New moulds review: LEGO® Friends January 2026 sets

The January 2026 wave of LEGO® Friends sets were revealed in early December 2025, and there's a lot of sets to look through.  We have already taken a look at some recolours in our article covering the New colours for 2026: 431 Blue Violet and 430 Warm Pink.

Now I will focus on all the new moulds included in the new sets including the animals and accessories, and a second post will look at all the recolours and new prints. A few of the new moulds are also found in other themes released on 1 January.

Review: 42661 Costume Party & 42674 Comic Book Game Store from LEGO® Friends

The LEGO® Friends June 2025 wave (August in North America) brings us two sets with a common theme: elaborate outfits. Set 42661 Costume Party with Unicorn & Fairy has the friends partying in fairytale costumes, while in 42674 Comic Book and Game Store they cosplay as their favorite comic book characters. 

Review: 42664 Travel Boat Adventure & 42673 Family Vacation Beach Resort from LEGO® Friends

For our first set review of the June 2025 wave of LEGO® Friends sets, we’re taking a trip to the seaside. We’ll hop on a cruise with 42664 Travel Boat Adventure, which will bring us to the idyllic scene depicted in 42673 Family Vacation Beach Resort. Grab your swimming suit and your coconut cocktail for a relaxing look at the exotic new elements found in these sets.

Parts review: June 2025 LEGO® Friends sets

Summer is coming to the Northern Hemisphere, and Heartlake City continues to grow with another wave of sets. With 13 products, the range coming on 1 June 2025 is a fair bit smaller than January's, which featured 20, but that won't diminish the quality of the models, or of course the new elements they bring – and there's even a new color.

As with the previous waves, I’ve opened up all the boxes we received for review – 11 of the 13 sets – and dug through them to bring you an overview of all the new elements these bring us, before building the featured models in later articles. 

Review: sets 42652, 42662 & 42663 from LEGO® Friends

We have reached my final blog post covering the LEGO® Friends sets from the January 2025 wave. The last three sets have us building a treehouse, stylin' a new coif, and setting out on a camping trip. And of course, all these adventures will provide us with new elements.

Review: sets 42640, 42641, 42650 & 42651 from LEGO® Friends

I am building the sets in the January 2025 wave of LEGO® Friends sets, and for this blog post I’ve selected the ones that primarily focus on animals. It’s a cuteness overload!

The LEGO Friends theme is responsible for the introduction of many new animals, whose more curvy, realistic features stand out from the more blocky classic versions found in themes like LEGO® City. This latest wave brings us many new cute creatures to go ‘aaaaaaaah’ over; both brand new molds and existing molds with new prints. Most of these can be found in the 4 sets that we will be taking a look at today, going from the smallest to the largest.

Review: 42656 Heartlake City Airport and Airplane from LEGO® Friends™

“Come on and fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away”

Heartlake City Airlines flies all over the world, and its passengers bring back exotic new elements from their travels for you to enjoy. So fasten your seatbelts as we go on a journey.

Review: sets 42643, 42644, 42649, 42655 & 42669 from LEGO® Friends

In our second part of set reviews from the LEGO® Friends January 2025 wave we visit several locations in Heartlake City that offer food in various forms, starting with a small ice cream truck and ending in an idyllic cottage a beekeeper calls home. While enjoying the sustenance we'll explore the new elements these sets provide.

Review: 42670 Heartlake City Apartments and Stores from LEGO® Friends

We start off the reviews for the LEGO® Friends January 2025 wave with the biggest set in the line-up. Together, let's hop on our bike and inline skates to potter some clay and wash out any resulting stains in the laundromat, before enjoying a cup of tea with locally sourced honey while watching the cats play with yarn. Oh, and look at the new baby!

Parts review: January 2025 LEGO® Friends sets

The first wave of 2025 LEGO® Friends contains 20 sets in total, including 2 only-partly-poly-but-mostly-paper bags. Across these, I’ve counted 222 new elements for us to enjoy, and so before I review the individual sets, I’ve put the most prominent, fresh molds in an overview for you.

