Review: 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle from LEGO® Disney™

It’s been 34 years (pause to realize my age…) since Beauty and the Beast was released by Disney™, blowing audiences away with the vibrant story and visuals. The movie and its characters have become icons, and many LEGO® sets have been inspired by it. So far, all of these sets are either aimed at children in the LEGO® Disney Princess theme, LEGO® Brickheadz, or references in other sets like 43226 Disney Duos. 

Now, for the first time, an 18+ set fully dedicated to the movie is being released: 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle. Will it be as impressive as the original? Be our guest, and join us in exploring the mysterious castle and all its secrets.

Review: 10354 The Shire from LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, but a hobbit hole made of LEGO® bricks! Today we journey back to Middle-earth to recreate Bilbo Baggins' famous abode, Bag End, in set 10354 The Shire. 

There's much to celebrate in this set; not only is it Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday but we finally get a LEGO Tolkien-based set that isn't prohibitively expensive. Plus, the set contains a treasure trove of new elements including 2 new moulds, 8 exclusive minifigures, and 13 recolours. Let's take a look!

 

Reveal: 10354 The Shire from LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings

The latest LEGO® Icons The Lord Of The Rings set, 10354 The Shire has been officially revealed. My through set review is coming soon, but here is a taster!

Pick a Brick: Create a Minifigure online – UK beta test underway

Recently we gave you a sneak preview of an exciting new web app on the LEGO.com Pick a Brick site: Create a Minifigure. As of today, the beta version has gone live in the UK! Unfortunately it is not available elsewhere.

Design your own minifigure from the available parts – you can create up to 40 minifigures in one order. Once you have designed one, it's easy to duplicate it too, for personal army building!

This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.

March 2025 LEGO® Gifts with Purchase and 2x Insider Points

You can view May 2025 GwPs here.

What were the LEGO® Gifts with Purchase (GwP) in March 2025? We've retained this page for historical records. 

Review: 43272 Heihei from LEGO® Disney™

One of the most colourful sets released earlier this month is LEGO® Disney 43272 Heihei, a brick-built version of the idiotic rooster from the Moana movies. 

There's a new mould, a few recolours and a pile of rarer colours in this set, so well worth a closer look.

Review: 31215 Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers from LEGO® Art

LEGO® Art has been a polarising theme among the generally praised 18+ sets. So far, only a small minority of the theme's 20 sets have been versions of well-known works of art – and of those, most have been pop art pieces or logos easily transferred into the plastic material and the well-defined colour charts of LEGO bricks. The most interesting departure so far has been 31213 Mona Lisa, reviewed by Jonas Kramm last September and, outside the LEGO Art theme, LEGO® Ideas 21333 Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night which I had pleasure to review in 2022. It's still my favourite set.

Whereas the bold blues of van Gogh's palette transformed delightfully into bricks, da Vinci's Renaissance idiom of thin, light layers resulted in a larger divergence from the original. The project was ambitious but the reception was mixed. 

I wonder if the good performance of the Starry Night made the designers look back to van Gogh and produce 31215 Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers: he sure is an admired artist, but getting two among the very small number of painting-in-LEGO sets is not a small feat. With a quick look, the set seems to be very close to the original painting – but we'll have more than a quick one.

Review: sets 42203, 42204 & 42205 from LEGO® Technic

The March 2025 wave of LEGO® Technic sets consists of 5 vehicles. I’ve already looked at the 2 large F1 cars, and now I turn to the 3 smaller sets, where we find 2 fast cars and a dump truck.

Reveal: 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet from LEGO® Botanicals

LEGO® Botanicals just keep on... growing! But in a way, they are also shrinking.

Just revealed now on LEGO.com, 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet is a smaller floral arrangement being released on 1 May 2025. It's great to see LEGO Botanicals sets at different price points as the larger bouquets are often too expensive as gifts for all occasions. But do you think this one is good value?

Designer interview: LEGO® Ideas 21356 River Steamboat

At LEGO® Fan Media Days in Denmark in September 2024, I was lucky enough to meet some of the design team behind the biggest LEGO® Ideas set to date.

Design Lead Jordan David Scott and Product Designer Marina Stampoli talked me through the absolutely massive LEGO Ideas set 21356 River Steamboat, which comes in at 16" (40cm) x 28" (69cm), contains over 4000 pieces and weighs 3 kilograms. "I did some exercise," says Marina as she lifts the model.