Along with the three LEGO® playsets inspired by Illumination’s Despicable Me 4, the wave is rounded out with a brick-built character display featuring Gru and a group of his Minions. Now brick-built characters seemingly fall into two categories – amazing recreations or awful. Gru’s LEGO replication hasn’t fared too well so can his latest LEGO appearance change that? Here’s a closer look at the newly released Brick-built Gru and Minions set.
Product Details
Set Name: Brick-built Gru and Minions | Set Number: 75582 | Pieces: 839 | Theme: Despicable Me 4
Number of Bags: Bags x 8 | Instructions: Paper booklet + Builder App | Stickers: Sheet x 1 | Characters: Gru, Jerry, Mel, Dave, Beedoo & Kevin | Insiders QR: Yes
RRP: £49.99/$54.99/54.99€/99.99AUD/69.99CAD
Availability: LEGO Stores & LEGO Online from May 1st (globally) Available Now in UK & Europe
The build begins with the ragtag band of Minions. Unlike most other sets, these Minions are brick-built making them much bigger than their minifigure counterparts. The first few bags are each focused on a singular character. These include Jerry with maracas and fruit hat, AVL agent Dave with a head propeller and walkie-talkie, ‘Beedoo’ Minion with a megaphone and flashing lights hat and Kevin with his fart gun. They are all built similarly, with the head section moveable. But they have different outfits and accessories. They are each built on a round plate which allows them to be mounted on the next part of the build.
With the first of the Minions complete, the build moves on to the display base. This stage-like section features a trio of splat gears within it, which is topped by a colourful platform. But the ability to make it rotate isn’t just a plain old handle, instead it’s another Minion. Again this is built in the same way as the others but has a long Technic axle running through it. This extends down into the base section and allows all of the working elements to move.
This base section becomes home to brick-built Gru and I’m still unsure if I like him or not. The legs and body are directly connected to the base. The body is quite cubic and suits Gru’s equally unusual body shape. I must admit how the central section of the body, which includes Gru’s scarf, is built is quite clever. Much odd the upper part of the body is clad around the part connected to the base. Gru’s arms and head are then added to complete his look. The head is both scary-looking and a decent recreation of the animated characters. Depending on how you angle the eyes, Gru can look a little ‘spaced out’. Once Gru is in place the four Minions are then added to the rotating plate and when you turn Minion Mel, they dance around their beloved leader.
After five main movies, Gru and his Minions have become part of popular culture. The characters from those films are instantly recognisable thanks to their unique looks. As mentioned in the introduction, various brick-built characters have been recreated with varying degrees of success. Gru’s minifigure replica isn’t a great take on the character so at least his brick-built version does a much better job of representing the character’s appearance. It’s certainly not perfect and it still looks a little peculiar. But the biggest annoyance is the use of stickers. All of the Minions’ eyes are stickers and because they are such a noticeable part of the character, if the stickers are poorly applied they look odd. Despite the stickers, the Minions are fun little characters and the best part of the set.
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