≡ Menu

The LEGO Chinese New Year sets of the last couple of years have been beautifully designed and super popular. A few days ago, LEGO announced that there will be releasing several more sets related to Chinese culture early next year. Below are the details.

November 6th, 2020: Today, the LEGO Group revealed four new LEGO sets celebrating classic Chinese culture and legends at the 3rd China International Import Exhibition (CIIE). This is the company’s largest scale of novelty unveils at the CIIE since 2018. The new offerings range from within themes such as LEGO DUPLO, the popular LEGO Chinese Traditional Festival, and the newly-launched LEGO Monkie Kid.

LEGO DUPLO Town Happy Childhood Moments taps into two critical moments of a toddlers’ life in China: Chinese New Year and kindergarten. It can support Chinese parents to teach their preschoolers about traditions of the lunar New Year and key skills to prepare kindergarten life in a playful way. It is also the first LEGO DUPLO set that is customized for Chinese pre-school families.

LEGO Story of Nian invites children to learn the old story about Nian and celebrates the Chinese new year with LEGO bricks. It features a brick-built Chinese residence with traditional decorations, a snowy scene that is brought to life with a poseable Nian creature, a snowman figure, and six minifigures including grandpa, grandma, three children, and a person in an ox costume to mark the Year of the Ox in 2021.

LEGO Spring Lantern Festival recreates the magical atmosphere of the festival that marks the end of the lunar new year celebrations. It features a brick-built Chinese garden with moon gates, pavilion, pond, and bridge, a special ox lantern illuminated by a LEGO light brick, as well as other must-have items during the festival like a rabbit lantern and a Tang Yuan rice ball.

To inspire children to learn more about Chinese traditions when building, illustrations are telling the legendary stories of Nian. The Lantern Festival is added on the building instructions of the two sets, which is the first time this kind of feature appears in the LEGO Chinese Traditional Festival theme.

LEGO Monkie Kids’ Team Quadcopter, is a new set from the LEGO Monkie Kid theme. It presents the story of Monkie Kid’s team of heroes and their battle with Spider Queen, and perfectly combines the modern hi-tech fantasy elements with the well-known Chinese story. The LEGO Monkie Kid theme was launched in May 2020 as the first LEGO theme inspired by a classic Chinese legend. The new set joins the range of 11 sets, which have already been released, to empower children to be brave, resilient, and optimistic through creative play.

The #80106 LEGO Story of Nian and #80107 LEGO Spring Lantern Festival sets will be available in China and Asia Pacific markets from January 1st, 2021, and from January 10th, 2021 at the LEGO seasonal items section of the Online LEGO Shop. and other markets in the world. The #10943 LEGO DUPLO Town Happy Childhood Moments set will be available across LEGO branded retail stores and the LEGO DUPLO section of the Online LEGO Shop globally from January 1st, 2021. The #80023 LEGO Monkie Kids’ Team Quadcopter set will be available from March 1, 2021, together with another six new LEGO Monkie Kid sets. You can check out the currently available sets at the LEGO Monkie Kid section of the Online LEGO Shop.

Paul Huang, Senior Vice President of the LEGO Group and General Manager of LEGO China, said “We are excited and proud of unveiling new products at the CIIE for the third year in a row. All these novelties are rooted firmly in Chinese culture and values, and provide a common ground for children and families to build and play together. By doing this, we can bring the LEGO play experience closer to the hearts of Chinese consumers and support children with learning through play experiences.”

The LEGO group also announced that they will continue to invest in China, which is a strategic growth market for them. Since the 2nd CIIE which was held in November 2019, the number of LEGO branded retail stores on China’s mainland was almost doubled to 207 as of October 31, 2020. It is expected that another 80 new LEGO branded retail stores will be opened on China’s mainland in 2021, making the total number to reach 300 by the end of next year.

Niels B. Christiansen, Chief Executive Officer of the LEGO Group, said “We are very pleased with the progress we have made in China over the past year. We have continued to invest in bringing learning through play to many more children around the country and achieved double-digit growth. Despite the challenges, we opened more than 80 new stores and launched a theme inspired by Chinese legend in the past 12 months. We remain confident in the long-term potential of the China market.”

