In order to compile a list of the biggest and most challenging Lego sets, it was necessary to narrow down the criteria. First, the sets have to be mass produced by LEGO. In other words, we’re not considering any giant custom sets like the 6-meter Death Star Trench or insane 150,000 piece recreation of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings. Second, we excluded expandable sets such as the Modular Building series that you can keep adding on to like the Town Hall (10224), Green Grocer (10185), and the newly released Palace Cinema (10232) that can be combined together to lay out enormous Lego city scenes. Furthermore, to define what we mean by “biggest” the list considers those Lego sets with the largest amounts of pieces and/or final completed size of the set. As far as “challenging,” most of the sets listed below are suggested for builders aged 16 or older, although I’ve personally seen kids half that age cranking out 1,000+ piece sets with hardly any difficulty. Some of the sets listed below are still available at Lego stores worldwide, while some are out of production.
But you may find retired sets listed for outrageous prices on Amazon or eBay, though, those ones are arguable the best LEGO sets. Once Lego stops selling an item, or if produced in limited quantities, third parties grab those products and jack up the price depending on demand. You’ll find Lego sets a purchase limit per customer on certain items. Last week we created a list of must-have movie-themed Lego sets. Now, here’s a list of the most challenging and biggest lego sets, ordered somewhat subjectively but with consideration of total number of pieces combined with level of difficulty. By the way, the number in the parenthesis represents the Item Number in case you decide to go on a hunt for one of these Lego sets. It’d be hard to argue against Lego’s Star Wars Collector’s Millennium Falcon as being one of the most challenging and largest Lego sets (it also probably ranks as our #1 LEGOs for adults). The $499 Millennium Falcon is suggested for ages 16-years and older but younger kids can probably get through it with some supervision.
The highly detailed scale model is made up of a whopping 5,195 pieces but only 5 mini-figures including Luke, Princess Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and a stormtrooper. Why the set doesn’t include C-3PO and R2-D2 mini-figures is sort of a mystery (weren’t they on the Falcon during the mission to rescue Leia?), but nevertheless the ship itself is more than enough to focus on. The Collector’s Millennium Falcon was released in 2007 and retired in 2010, but remains the most-expensive mass-produced Lego set to date. If you need a little break from science fiction-based Star Wars sets you can jump into an architectural project building the Taj Mahal. The $299 set gives you more bang for your buck than the Collector’s Millennium Falcon, boxing a total of 5,922 pieces (about 700 more than the Falcon). What also makes this set a bit more of a challenge for builders is that all the pieces are all generally the same color. This makes it especially difficult for those who like to dump all their Lego pieces into a pile rather than build bag-by-bag.
Puzzle builders will attest to the difficulty of puzzles that don’t vary too much in color or patterns. The Lego model of the famous Taj Mahal palace in India was released in 2008. The Super Star Destroyer is a massive Lego set with 3,152 pieces and five mini-figures including Darth Vader, Admiral Piett, Dengar, Bossk and IG-88. You’ll spend most of your time building the interior structure of this ship (which in the end you don’t even see), but the results are an extraordinary detailed rendition of the massive ship from the Star Wars saga that measures almost 50-inches and weighs almost 8 pounds. The Super Star Destroyer sells for $399 US.The Lego model that puts all other Lego models to shame was proudly displayed in New York's Times Square last week. The life-size Star Wars X-Wing fighter replica is being dubbed the world's largest Lego model and apparently took 32 "master builders" to put together. The model -- which reportedly weights 46,000 pounds -- took 17,000 combined hours to build, according to Businessweek.
It was on display in New York for three days through May 25 and will now be moved to LEGOLAND in California. In case you missed it, here are some photos of the model in Times Square: The Morning Email helps you start your workday with everything you need to know: breaking news, entertainment and a dash of fun. Welcome to BrickCon Public Exhibition BrickCon 2017: Brick to Old School! October 7th – 10am to 4pm, October 8th – 10am to 3pm This is our 16th BrickCon. We continue at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall Tickets will be on sale June 1st View thousands of models created by adult LEGO® Hobbyists from around the nation and the world! Build your own masterpieces with LEGO® parts at our Building Zone! Purchase current, past and custom LEGO® sets, parts and minifigs at our Brick Bazaar! BrickCon 20152017 - Sat October 7th: 10am to 4pm Sunday October 8th: 10am to 3pm @ Seattle Center Exhibition Hall Please purchase your convention tickets from Eventbrite here
Bilbo and his company of cheerful dwarves managed to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the vicious and cunning dragon, Smaug. While the dwarves stayed, Bilbo went back to his Hobbit-Hole to care take of his lovely garden. We hope you’ve had lots of fun playing with the LEGO® The Hobbit™ sets! Bilbo’s adventure may be over, but yours doesn’t have to be! You can still explore Middle-Earth and play as Lord of the Rings characters in LEGO DIMENSIONS™!LEGO has captured the imaginations of children for several decades and continues creating a wide range of products to this day. The famous colored bricks made their debut in Billund, Denmark in 1958 as a creation of the LEGO Group. Considered the toy of a million possibilities, the main focus for LEGO was to create something children can play with, over and over, any way they see fit. Despite the company’s focus on an imaginative, child-friendly product, several incidents over the years have provided dark blemishes on LEGO’s otherwise untarnished name.
