pandemic.
At this time, we had just dropped a record-breaking amount of money on a $130 LEGO set, so a $200 set still seemed difficult to fathom. The uncertainties of whether this tree house will ever be back on the market dramatically increased our desire for it, and after some time I found myself stalking this product listing on LEGO Store, Amazon, and a few other outlets every six hours. Amazon obtained a small shipment one day so I snatched one without blinking. The item went back to out of stock immediately after I checked out.
Building the tree house was every bit as fun as we imagined. My primary appreciation was on the sturdy construction of the thick base and tree trunk. They seemed indestructible! On the other hand, Hong loved the little rooms, the intricate amenities within, the staircase, bridge, etc.. The set came with summer (green) and fall (orange) leaves and Hong knew immediately that she’d go with the latter. The green leaves went straight to a plastic cup and have remained there since.
My one complaint was the tree house’s ambiguous commitment to being a playable set. It came with four minifigures, a bunch of food and tools, and even a swing… but the rooms were entirely covered in flat tiles so all a minifigure could do was to lie flat on the floor. The “house” part of the finished product ended up being pure sculptures for admiration, whereas the “tree” part became part of our LEGO universe.
LEGO Friends Heartlake City Airplane (41429) – $70 / 574 pieces
Before we bought ourselves the giant sculptures, Hong and I gave the kids allowance and let them choose their own LEGO sets. We were more generous with the allowance accumulation than we thought, and they soon could start to afford bigger things than they had ever laid their hands on. This post features their largest two sets.
Heartlake City Airplane came out during the summer, which I was immediately on board with being still deep in mourning over the cancelled trips. Personally, I preferred the LEGO City Passenger Airplane (60262, $100 / 669 pieces) which came with an airport terminal, a car compartment in the tail, a co-pilot seat, and a less cartoon-ish plane body. Despite my attempts of persuasion, though, the kids insisted on the LEGO Friends version. Well, that’s the verdict for those of you who doubted this product line’s appeal to little girls.
I took no part in building this thing, but played with it from time to time with the kids. It was easily my favorite thing among the massive LEGO products in their play area. I wasn’t a huge fan of the large, highly specialized pieces that formed the plane’s head and belly, because they blurred the line between LEGO and molded plastic toys. Aside from that, though, I loved the seats, windows, overhead luggage compartment, lavatory, and refreshment cart. One day we’ll be flying on a real plane again, right? For now this would do.
LEGO Friends Rescue Mission Boat (41381) – $90 / 908 pieces
I don’t have much to say about the Rescue Mission Boat aside from it being the most interesting of the LEGO Friends sets that the kids didn’t already have. Hong and I were just glad that they didn’t insist on a third camping van, and the kids liked this primarily because of the pink narwhal. Well it did have two decks and a wild animal dock, so that was kind of cool.
LEGO Lion Dance (80104) – $80 / 882 pieces
In each of the recent years, LEGO released a special set to celebrate Chinese New Year. By the time I learned about this, the previous iterations had been out of stock and only traded on eBay among insanely wealthy collectors. Luckily for me, this year’s Lion Dance set was my favorite design of them all, and it was still for sale. As we began dropping those airline refunds on plastic building blocks, snatching one of these was a no-brainer.
Hong and I put this together over a couple evenings and it was really fun. I loved the gold-and-red color scheme. I loved the cute design of those miniature lions. I loved the army of 8 minifigures. I loved the gate.
Playing with this set inspired me to show the kids some of the Wong Fei Hong movies from the 90s. We pretended these LEGO lions could climb, fly-kick, and destroy enemies with their sword teeth. Ah~ could there ever be another LEGO set as culturally meaningful as this?
LEGO Ideas Pirates of Barracuda Bay (21322) – $200 / 2,545 pieces
During the few weeks when I checked for the tree house availability several times per day, I was even more obsessed with another $200 set – Pirates of Barracuda Bay. It was technically released in April 2020, but I wasn’t able to find it anywhere until mid-August. Then, of course, I finalized my purchase within hours of it being back in stock.