The LEGO Foundation and the LEGO Group also announced that they have joined forces with China Braille Press, an affiliated agency to China Disabled Persons Federation (CDPF), to test LEGO Braille Bricks in China with objectives of introducing a fun and engaging way to help Chinese children with vision impairment develop tactile skills and learn the Braille system.

The testing program is being implemented in four blind schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Taian cities in China. It is the first time that the LEGO Braille bricks toolkit is prototyped outside Latin-based languages. Currently the concept has launched in six Latin-based languages and the ambition is to implement a further five, bringing the total up to eleven languages across twenty countries by early 2021.

Stine Storm, Senior Play & Health Specialist at the LEGO Foundation, said “We are very excited to kick off the testing of LEGO Braille Bricks with local partners in China. We believe blind children should have equal access to learning through play opportunities, just like sighted children. Through inclusion, they will have the chance to learn a breadth of key skills such as communication, collaboration, joint problem-solving, etc.”

Another interesting piece of news is that Merlin Entertainments announced that LEGOLAND Shanghai Resort is anticipated to open in 2024. LEGOLAND Shanghai will be one of the largest LEGOLAND Resorts in the world and will incorporate a 250-room fully themed hotel on opening. World-leading creative, design, and construction teams will work together to create an immersive theme park, drawing inspiration from famous scenic spots in Shanghai, Jinshan District, and the town of Fengjing. It will be located in the Jinshan District in southwest Shanghai with a two-hour catchment of 55 million people. The region comprising Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui has an estimated population of 220 million.

What do you think? How do you like the new LEGO Chinese New Year and LEGO Monkie Kid sets? Are you planning to get any of them? And do you have any of them from this year? Which one is your favorite? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below!

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

{ 18 comments }

LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street Review & Thoughts

When the #21324 LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street set was announced last month (see: LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street Coming Soon!) I got so excited I had a hard time waiting until its official release on November 1st. It’s not just that I like Sesame Street, but also because I pay attention to all LEGO sets that come with buildings featuring well-detailed exteriors and interiors. I like to learn from the building techniques, which I then incorporate into my own LEGO city.

When a LEGO set only has a few features that I would like to copy, I just use the downloadable building instructions to learn how they were built, and when a set has a lot to offer (interesting techniques, lots of useful parts, minifigs I like, etc.) I will purchase the set. As Sesame Street wasn’t available until the beginning of this month, and building instructions weren’t available either, I attempted to build the set on my own from the pictures that were included in the press-release and posted at the Online LEGO Shop. Yes, I was that impatient.

The buildings in the Sesame Street set are not what I would call pretty like the #10243 LEGO Creator Parisian Restaurant. or cute like the #10270 LEGO Creator Book Shop. It’s more like an old, rundown big city apartment. And this is exactly what I liked about it. Rundown buildings give so much character to a city. Every broken window, every patch of peeling paint has a story that you can weave through your city.

I was able to recreate most of the set from the parts I had on hand, however, I quickly realized that it is full of new pieces and new colors that are not available in any other set. So, as soon as it was released on November 1st, I purchased it, and when I received it a few days later, I started building immediately. Below are my thoughts on the set.

First things first, I like the box. It’s not too small and not too big – just the right size to hold all the parts and instructions. I’m getting a little tired of the black background of the 18+ sets, but in this instance, it works out well as the set itself is so colorful. The instruction manual is quite substantial with 255 pages and black pages. Many people pointed out that black instruction manuals are very hard to follow, especially when the set includes dark parts. I find this true as well, so good lighting for these types of instructions is important.

Like the box, the instructions also have a minimalist design with just the Sesame Street characters on a plain black cover. The first few pages include quite a bit of information on Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop, and the fan designer of the set Ivan Guerrero (who is a commercial filmmaker from the Philippines). And there are also quotes from LEGO designer Ollie Gregory and LEGO Graphic Designer Crystal Marie Fontan who worked on the set. I have been consistently impressed by Crystal’s work on LEGO minifigures and stickers, so it was nice to read some of her insights.

Speaking of stickers, one sticker-sheet is included with the set featuring 22 stickers. Every one of them is a nod to something from Sesame Street and contains quite a bit of Easter eggs.

