The 10 biggest LEGO news stories of 2023
As another year draws to a close, here are the 10 biggest LEGO news stories that landed in 2023 – from the launch of one LEGO theme and the end of another, to a cancelled set and a curious rebrand…
We live in interesting times in the LEGO-sphere, but not in the way Joseph Chamberlain perhaps suggested in 1898: these are moments we welcome with open arms. They give us substance to chew on, ways to occupy our time and – most importantly – new LEGO sets to build. The brick-built news cycle keeps ticking over, churning out stories bigger and more surprising than the last, and we’re here for it.
2023 was no exception. From brand new LEGO themes springing out of the fertile soil of Billund’s boardrooms to controversial cancellations of hotly-anticipated sets, this year had it all. Whether you’re new to the LEGO game, haven’t kept track of everything going on in the past 12 months or just want to take a stroll down memory lane, here’s a recap of all the biggest LEGO news stories that emerged this year.
10 – LEGO goes all-in on Disney’s 100th anniversary
Disney celebrated its centennial in 2023, and the LEGO Group celebrated those celebrations by turning the LEGO Disney dial up to 11. This year has brought us not only a raft of new sets – headlined by 43222 Disney Castle, but including such gems as 43217 ‘Up’ House and 43230 Walt Disney Tribute Camera – but also saw the LEGO Group launch a bumper-size Collectible Minifigures series, fashion an enormous mural for the LEGO House, source a new Ideas set from the community, and release multiple thematic gifts-with-purchase.
9 – The launch of LEGO DREAMZzz
New LEGO themes come and go, but a ‘big bang’ launch is one to really sit up and pay attention to. Generally defined as a LEGO theme planned to last for at least three years, with a huge marketing push that usually includes some form of tie-in media, previous (and current) LEGO ‘big bang’ themes include NEXO KNIGHTS, The Legends of Chima and NINJAGO.
DREAMZzz – a wacky and colourful theme anchored around the concept of bringing dreams (and nightmares) to life – is the latest weapon in that product arsenal, and arrived earlier this year to much fanfare. Most of that was manufactured by the LEGO Group’s PR department and the TV series that launched months before the sets, but the products themselves feel like a breath of fresh air, too: there are no cumbersome apps to grapple with here; only pure creativity. Whether it can go the distance remains to be seen.
8 – BrickLink gets hacked
The LEGO secondary market was thrown into turmoil not too long ago when BrickLink shut down almost without warning. Early signs pointed to a cyberattack, and the company – which is now owned by the LEGO Group, remember – eventually confirmed those suspicions, attributing the cause of the shutdown to ‘unauthorised individuals’ accessing a ‘small number of accounts’.
The marketplace re-opened on November 11, eight days after it first closed down, and BrickLink announced in a statement that the platform had received ‘a threat and ransom demand’. However, investigations prior to re-opening found ‘no evidence that [BrickLink’s] systems were compromised’, and determined the incident likely occurred after a hostile party obtained a list of usernames and passwords for BrickLink accounts. The team has said it will now ‘step up security across the platform’.
7 – The end of DOTS
The LEGO Group historically has not widely announced the ending of its themes, instead allowing them to peter out, the absence of new sets instead acting as confirmation that it’s done and dusted. But just as it proclaimed the premature termination of LEGO VIDIYO in 2022, so too did the company announce in 2023 that LEGO DOTS would be coming to an end.
Things were a little different this time, though: while VIDIYO was put out to pasture somewhat unceremoniously, DOTS will live on in other ways. “After careful consideration, we have decided to exit the LEGO DOTS theme and integrate tile-based play into other themes within our portfolio,” the LEGO Group said in a statement in January.
6 – LEGO 2K Drive: a non-TT Games game
Following the much-delayed LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – which arrived amid controversial reports of TT Games’ workplace culture – the LEGO Group shifted its AAA video game attentions to other studios. The first result of its new partnership with 2K Games is LEGO 2K Drive, which marks the biggest departure for a LEGO video game in over a decade.
An open-world racer with a unique mechanic – you can shift between road-ready, off-road and waterborne vehicles instantly when switching terrain – LEGO 2K Drive debuted to a mostly positive reception, bolstered by its garage, which allows players to create their own cars and boats from scratch. It’s still going strong, too: Season 3 of its post-launch content has just gone live.
5 – Growth slows and profit dips in 2023
After years of double-digit growth thanks to a pandemic-prompted boom in sales, things slowed down a little bit for the LEGO Group in the first half of 2023. Sales grew by just 1% from January to June, while operating profit dipped by 17%, though pretty much all of that figure can be attributed to increased investments, such as in its new factories in the US and Vietnam.
We learned plenty more from the company’s financial results for the first half of the year, too – including its best-selling themes, its position in relation to the wider toy industry, and that we’re collectively buying fewer sets per person. Head here for more key takeaways from the initial financials in 2023.
4 – LEGO Fortnite smashes records
The first tangible fruits of the LEGO Group’s $1bn investment in Epic Games finally materialised earlier this month in LEGO Fortnite, a brand new game mode hosted on the free-to-play titan’s platform. The survival crafting experience has already met with unparalleled success – at least within Fortnite itself – with nearly 2.5 million players at its peak. It’s the second-most players for any Fortnite game mode, behind only Battle Royale.
Those numbers are still some way off Minecraft, which is for all intents and purposes LEGO Fortnite’s biggest rival (the two games are very similar in concept and approach). Time will tell whether it has the staying power to succeed – but the LEGO Group and Epic are promising that LEGO Fortnite has legs, and that this is just the beginning for the lobby…
3 – LEGO VIP becomes LEGO Insiders
VIPs are out, Insiders are in. That was the messaging behind the LEGO Group’s rebranding of its longstanding loyalty program, which is now known as LEGO Insiders (and was previously called LEGO VIP). Is it better to be an Insider than a Very Important Person? Hard to say, but there hasn’t been much material change to the scheme as of yet.
Perhaps the biggest difference now is that you can scan instruction booklets (dating back to 2018, with some exceptions) to earn 20 points at a time, in exchange for helping the LEGO Group better tailor its marketing to your purchasing habits. That means you can earn additional points on sets bought at LEGO.com, and at least some points on sets bought at other retailers. Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as usual… for now.
2 – LEGO cancels the fourth Indy set
Indiana Jones made his long-awaited return to LEGO Store shelves in 2023, but it wasn’t quite the grand comeback most of us had envisaged. In the end, only three LEGO Indiana Jones models debuted in April, and no more have materialised since (including any that may or may not have been planned for the Dial of Destiny, which was presumably the reason the line returned at all).
A fourth set was originally designed for that initial wave, 77014 The Temple of Doom, but the LEGO Group pulled the plug on the build at the very last moment (without citing a specific reason). That didn’t stop an image of the ill-fated model leaking online, so we can all yearn for what might have been.
1 – Collectible Minifigures leaves behind blind bags
We all knew it was coming, but the LEGO Minifigures team finally made the switch from foil bags to cardboard boxes in 2023 as part of its goal to make all its packaging sustainable by 2025. The change didn’t go down quite as well as the LEGO Group had hoped, however, as fans expressed their frustration with the new boxes – which removed the opportunity to discern their contents, as could previously be achieved by feeling the foil bags – by tearing them open in stores.
Shoppers around the world were quickly greeted with mass destruction on store shelves, with piles of boxes left torn, mangled and discarded for the next unlucky customer. The LEGO Group has since said it’s weighing up what to do next, but the same sorry state of affairs is already afflicting 71045 Series 25, which officially launches in January.
Click here for even more deep dives into all that 2023 brought to the table for LEGO fans.
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