Whereas the tree house was Hong’s childhood dream, the pirate ship was mine. Growing up, the coolest LEGO sets were either pirate or castle themed. I remember drooling over department store displays of these LEGO structures roughly ten times bigger than whatever my parents would’ve been willing to buy me. Fast forward 30 years, I became really into ships after Hong got me Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag for a birthday. As such, even though I’d still love to get my hands on a solid medieval castle, an 18th-century ship with gigantic sails was definitely at the top of my LEGO wish list. As if they were reading my mind, LEGO decided to release this set right at the beginning of an eternal quarantine.
The Pirates of Barracuda Bay was… unconventional, compared to traditional pirate sets. The band of pirates had supposedly wrecked their ship on a deserted island, pulled an HGTV on the hull, and now operated a tropical island inn from there. That was… cute, I guess? Not sure how I felt about an overly artistic hotel managed by water thugs, but this set was also convertible to the pre-crash state of the ship. I was sold, and there was never any doubt that I bought this set for the actual ship.
Building this set provided so much joy. The parrots, canons, wheel, anchor, and treasure chests were all little things I remember really wanting as a boy. Assembling the hull, the decks, and the masts reminded me of the ship anatomy that I had recently learned as an adult. I took care not to roll up the sails to decorate the inn (as pictured on the box), because it’d reportedly crease them and make the ship less attractive. The inn version ended up being amazing and I contemplated leaving it as is, but after a few days I continued on with the original plan and never looked back.
A less than ideal thing about LEGO Ideas Pirates of Barracuda Bay was that quite a number of pieces were used only in either of its two forms, so we’d have a bag of leftovers one way or the other. Also, after converting to the ship form, the island itself was littered with unsightly ship docks, making it too ugly to display but too large to stow away.
Fortunately… we had the Lion Dance set, which we managed to integrate onto the leftover island. No, it wasn’t all that cohesive of a combo, but at least I got the ugly parts covered up. Blue waters and palm trees and decorative Chinese gates and dancing lions formed a surprisingly cheerful sight. Surrounded by extra sharks, of course.
LEGO Ideas Voltron (21311) – $180* / 2,321 pieces
We all remembered the LEGO catalogue announcing the transformable Voltron a couple years ago, and then seeing it in person at Legoland California. Having both enjoyed the TV series as kids, Hong and I saw this as a highly tempting toy to buy. The desire was abundant but we lacked the catalyst to actually splurge so much money back then. I also contemplated buying one, waiting for it to appreciate in value, and then selling it on eBay.
Ironically, two years later, I ended up buying it on eBay, at a premium of $240*. The $60 markup, months after the product got discontinued, was significant but not enough to bother me in a year of f**k-it attitudes. It also made me glad to have not speculatively hoarded this LEGO set, because I value my home space a lot more than the ~$25 in net profit after taxes, fees, and shipping.
Voltron was quite different from our other LEGO sets. It was a Transformer-like toy as opposed to a building or a vehicle for the minifigures to reside in. Also, it relied heavily on small, standard, not-specific bricks. It was rather amazing that such a statement piece could’ve been had without a bunch of custom-designed parts, like the airplane head or the ship hull. We knew the lions could be combined into a large robot, and reversed, but actually working it out in front of us was still an unbelievable engineering wonder. The design really closely mirrored the original Voltron toys, and the transformation didn’t leave many extra pieces behind (just one).
The set came with six booklets of instructions – one for each lion and a sixth one for the weapons and the transformation. While many LEGO sets had distinct components (like the pirate ship’s three sections), this was the only one I know of that was designed for parallel builds. If you had three people working together, you could easily knock the whole thing out in under three hours without getting in each other’s way.
So there we have it, Voltron, the Defender of our LEGO Universe!
Before embarking on this journey of expensive LEGO sets, I never quite realized how much time these things could take. It was just not something we thought about, having only experience with $20-50 sets that were quick to build. On average, we found ourselves able to assemble 300 pieces per hour. Pictured at the top of this page were sets made from over 12,000 pieces, and must have taken a whole work week!
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