The biggest LEGO Ideas sets of all time – April 2024

09/04/202409/04/2024 Chris Wharfe 6828 Views 0 Comments

Now that the dust has settled on 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale, where does this ambitious new release sit among the biggest LEGO Ideas sets of all time?

Bursting from the imagination of Lucas Bolt and on to LEGO Store shelves at the start of April 2024, 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale is the 56th LEGO Ideas set to emerge from Billund – and one of the biggest. You only need to give it a quick sideways glance to come to that conclusion, but where exactly does its 3,745 pieces place it among the heavyweights of this crowdsourced theme?

We’ve compiled the 10 biggest LEGO Ideas sets so far to find out – and you might be surprised by how few of these sets launched in the past couple of years. Dive into the full top 10 below, and let us know in the comments how many of these you’re lucky enough to own…

10 – 21333 Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night / 21341 Disney Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage

Price: £149.99 / $169.99 / €169.99 Pieces: 2,316 Release date: May 25, 2022 / Price: £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99 Pieces: 2,316 Release date: July 1, 2023

LEGO Art by way of LEGO Ideas, 21333 Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night does genuinely new and interesting things with a 19th-century painting. Truman Cheng’s visionary design deserves all the applause for that alone, but it has one more string in its bow: a place in the 10 biggest LEGO Ideas sets of all time, even if only by the skin of its teeth.

In fact, it has to share the stage with 21341 Disney Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage, which by some coincidence shares the exact same piece count with its LEGO Ideas predecessor. Whether by dint of the Disney tax or its additional minifigures, though, Amber Veyt’s Hocus Pocus set costs an extra £50 / $60 / €60 over the Starry Night.

9 – 21311 Voltron

Price: £159.99 / $179.99 / €179.99 Pieces: 2,321 Release date: August 1, 2018

The first set in this list not forced to share its crown (even if it is a ninth-place crown), 21311 Voltron is one of the mightiest mechs the LEGO Group has ever committed to plastic. Weighing in at only five more pieces than 21333 Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night and 21341 Disney Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage, this 2018 set is a mechanical marvel simply for its ability to stand up straight under its own weight. That it can split into separate mini mechs is the icing on the retro cake.

8 – 21337 Table Football

Price: £214.99 / $249.99 / €249.99 Pieces: 2,339 Release date: November 1, 2022

Much maligned for its execution, this short-lived release nonetheless occupies a spot in the LEGO Ideas Hall of Fame for its size and scope alone. Most of 21337 Table Football’s 2,339 pieces were not devoted to making a large and expansive foosball table, though: they were instead concentrated on making a smaller table sturdy enough to withstand play. The compromises may have been many, but this is still the eighth-biggest set from the theme so far, and nobody can take that away from it.

7 – 21344 The Orient Express Train

Price: £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99 Pieces: 2,540 Release date: December 1, 2023

Now we’re getting somewhere: a more than 200-piece leap from 21337 Table Football brings us to 21344 The Orient Express Train, which rolled into stations last December and instantly cemented its status as one of the biggest LEGO Ideas sets to date. This one was again criticised for the changes made to the original submission, but has found favour among plenty of train enthusiasts nevertheless – not least for being able to fit on standard LEGO track. (Take that, Hogwarts Express.)

6 – 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay

Price: £179.99 / $199.99 / €199.99 Pieces: 2,545 Release date: April 1, 2020

A favourite of LEGO Pirates fans everywhere, 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay looks far more than the sum of its parts. In fact, it’s hard to believe that there are only 2,545 pieces here – just five more than in 21344 The Orient Express Train – for the sheer scope and size of this shipwrecked island, which is also a 2-in-1 set (you can retrieve and rebuild the Black Seas Barracuda from the wreckage).

5 – 21332 The Globe

Price: £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99 Pieces: 2,585 Release date: February 1, 2022

Take 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay, add 40 extra pieces, and then also sub out pretty much all of the original 2,545 parts for something else, and you’ve got 21332 The Globe. That’s a long-winded way of saying that this set is just a little bit bigger than its nautical contemporary, but only in the way that a journey around the world is a little bit long-winded (surely). In any case: here is the fifth-biggest LEGO Ideas set to date.

4 – 21318 Tree House

Price: £214.99 / $249.99 / €249.99 Pieces: 3,036 Release date: August 1, 2019

Released all the way back in 2019 but still on shelves today, 21318 Tree House has only been bettered in piece count by three sets in this theme so far. That perhaps speaks to just how out of hand the LEGO Ideas theme was getting a few years ago – it’s since scaled things back to a degree, with a few more affordable sets joining the line-up in the past couple of years – but ensures we’ll all be talking about this set for a while yet.

3 – 21323 Grand Piano

Price: £344.99 / $399.99 / €399.99 Pieces: 3,662 Release date: August 1, 2020

The LEGO Ideas theme is nothing if not ambitious, and you’ll find that level of ambition expressed nowhere better than in 21323 Grand Piano. How else can you describe a set that attempts to deliver a playable piano (sort of) with 3,662 pieces, and then asks buyers to part with £345 for the privilege? The LEGO Group has won this round though, because this set is still available nearly four years later, and has clearly carved out a place in the portfolio…

2 – 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale

Price: £314.99 / $359.99 / €359.99 Pieces: 3,745 Release date: April 1, 2024

It’s not quite a gold medal for 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale after all, but second place on the podium is still good going. And it sits just 210 pieces behind the winner, proving once and for all that the LEGO Group was happy to go all-out on its celebration of the tabletop roleplaying game’s 50th anniversary. The LEGO Ideas theme might not be pumping out as many massive sets as it used to, but when it does go big, it goes big.

1 – 21330 Home Alone

Price: £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99 Pieces: 3,955 Release date: November 1, 2021

Who saw this one coming? Well, probably anyone who’s put together 21330 Home Alone’s 24 bags – one for each day of advent, because this is a LEGO set based on a Christmas movie, geddit? – and experienced that rewarding feeling that only comes with completing a nearly-4,000-piece build. In fact, no LEGO Ideas sets have yet broached that particular milestone, but this one comes close at 3,955 pieces.

And given LEGO Ideas projects have a limit of 3,000 pieces – it’s up to the designers to push beyond that if the proposal gets the green light – it’s unlikely it will be toppled from its vantage point any time soon…