The AMC show Breaking Bad focused on the exploits of a chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cook and his drug dealer ex-student. Naturally, a Breaking Bad set made from LEGO bricks that became available for purchase online for $250 caused quite a stir. Several Twitter followers posted concerned comments suggesting the set is highly inappropriate for children and the use of LEGO bricks is misleading. If you’re thinking “There is no way LEGO signed off on that,” you would be correct. LEGO has in no way endorsed or acknowledged the set, though the entire thing is made from their product. The independent company Citizen Brick purchases LEGO pieces and then redresses them into sets that would never make it into the actual toy line, such as drug- and sex-themed sets. In this modern age of domestic terrorism and paranoia, sometimes all it takes is a single word to send everyone into a panic. In the case of a 6 year old boy from Massachusetts, that word was “gun.” During a morning trip to Old Mill Pond Elementary, the kindergartner pulled out a quarter-sized LEGO minifigure rifle in front of the other students.
The other children began to panic, rousing the concern of the bus driver, who immediately slammed on the brakes. Although the boy obviously did not face any legal repercussions, he was given detention and ordered to write an official apology to the driver and all the children on the bus. The mother of the boy declared the school “overreacted” and that the toy did not pose a threat of any kind. The bus driver, however, stated that several of the children were still in shock and the ordeal was quite disruptive. In a similar trend, a company known as BrickArms created a controversial minifigure bandit, affectionately named Mr. White. The minifigure wears a tan militant shirt and black pants, accessorized with a pistol, an assault rifle, an RPG, and several grenades. The figure also sports a white head wrap that bears a striking resemblance to an Islamic terrorist. At least that is what a Muslim organization called the Ramadhan Foundation believes. The foundations members viewed the minifigure as highly obscene and labeled it as “glorifying terrorism.”
BrickArms founder Will Chapman has stated that the minifigure is not a terrorist, but simply a run-of-the-mill bandit with no specific skill set or personality. The Simpsons, for those who have been living under a rock for the last 25 years, is an animated television show that focuses on the mishaps of a dysfunctional, yellow-skinned family set in the fictional town of Springfield. The colorful denizens of Springfield are good candidates for collaboration with LEGO—however, the adult subject matter of the show certainly did not fit the age group of the toy line. When LEGO announced that Simpsons-themed sets would be release in 2014, parents grew concerned that the series wasn’t child appropriate. While LEGO has not made any official announcements involving the concerns, one company spokesman assured detractors that the series of sets were intended exclusively for fans of the television show. Anyone who has ever played a LEGO video game will know that humor goes hand-in-hand with those colorful bricks.
One father of two, however, did not find the humor in a sticker of a construction minifigure accompanied by the catcall “Hey Babe!” Josh Stearns, who is also a Campaign Director for Free Press, posted the complaint online upon discovering the sexist statement. The complaint gained enough awareness that LEGO saw fit to send Stearns not one reply, but two. The first email, sent by Charlotte Simonsen, Head of Corporate Communications, was considered by Stearns to be insulting, as it insinuated that the company was sorry he couldn’t take a joke. The second email, sent by Andrea Ryder, Head of Outbound Licensing Department, contained a more amiable message that apologized for the sticker’s appearance, while assuring him that the product was discontinued and future decisions would not be made so careless. It is a fact of life that sometimes lovable creations have a dark side lurking beneath the exterior that the rest of the world sees. The factories that make the LEGOs children love are no different.
Earlier this year, LEGO announced that, due to a change with their parent factory in Denmark, 380 workers will be laid off by 2015. The Denmark factory has always produced, decorated, and packaged a large portion of the available sets, while other factories around the world picked up the slack—but the Denmark factory will no longer package or decorate their bricks, instead sending them to factories closer to distribution points. The Chief Executive of the Denmark plant has stated that while certain employees can retrain and find other positions within the factory, a significant portion will simply be laid off. Following in the footsteps of Mr. White, the “Jabba the Hutt’s Palace” set from the LEGO Star Wars line is said to resemble real mosques in Istanbul and Lebanon. A Turkish community in Austria has declared the set is an affront to the principles of their religion, and that depicting an intergalactic gangster as the palace’s owner is offensive. When word traveled around the Internet that the Jabba set would be discontinued in 2013, the Turkish sympathizers claimed a victory for their cause.
LEGO has since corrected the rumors that they were withdrawing the set due to prejudice. In an official announcement, LEGO stated the set had run its course after two years on shelves, and that it was simply time to retire the model. Photo credit: Shadman the Wonderguy A long time ago, in a brick factory far, far away, a decision was made to unite all the minifigures under one race of color. That color was yellow. According to Michael McNally, the choice for the color was so that the individual playing with the figures could imagine any person from any walk of life. For several decades the LEGO sets have included the bright yellow faces on every single figure—that is, until they ran into Lando Calrissian. You see, when LEGO acquired the rights to create sets for Star Wars, everything was fine for the yellow-faced characters—except Lando did not receive a figure at all. When LEGO showed no signs of creating the epic character, the public cried out for racial equality among the minifigures.
LEGO finally had to address the fact that making every figure yellow would exclude members of races with a darker skin tone. Since that time, LEGO has made strides to include skin tones that not only depict actual races, but also show a wider spectrum of colors. It is no small secret that most would consider LEGOs to be a boy’s toy, regardless of the fact that LEGO has stated that is a unisex product. In opposition to these claims, LEGO released the “Friends” theme of sets that were specifically intended for girls. The sets feature pink and purple bricks, accessories like lipstick and purses, and professions such as baker and beautician. Upon the announcement that such a line would exist, several Facebook commenters became outraged at the apparent prejudice towards women. Instead of depicting a female scientist or doctor, the sets reinforce the stereotype that women are only concerned with their looks. While the sets have increased in popularity since their initial release, many still find them unsuitable for the world of the modern girl.