LEGO Icons 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine review

Whether you grew up under the neon lights of real tables or just whiled away too many hours on the Windows XP game, 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine is hoping to speak directly to you. It’s the first fully-functional LEGO pinball machine (at least that’s what the press release says), and arrives under the LEGO Icons banner painted head to toe in retro – if not quite Classic with a capital C – space colours.

And you have to hand it to the LEGO Icons team. The 18+ theme is a sort of catch-all home for LEGO sets intended for adults, and while that means plenty of licensed tie-ins for nostalgic properties like Transformers and The Lord of the Rings, it’s also a space in which to try out new concepts and ideas. 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine falls squarely into that latter category alongside sets such as 10334 Retro Radio, 10363 Leonardo da Vinci's Flying Machine and (of course) 10323 PAC-MAN Arcade.

The concept here is equally full of promise, but the LEGO Group has tried its hand at working versions of tabletop or handheld games before – with sets like 21337 Table Football and 40596 Magic Maze – and for every hit there’s a miss. 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine has all the potential to fall into the former category, and for a while it feels like it might. In the end, it just falls short.

Before you get to that point, though, there are 16 bags containing 2,274 pieces to put together (along with a hefty sticker sheet), and as a build experience there’s a lot to love here. It’s engaging and varied throughout, and while it’s very occasionally bogged down in repetition (owing to its symmetrical shaping), there’s far less of that than you’d imagine at first glance. 

It’s one of those satisfying builds where at almost every step you’re laying the groundwork for something that’ll come later, and that speaks to all the mechanisms woven into the design: the bumper that synchronises with a flipper further up the playfield; the spring-powered mechanism that launches the ball; the asteroid that (in theory) nudges the astronaut along its track; and so on.

By the time you reach those last few bags, 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine will have given you a deeper appreciation for the art of LEGO design, along with something more practical and functional than you’d traditionally expect from LEGO Icons (with a couple of notable exceptions).

And yet… it all falls down if it doesn’t actually work. Don’t get me wrong: you can totally play pinball with this set. Launch the ball, operate the flippers, send it around the bumpers and up the ramp – you can do it all. But in lieu of a digital score or any sounds or lights (here’s one place a SMART Brick may actually have added some tangible value), the design team have instead incorporated a mission to reunite the two included astronaut figures, and all I can say is: good luck.

The aim of the game is to strike the ‘asteroid’ in the centre of the playfield with the ball, which is connected to the track on the backboard. Every time you hit it, the light blue Classic Space astronaut should advance along the track and eventually reach the corresponding light blue space baby. And if that worked, it’d be awesome. It would give this set life beyond just pushing the ball around the playfield. Note: ‘if’ and ‘would’.

The instructions specifically call out the counterweight underneath the asteroid that’s supposed to push it back to its starting position, completing the movement of the single-direction gear that propels the astronaut along and allowing the target to be struck again. It supposedly achieves this thanks to a combination of the angle of the machine and gravity. But whether it’s because the counterweight isn’t heavy enough, or the asteroid doesn’t have enough momentum, or something else entirely, I just couldn’t get it to work as intended.

It didn’t matter how much force I hit the ball into the asteroid with. I flicked it with my finger, whacked it with my hand – it would never reset back to the starting position. You can see this in practice in the video below.

Maybe gravity is different in the UK to Billund. I don’t know. All I can say is that for me, the core function of 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine doesn’t work. I went back through the instructions and quadruple-checked the build, I took bits of it apart and reassembled them, I even added more pieces to the counterweight to see if the additional weight would help, but I had no joy at any turn.

I’m willing to accept – if it is the case despite all the above – that this might be down to user error. But if this is the experience I’m having with 11374, it’s not hard to imagine that others might have the same. It brings to mind the missile that ejects from 71411 The Mighty Bowser’s mouth; I had real issues getting that to work, and a quick Google at the time I was building it (a few months after release in 2022) suggested I wasn’t alone.

These are high-level concepts from the LEGO Group and in that regard, this is a set worth championing – but only if you can get the core function to work properly. The flippers and bumpers and ramp are fine, but it’s the mission that’ll keep you coming back to this set and tinkering with it again and again.

Either way, it obviously doesn’t have the same longevity as a real pinball machine, tabletop versions of which can be had for much cheaper than this LEGO model. But what you’re buying here is first and foremost the incredibly interesting build experience, and then the byproduct that is the finished model.

Speaking of which… the colours here may not be hooked to any one Classic Space faction, or really even inspire nostalgia for the theme in any specific way beyond the astronaut minifigure, space baby and their inclusion on the giant stickers running down both sides of the machine. But, you know: it’s 2026. Maybe it’s time to move on from that aesthetic?

The colours chosen here are vibrant, the trans-bright green, trans-light blue and various other transparent shades across the playfield pop against the black, and the graphic design is pretty cool even if it’s not overtly Classic Space.

Of course, including those astronaut and space baby figures in light blue for the first time here could perhaps be interpreted as a cynical way to get bums on seats (in a manner of speaking), especially given the rest of the set seemingly isn’t that interested in paying tribute to Classic Space in the way you’d expect or even hope for. But in all likelihood the parts for those characters will end up on Pick a Brick eventually, so even there it’s hard to start pointing fingers.

And that just leaves the price. 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine weighs in at £189.99 in the UK, $229.99 in the US and starts at €209.99 in Europe. In return you’re getting 2,274 pieces, a minifigure, a baby figure, and a model that measures 24cm tall, 38cm long and 28cm wide. Does it feel like fair value? Just about… if you can get the primary function to work properly, of course.

As mentioned, that’s what’s going to give this set staying power beyond the initial novelty, so if you do pick up this set I genuinely hope you have a more satisfying time with it than I did. It looks pretty nice (although I’m not sure it’s display-worthy enough to swap out for anything else on my shelves currently), and the flippers and launcher and so on work as intended, so it’s not all bad – but it really is remarkable how much of a dampener the loss of that functionality puts on proceedings.

Without it, this feels more like something I’d be prepared to pay £140 or £150 for, so if you don’t want to take the gamble you might be better waiting for a sale or at least double Insiders points. If you’re confident that I’m just not a pinball wizard and you’ll have a much better time with it, you’ll be able to get your hands on 11374 Arcade Pinball Machine from July 1 at LEGO.com and the LEGO Store (don’t forget to sign up to LEGO Insiders for early access ahead of its wide launch on July 4).

This LEGO set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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