Review: 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle from LEGO® Disney™

It’s been 34 years (pause to realize my age…) since Beauty and the Beast was released by Disney™, blowing audiences away with the vibrant story and visuals. The movie and its characters have become icons, and many LEGO® sets have been inspired by it. So far, all of these sets are either aimed at children in the LEGO® Disney Princess theme, LEGO® Brickheadz, or references in other sets like 43226 Disney Duos. 

Now, for the first time, an 18+ set fully dedicated to the movie is being released: 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle. Will it be as impressive as the original? Be our guest, and join us in exploring the mysterious castle and all its secrets.

Review: 10354 The Shire from LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, but a hobbit hole made of LEGO® bricks! Today we journey back to Middle-earth to recreate Bilbo Baggins' famous abode, Bag End, in set 10354 The Shire. 

There's much to celebrate in this set; not only is it Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday but we finally get a LEGO Tolkien-based set that isn't prohibitively expensive. Plus, the set contains a treasure trove of new elements including 2 new moulds, 8 exclusive minifigures, and 13 recolours. Let's take a look!

 

April 2025 LEGO® Gifts with Purchase

LEGO® have revealed Gift with Purchase (GwP) 40763 Children's Day Teddy Bear although no dates or conditions have been provided yet. After the current GwP and Double Points promotion ends, the next will be 40761 The Lord of the Rings: Sméagol™ & Déagol™.

Reveal: 10354 The Shire from LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings

The latest LEGO® Icons The Lord Of The Rings set, 10354 The Shire has been officially revealed. My through set review is coming soon, but here is a taster!

Pick a Brick: Create a Minifigure online – UK beta test underway

Recently we gave you a sneak preview of an exciting new web app on the LEGO.com Pick a Brick site: Create a Minifigure. As of today, the beta version has gone live in the UK! Unfortunately it is not available elsewhere.

Design your own minifigure from the available parts – you can create up to 40 minifigures in one order. Once you have designed one, it's easy to duplicate it too, for personal army building!

This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.

March 2025 LEGO® Gifts with Purchase and 2x Insider Points

REVEALED: upcoming GwP 40761 Sméagol & Déagol

What are the LEGO® Gifts with Purchase (GwP) in March 2025? With set 40764 Easter Bunny Surprise now available and a double VIP offer available on selected sets, we've updated this page. 

Review: 43272 Heihei from LEGO® Disney™

One of the most colourful sets released earlier this month is LEGO® Disney 43272 Heihei, a brick-built version of the idiotic rooster from the Moana movies. 

There's a new mould, a few recolours and a pile of rarer colours in this set, so well worth a closer look.

Review: 31215 Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers from LEGO® Art

LEGO® Art has been a polarising theme among the generally praised 18+ sets. So far, only a small minority of the theme's 20 sets have been versions of well-known works of art – and of those, most have been pop art pieces or logos easily transferred into the plastic material and the well-defined colour charts of LEGO bricks. The most interesting departure so far has been 31213 Mona Lisa, reviewed by Jonas Kramm last September and, outside the LEGO Art theme, LEGO® Ideas 21333 Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night which I had pleasure to review in 2022. It's still my favourite set.

Whereas the bold blues of van Gogh's palette transformed delightfully into bricks, da Vinci's Renaissance idiom of thin, light layers resulted in a larger divergence from the original. The project was ambitious but the reception was mixed. 

I wonder if the good performance of the Starry Night made the designers look back to van Gogh and produce 31215 Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers: he sure is an admired artist, but getting two among the very small number of painting-in-LEGO sets is not a small feat. With a quick look, the set seems to be very close to the original painting – but we'll have more than a quick one.

Review: sets 42203, 42204 & 42205 from LEGO® Technic

The March 2025 wave of LEGO® Technic sets consists of 5 vehicles. I’ve already looked at the 2 large F1 cars, and now I turn to the 3 smaller sets, where we find 2 fast cars and a dump truck.

Reveal: 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet from LEGO® Botanicals

LEGO® Botanicals just keep on... growing! But in a way, they are also shrinking.

Just revealed now on LEGO.com, 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet is a smaller floral arrangement being released on 1 May 2025. It's great to see LEGO Botanicals sets at different price points as the larger bouquets are often too expensive as gifts for all occasions. But do you think this one is good value?