Parts review: LEGO® Friends, LEGO® City and LEGO® Disney Advent Calendars

Welcome to December already! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, although the 2024 LEGO® advent calendars were actually revealed back in August. Stop reading now if you want to keep every aspect of your LEGO® City, LEGO® Friends or LEGO® Disney Advent calendars a surprise. Although we won't be spoiling the final mini-builds here, we have collected the new elements, new prints and rare elements from each of the three advent calendars to show you. 

There's some fun new elements amongst the usual fires with marshmallows toasting, ice hockey and Christmas trees!

Moulding LEGO® mini-doll legs

We recently came across a new LEGO® element. They look somewhat macabre and perhaps more akin to something from John Carpenter's The Thing than LEGO.

The elements in question appears to be mini-doll legs that are moulded in pairs. The double-ended legs started a discussion here at New Elementary about mini-doll leg moulding processes and the timing of printing. Read on to hear our theories.

Review: 40694 River Camping Adventure GwP from LEGO® Friends

From tomorrow Monday 16 September, set 40694 River Camping Adventure is the gift with purchase with select LEGO® themes. Here’s your early look at what this cute LEGO® Friends set contains!

LEGO® Friends review: water fun with sets 42623, 42625 and 42630

There are three sets left to review from our batch of June 2024 LEGO® Friends sets, and 42623 Beach Water Scooter, 42625 Beach Smoothie Stand, and 42630 Heartlake City Water Park all depict fun in the water. Just as I started building these, the summer sun finally appeared here in the Netherlands, after weeks of rain. So it’s the perfect occasion to have a cooldown, be it at the pool or on the beach.

LEGO® Friends review: Adventure Camp sets 42622, 42624, 42626 & 42631

Grab your sleeping bag, citronella candle and first aid kit; we're going camping! The June 2024 LEGO® Friends wave includes 4 sets that are situated out in the wild: 42622 Adventure Camp Archery Range, 42624 Adventure Camp Cozy Cabins, 42626 Adventure Camp Water Sports, and 42631 Adventure Camp Tree House. Will these sets bring us some much needed relaxation, or will the bugs and bears keep us up at night?

LEGO® Friends review: 42638 Castle Bed and Breakfast

When you hear the word castle, most AFOLs will think of fortified walls, towers, drawbridges, moats, knights, archers and trebuchets... and of course grey, grey and grey. But despite having the word castle in its name, today’s set doesn’t fit that description at all.

Snuggle in for a cosy night and delicious morning as we stay at the new LEGO® Friends set 42638 Castle Bed and Breakfast.

LEGO® Friends: new parts for June 2024

Summer is coming (for the northern hemisphere); often a time for vacation. The June 2024 LEGO® Friends wave offers several forms of relaxation, with sets taking us to an adventure camp, the beach, a water park and a bed and breakfast in an old castle. If you don't have time off though, you can still grab a pastry at the café. 

LEGO has sent us most of the wave for an early peek. Before I take a closer look at the sets themselves, I’ve gathered all new elements found across the whole wave in this overview for you.

LEGO® Friends review: 42602 Space Research Rover

To boldly go where no mini-doll has gone before! Olivia has set out for the stars, as her next space-themed set has her exploring alien life beyond our solar system. Buckle up and join the ride with LEGO® Friends 42602 Space Research Rover.

LEGO® Friends review: 42620 Olly and Paisley's Family Houses

Houses of the main characters have always been prominent in the LEGO® Friends line. The theme was rebooted last year, and the new style has been generally acclaimed. 42620 Olly and Paisley's Family Houses is the first LEGO Friends main cast set to feature two different houses, both in unusual colour schemes, yet feeling architecturally coherent.

LEGO® Friends review: 42604 Heartlake City Shopping Mall

The LEGO® Friends theme was rebooted last year and in addition to brand new set concepts like 42605 Mars Space Base and Rocket it has brought many new takes on sets from earlier years. During its 12 year run, LEGO Friends has given us 41058 Heartlake Shopping Mall in 2014 – remembered for its Pearl Gold palm leaves, and 41450 Heartlake City Shopping Mall in 2021 – a surprisingly recent model that shares the same name, layout and escalator system as the new mall I'm reviewing today: 42604 Heartlake City Shopping Mall.

 

All of the rebooted LEGO Friends sets seem to be large improvements over their predecessors; so how does this mall fare?