The set comes with six main characters; Elmo, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, plus Oscar the Grouch, and Big Bird. Big Bird has an interesting upper body piece that’s slightly rubbery. I suppose this was done to make sure that the beak and tail wouldn’t break off easily. I like it. It’s also interesting to note that from the four short-legged minifigs, two have bendable legs, while the other two have fixed legs. The bendable legs are slightly taller than the regular short legs, so my guess is this is why they were mixed. Other non-minifig characters include Slimey the Worm (as a printed heart-tile… awww!), Dorothy the Goldfish (printed on a clear minifig head that serves as a fishbowl), Radar the Teddy Bear, and Rubber Ducky. And you also get a toy bunny and two white birds.

The parts are separated into six groups of numbered bags, plus an unnumbered bag with the largest plates. You build 123 Sesame Street from bags numbered 1-4, Hooper’s Store from bags numbered 5, and parts for additional decorations and accessories are in bags numbered 6.

From the very beginning, you discover that this set is incredibly colorful! Even the base, which appears all gray from the top, contains tons of hidden colorful plates that provide additional support. Seriously, I can’t remember ever building a set with so many different colors. Yet, it all comes together perfectly at the end. In fact, I would say that this set is a perfect candidate to study color-mixing techniques. Below are a couple pictures from the instructions just to demonstrate how colorful this set is.

Another thing you will discover is how many unique parts this set includes. The parts list hasn’t been added to the BrickLink database yet, so I can’t verify, but based on my research when I tried to build the set myself, I came up with quite a large list of parts that aren’t available in any other set. Some examples are the unprinted Minecraft head in white (used as a lampshade), the new corner curved slope in white, a very small flower stem in tan I have never seen before, the small heart tile in tan, the lamp post in green, the small globe used for the lamp post in satin-trans-light-blue, 1×1 brackets in medium-nougat, the large crate in dark-red, several new pieces in light-yellow, and several more.

Some already existing but still rare parts are the 1x3x3 window frame in tan, the small 1×1 pyramid slopes in black, the 1x1x1 2/3 modified brick with two studs on one side in dark-green, the 2×6 tile in black, 2×4 jumper-plate in dark-orange, the 1×4 masonry brick in lavender. The set also comes with some exclusive printed parts, like the ones you see on the Sesame Street sign and the building number over the door, the 1×2 printed tile with peanuts, and the 1×2 tiles with VCR tape print is not new but still very rare.

One of the features I like most about this set is the great number of furniture pieces and accessories. The bed on the first floor with the little train running around, the two identical beds on the second floor, the large seats on the second floor of both buildings, the bathtub, the VCR player, the air conditioner on the roof, the little dove house on the roof, the random UFO (also on the roof), the mailbox, garbage can, and more. They are all delightful little builds and I definitely plan on reusing them in other settings.

I also like the façade of both buildings. The colors work nicely together, and although the decorative elements are sparse, they are nicely done. And I’m very impressed by the simplicity of the large green door. The only thing I don’t like about the façade is the disproportionately large and protruding décor over the door. It’s a clever design, but it feels out of place. Fortunately, it’s very easy to make it smaller just by the included parts.

When the press-release came out, some fans mentioned that they feel there should be a third window on the second floor. In some images from original Sesame Street material it appears that the building had another window over the door, while other images show no window there, so I’m not sure which one is considered more correct, but seeing the set in person, I feel it’s perfectly balanced.

Another feature fans didn’t like from the press-release is that the side of the smaller building is open and fully exposed facing the front. Unfortunately, this looks even worse in real life than in images. I’m not sure why designers made this decision. The exposed interior, the thin or non-existing walls, the disjointed jumble of colors, and the oddly angled roof makes this building look chaotic and unfinished. This is unfortunate, as it looks great from the two finished sides. A couple of solutions I can think of are to turn the small building 45 degrees, so the prettiest side faces the front, or you can finish off the two sides and make a completed building.

Overall, I really like the set and I’m already working on some modifications. I believe both young and old Sesame Street fans will be very happy with it, LEGO City and Modular Building fans will be happy with it, and those who want a large number of useful and rare parts will be happy with it. Speaking of parts, I should also mention that the set comes with just about 100 extra parts. Sure they are small, usually 1×1 elements, but they are all very useful either to expand the set, or in some other application. If you are interested, #21324 LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street is available directly from LEGO at the LEGO Ideas section of the Online LEGO Shop.

What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Ideas Sesame Street set? Are you planning to get it? Or do you have it already? What features you like/don’t like? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below!

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

{ 25 comments }