Designer interview: LEGO® Ideas 21356 River Steamboat

At LEGO® Fan Media Days in Denmark in September 2024, I was lucky enough to meet some of the design team behind the biggest LEGO® Ideas set to date.

Design Lead Jordan David Scott and Product Designer Marina Stampoli talked me through the absolutely massive LEGO Ideas set 21356 River Steamboat, which comes in at 16" (40cm) x 28" (69cm), contains over 4000 pieces and weighs 3 kilograms. "I did some exercise," says Marina as she lifts the model.

Teaser: LEGO® Pokémon in 2026

LEGO® Pokémon products will be coming in 2026, it has just been revealed. The LEGO Group and The Pokémon Company have announced a new partnership, which makes sense given that Pokémon is partly owned by Nintendo, who LEGO have successfully partnered with for several years now. This does presumably mean, however, that Mattel's current license to produce MEGA Construx Pokémon products will be ending in 2026. 

Review: 21354 Twilight The Cullen House from LEGO® Ideas

Stephenie Meyer started her writing career by breaking the mould, not realizing publishers expect shorter teenage novels than the author's debut manuscript. That didn't stop the voracious hordes of 2000s teen readers; once they had a taste of blood they wanted more of Twilight's supernatural love triangle. Five books, five movies, and twenty years later, the fandom lives on like some kind of immortal vampire, prompting fans around the world to support the LEGO® Ideas 21354 Twilight The Cullen House into production.

Review: sets 42652, 42662 & 42663 from LEGO® Friends

We have reached my final blog post covering the LEGO® Friends sets from the January 2025 wave. The last three sets have us building a treehouse, stylin' a new coif, and setting out on a camping trip. And of course, all these adventures will provide us with new elements.

Set review: 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 and 42207 Ferrari SF-24 from LEGO® Technic

Throughout 2025, The LEGO Group is releasing sets based on the Formula 1 races, which kick off in Australia this weekend. LEGO® Technic joins in with (among others) two large scale F1 cars: 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 Car and 42207 Ferrari SF-24 F1 Car. In part 1 of this review I showed you all the new elements found in sets 42206 & 42207, and now I’ll start building the two speedy vehicles – at the same time, for comparison!

F1 Suspension Mount with Fender (part 6813) from LEGO® Speed Champions

With the 2025 Formula 1 season finally getting underway with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, we'll take a New Elementary view on F1 over the next couple of days!

Suspension Mount with Fender, Formula 1 (6813) is a new element that was introduced in the most recent wave of LEGO® Speed Champions sets. This new specialised part grants the cars an even higher degree of accuracy, but is it useful for anything else? Let's investigate... 

Pick a Brick USA & Canada: Standard elements are back

The LEGO® Pick a Brick service have re-opened their "Standard" service in North America and over 12,000 elements have returned. Only "Bestseller" elements have been available since the service was closed in December 2024.

This is a step towards things getting back to normal with Pick a Brick, what with the ongoing warehouse issues and poor customer communication on late 2024 orders that have left many customers frustrated and angry. However, in a new development for 2025, maximum order quantities have been placed on many items – read on for details.

MOCs with parts from 10345 Flower Arrangement from LEGO® Botanicals

With 14 recoloured elements and parts ranging from butterflies to umbrellas, the latest LEGO® Botanicals set, 10345 Flower Arrangement makes for a pretty good parts pack. I recently reviewed set 10345, and now here are 2 of my own creations using parts from the set.

Review: 40762 Mixed Flowerpot GwP from LEGO® Botanicals

It's proving to be quite the year for LEGO® Botanicals! They've become their own line with their own logo, released some stunning sets with new moulds, taken over LEGO® House and had their first ever Gift with Purchase (GwP) – and now, here is their second already.

40762 Mixed Flowerpot, now available worldwide, is a gorgeous model featuring a range of stunning LEGO flowers. If you are a fan of the LEGO Botanicals theme, you simply cannot miss out from adding this to your collection. If you have never built one, this is the perfect taster set to find out what all the fuss is about! 

Reveal: 72037 Mario Kart™– Mario & Standard Kart from LEGO® Super Mario™

Happy MAR10 Day everyone! What better day to reveal that, on top of the LEGO® Super Mario™ offers available, you can also pre-order a new set coming in May 2025! 

