Closer look at LEGO’s new Pick-a-Brick packaging

LEGO’s new Pick-a-Brick boxes are rolling into stores soon, so let’s take a closer look at this more environmentally-friendly packaging system.

Trialled in two stores earlier this year and due to roll out during the second half of 2023 worldwide as stocks of the iconic plastic refillable cups run out, the LEGO Group is introducing a new cardboard packaging system for parts and elements plucked from the LEGO store’s Pick-a-Brick walls.

Ahead of this changeover the LEGO Group has kindly provided samples of the new environmentally-friendly cardboard boxes for a hands-on look.

As with the current system for Pick-a-Brick there are large and small containers available, only this time they arrive flat-packed. Presuming that will be the case in store too, you will have to first fold up the box before picking your pieces, which as a process is super quick thanks to a pretty smart design. Then, as per the trials in London and Berlin, once you’ve filled your boxes the lid folds down quite securely – but even so, it appears that they will also be taped shut with a little padlock-style sticker.

The designs across both Pick-a-Brick boxes – as well as the Build-a-Minifigure station boxes also coming in – are at once both smart and eye-catching, with slightly stylised LEGO graphics on the tops and sides of each. The Pick-a-Brick boxes have images of parts and mini-builds on them, while the Build-a-Minifigure one has a minifigure depicted on its lid, to help differentiate between the two separate stations in store that these boxes will be used for.

In terms of durability, clearly these aren’t going to survive as many reuses (or months sat unopened and moved about at home) as the plastic cups of old have, but they are not designed with that as a priority. As the LEGO Group pivots to more environmentally-friendly packaging across its product range, this is a natural step and one that in design and in-store functionality is clearly, simply and nicely realised. If anything, it’s also a better tie-in to the many boxes that line the walls of the LEGO store. We’re all used to years of using the plastic cups, but these will be very easy to get used to filling up at the back of the store.

As far as capacity goes, the Build-a-Minifigure box is tantalisingly much larger in capacity than any three-minifigure plastic packaging was, coming in at 9.2cm wide and long and 3.7cm deep, equivalent to about 2/3 of the capacity of the smaller Pick-a-Brick box. That increased size for a minifigure box doesn’t mean that we necessarily need to buy more minifigures, but the option is there, and for reference we managed to fit 21 minifigures inside the one box while still being able to close it.

Meanwhile, the two cardboard Pick-a-Brick boxes both seem to be a shade under a 1:1 match in volume to their plastic cup predecessors, losing about 5% of the same capacity in our tests at least. What they lose in all-round capacity, though, they make up for with nice, square corners that certainly offer up a different and perhaps more enticing packaging solution for those builders wanting to maximise the available space on offer by stacking bricks and pieces together.

Additionally, being made of a more pliable material than the plastic cups, these boxes may be susceptible to squeezing in a few more bricks here and there, if you want to risk the trip home with an over-packed box of LEGO that could explode. Officially then, we don’t recommend testing the flexibility of the boxes too far…

Indeed, just closing down the lid and trying to re-open it the first time without inflicting any damage did indicate that these boxes will not stand the test of time. You can see in the progression of our photography that the boxes are already a little battered through light handling.

In terms of measurements, the smaller Pick-a-Brick box comes in at 9.2cm long and wide, while the larger Pick-a-Brick box is also 9.2cm wide but twice as long at 18.5cm. Both boxes are the same depth of 5.7cm.

More important, though, are the LEGO brick measurements. In terms of height, both sizes of Pick-a-Brick box can close with a stack of five bricks and two plates floor to ceiling, or six bricks on their side, with space left over for a little something on top too.

The larger Pick-a-Brick box can fit 19 stacked bricks on their side in one column, lengthways, while the smaller Pick-a-Brick box can fit nine. Following this same alignment, both would be able to fit 11 rows of stacked bricks.

Stacking bricks the other way in the larger Pick-a-Brick box will fit 23 rows of nine-deep columns of bricks. If you are following the maths, there’s not much in it between these two ways of lining up your bricks.

All in all, this change may slightly compromise the amount of LEGO you can get in one go by a tiny amount, but it’s a change that is fair and in line with an environmentally-positive direction from the LEGO Group. Watch out for these boxes to start appearing in LEGO stores worldwide from the second half of 2023, as stocks of the plastic cups run out.

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