LEGO announces change to 18+ building instructions in 2023

The LEGO Group has announced that building instructions in 18+ sets will be changing from 2023, starting with the newly-revealed 10312 Jazz Club.

Building instructions across the rest of the LEGO portfolio changed mid-2022, moving from designs that mirrored the box art to product renders on lighter backgrounds. The LEGO Group initially explained that change as creating a ‘visually consistent unboxing experience’, with the new manuals matching the design of its paper bags, which will replace plastic bags in sets next year.

Direct-to-consumer sets, however – from those in the LEGO Icons range to within themes like Star Wars, Ideas and Marvel – have maintained their unique building instructions designs to date. That will all change come 2023, as the LEGO Group aligns its sets designed for adults with the rest of its products. This time, it’s apparently because of technical issues surrounding the paper bags.

“As our fans have noticed, the covers of building instructions for many of our sets underwent a redesign this year with exception of our LEGO sets for adults,” the LEGO Group shared in a statement. “Starting from [January] 2023, building instructions for adult sets will also feature redesigned covers with lighter background prints.

“The redesign of building instruction covers is connected to our move to paper-based bags in our boxes. A lighter background print ensures that we maintain our very high quality standards. In this case, that the visual appearance of the paper-based bags is not impacted by potential ink marks caused by friction between building instructions and bags during transportation.”

The lighter building instructions will surely still have some ink on them – the product renders aren’t entirely white, as seen in the cover for 10312 Jazz Club above – but seemingly not enough to cause concern. What’s perhaps more puzzling is that instruction manuals in most bigger sets currently arrive in their own cardboard wallets, ostensibly to protect them from damage in transit, which would surely prevent ink marks anyway.

One possible explanation is that the LEGO Group is removing those cardboard wallets, which would save on more packing materials (in line with its wider sustainability goals), although it would then open the building instructions back up to potential bending, creasing and warping within boxes. We’ll hopefully find out for sure when the first 18+ sets – including 10312 Jazz Club – arrive in stores.

10312 Jazz Club launches January 1, 2023 for £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99. Click here for more details and a full gallery of images.

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Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

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