Just revealed, 72037 Mario Kart™– Mario & Standard Kart is a nearly 2000-piece model of Mario bouncing around in his kart. It looks like a really interesting model to build, so let's take a closer look.

Review: 43262 Maleficent's and Cruella De Vil's Dresses from LEGO® Disney

43262 Maleficent's and Cruella De Vil's Dresses from LEGO® Disney is the second of the two dress sets that will be released 1 March 2025.

We have already taken a look at 43266 Cinderella's Dress and now it's time for the slightly larger and more expensive set with two dresses.  While both of these sets may not be of interest to everyone from a theme point of view, they do contain some nice new elements.

LEGO® building at angles: Escaping the grid

Today we are excited to publish a guest article from Arno Knobbe (@legoarno on Instagram), an Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands who attended our building workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend 2024. As a fan of both numbers and LEGO® bricks, he is perfectly qualified to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about building “off-grid” with LEGO parts, but were too afraid to ask because it would probably involve math... Fear not! With Arno’s beginners’ introduction to LEGO building at angles and diagonals, it's easy.

When building with LEGO, we usually adhere to the familiar structure of the standard square grid, where everything aligns neatly and predictably. This grid system provides stability and order. However, there are moments when creativity takes over, and we decide to break free from the constraints of this rigid structure. Either because some angled part needs to be matched, or simply because the diagonal bit breaks the monotony of building in “the Matrix”. The LEGO universe offers several techniques for escaping the LEGO grid by building at an angle, which I will be taking you through today.

Review: sets 42640, 42641, 42650 & 42651 from LEGO® Friends

I am building the sets in the January 2025 wave of LEGO® Friends sets, and for this blog post I’ve selected the ones that primarily focus on animals. It’s a cuteness overload!

The LEGO Friends theme is responsible for the introduction of many new animals, whose more curvy, realistic features stand out from the more blocky classic versions found in themes like LEGO® City. This latest wave brings us many new cute creatures to go ‘aaaaaaaah’ over; both brand new molds and existing molds with new prints. Most of these can be found in the 4 sets that we will be taking a look at today, going from the smallest to the largest.

Reveal: LEGO® Jurassic World Rebirth sets coming June 2025

With the latest film in the franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth coming in July 2025, so too the LEGO® Jurassic World theme continues, with 6 tie-in sets launching on 1 June. Read on to see them all and their prices, plus some new parts we spotted!

Parts review: 71048 LEGO® Minifigures Series 27

I might be a bit late in saying, but LEGO® Minifigures are a bit of a phenomenon. Fifteen years, 47 actual series when including licensed themes, and 727 figures – many of which it would be difficult to imagine ever existing outside of this theme.

There have been hundreds of unique parts introduced, some of which have made it into standard sets by virtue of their usefulness. The posing stand, aka Bar 1L with Angled Hollow Stud (65578) would definitely be a candidate for that. Will Series 27 contain a game-changer of similar importance?

What are the new LEGO® parts in March 2025 sets?

NEWSFLASH: Micro Space Command Centre available for 2,250 Insiders points

I've created a list showing all 516 new LEGO® elements added on 1 March 2025, with links to which sets they come in so you can check for the ones you might be interested in. And for those of you who instead prefer our list of March 2025 sets showing which contain the most new elements, click here.

Review: 76968 Dinosaur Fossils - Tyrannosaurus rex from LEGO® Jurassic World

We're going to build old bones! Massive Tyrannosaurus rex fossil bones from LEGO® bricks, to be exact. First though, we're going to dig into the new parts buried in LEGO® Jurassic World 76968 Dinosaur Fossils.

LEGO® BLUEY™ June 2025 sets revealed

The LEGO Group and BBC Studios have unveiled the upcoming LEGO® BLUEY™ playsets at Toy Fair® 2025 in New York City. This is the first time Bluey and her family will be depicted in LEGO form, within six new sets for builders aged 2 to 5: two are LEGO® DUPLO® sets and four are LEGO® System sets with the 4+ age mark.

Let's take a closer look at all six products due to launch on 1 June 2025, as we imagine the interest in these sets will expand well beyond the intended age group.