LEGO Icons 40681 Retro Food Truck GWP review

40681 Retro Food Truck offers another tantalising taste of what could be for the LEGO Icons range, serving up the perfect freebie in the process. The only question now is… ketchup or mustard?

Available from January 1 to 16, 2024 (or while stocks last) with orders above £170 / $190 / €190, 40681 Retro Food Truck is the first gift-with-purchase up for grabs in the new year. And it’s one well-timed for splashing out on any of the 100+ new sets coming our way – either as a handy bonus for what you were going to buy anyway, or as an incentive to spend just that little bit extra to reach the required threshold.

It’s well worth doing so for the middling threshold it occupies (yes, £170 / $190 / €190 is what we might define as ‘middling’ in 2024), as there’s a lot to love in this 310-piece vehicle.

The final model doesn’t come in much bigger than what you’d expect from a LEGO City equivalent, but is densely packed with small pieces for a more detailed and involved building process. Decked out in attractive colours and with some neat part usages – Wolverine’s claws in gold for fries is an inspired choice – this is a delicious slice of what the LEGO Group can do with an 18+ label on a smaller scale.

In essence, 40681 Retro Food Truck – and its two minifigures, two hot dogs and double-sided sandwich board – has us yearning for a full line of readily-available Icons vehicles to populate our cities, rather than sprinkling them out one at a time to accompany modular buildings. (See also: 40532 Vintage Taxi, 40586 Moving Truck et al.)

This is clearly intended as a counterpart to 10326 Natural History Museum (it first popped up in a lifestyle image for that set), but the strength of the design once again gets you thinking about ways in which the LEGO Group might bolster the bread and butter of its City theme for adults. That’s a sign of a great gift-with-purchase, and one that’s definitely worth aiming for in January.

40681 Retro Food Truck is available from January 1 to 16, 2024 (or while stocks last) with orders above £170 / $190 / €190 at LEGO.com and in LEGO Stores.

Note: our sticker numbered ‘2’, the licence plate for the truck, was missing from the sheet in our review copy, so has not been applied here…

Thank you for supporting the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO using our affiliate links.