We Build LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Shire, the Beginning of an Epic Quest

The caller 2,017-piece Shire is warmly detailed; each partition is rounded oregon curved, and each aboveground is laden with accessories. LEGO provided IGN with a transcript of The Shire for a trial build. It is charming, befitting its subject, but it is besides disproportionately costly for its portion count.

Set #10354 is simply a rendition of Bilbo Baggins' hobbit-hole, arsenic seen connected his “eleventy-first” birthday. The acceptable includes 9 minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Frodo, Mrs. Proudfoot, Farmer Proudfoot, Merry, Pippin, Rosie Cotton, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey. The home, built into a green-bricked hillside, is chopped distant astatine the back, allowing onlookers to adjacent into 1 of 3 rooms: the main foyer that you locomotion into done the circular door, a survey disconnected to the left, and a eating and sitting country disconnected to the right.

You physique these rooms separately and past articulation them unneurotic via clamps, which creates a seamless hillside connected the exterior and a communal surviving abstraction connected the interior. The designers emphasized the coziness of Bilbo's home, with antithetic patterned rugs covering the floor, letters (from "well-wishers," nary doubt) stacked up connected the ground, and nutrient tucked into immoderate remaining corners. There's a wedge of food supra the fireplace, a loaf of breadstuff and libations connected the windowsill.

It’s besides afloat of artifacts from Bilbo's travels arsenic a young man. In the ample thorax by the doorway is the Mithril Coat, which Bilbo gifts to Frodo earlier his travel to Mordor. On the array adjacent the teapot sits a well-worn map, which led Thorin and Company to the Lonely Mountain successful their anterior adventures. There's a sword, on with a parasol, successful the umbrella basal by the door.

The location has a azygous mechanical constituent that uses LEGO Technic to execute its desired effect. If you crook a knob, you tin alteration the show successful the fireplace to amusement either a charred envelope oregon the One Ring – a motion to the pivotal country successful Fellowship of the Ring, erstwhile Gandalf throws the envelope successful the occurrence and Frodo sees the markings connected the Ring for the archetypal time.

The rooms are wider than they are tall, which canonically makes sense, but besides creates the cognition of wide, unfastened space. The existent operation of the interiors is reasonably straightforward – nary precocious gathering techniques required. It's the exterior, with its flowing, little chiseled curves, that requires a spot much attraction to guarantee accuracy and placement.

When I was a kid, I had an Earth globe connected a stand, and if I ran my manus implicit it, I could consciousness exaggerated alleviation of the terrain. This was a tactile pleasure, and I experienced thing akin portion gathering The Shire. You usage multiple, curved greenish pieces to make a earthy ebb and travel to the hillside. It's shallower successful 1 portion and steeper successful the next; it's unevenly eroded present and much uniformly sloping there.

It communicates – arsenic the books and movies bash – that hobbits are a earthy portion of their environment, and astir would beryllium resistant to leaving it oregon different disrupting the bid of things. Bag End is crowned with a tree, its gnarled branches extending and draping implicit the hilltop.

Several freestanding exterior elements don't specifically heighten the halfway set, but correlate to the films' events and are fantastic for staging scenes. There's a day cake; a Party Tree, with multi-colored lanterns hanging connected its branches; a patterned tent, which gets blown sky-high successful the movie, acknowledgment to Merry and Pippin. There's a reddish dragon firework, which you hole to a wide attachment to make the content that it's flying. There's Gandalf's horse-drawn carriage. You tin power Frodo and Gandalf's legs to 'standing' oregon 'sitting' to hitch a thrust successful the carriage.

Lastly, determination is simply a radical of barrels, rigged to interlocking gears. Turn a dial, and you tin marque Bilbo "disappear" conscionable arsenic helium did astatine the extremity of his party.

By and large, LEGO Shire is simply a elemental acceptable – acold simpler than LEGO Rivendell and acold simpler than LEGO Barad-dûr. Nothing is ornate, but past again, wherefore would it be? These are not elves' dwellings; these are hobbits', and hobbits unrecorded elemental lives. It would travel that their corresponding acceptable would not beryllium technically fussy. There's thing bully astir LEGO making smaller, simpler sets; not each acceptable has to beryllium a 5,000 to 7,000-piece behemoth, with scores of patterned tiles oregon bricks.

But therein lies the problem. This is simply a elemental build, yes. But it has a steep terms tag that would connote thing grander and much involved.

The accepted regularisation of thumb, to find a set's tenable pricing, is 10 cents per brick, springiness oregon take. Barad-dûr is 5,147 pieces and it presently costs $460, which is 16% beneath the tenable price. Rivendell is 6,167 pieces and presently costs $500, 19% beneath the tenable terms Meanwhile, The Shire is 2,017 pieces, and it costs $270 – 34% above the modular metric. Despite this, it feels, successful each honesty, similar a $200 set.

LEGO Star Wars sets are notoriously marked up, owing to what fans notation to arsenic the "Disney tax" since it is based connected a licensed property. But adjacent Jabba's Sail Barge, released successful 2024, was not this disproportionate. That acceptable was 3,943 pieces, for $500 – 27% supra the metric.

Ironically, this acceptable is inactive the astir affordable enactment for Lord of the Rings fans who couldn't warrant buying Rivendell oregon Barad-dûr. But those anterior 2 sets are amended deals connected a per-brick standard compared to this one.

One could reason that portion number is simply a reductive mode to measure terms – that pricing is indicative of lawsuit request and what the user is consenting to pay. Has LEGO built up capable goodwill – and is Lord of the Rings beloved capable – to marque this pricing sustainable? I conjecture we're going to find out. But it is beauteous to look at.

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Kevin Wong is simply a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing successful LEGO. He's besides been published successful Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him connected Twitter astatine @kevinjameswong.