As the LEGO Group continues to celebrate Disney’s 100th anniversary, the range of LEGO® sets marking the occasion grows. The latest addition to the LEGO Disney 100 collection is a unique set of 8 buildable characters inspired by some of the many loveable sidekicks who have been featured in several classic Disney or Pixar animated movies. These characters often become as beloved as those they act as companions to. But do these loveable Disney sidekicks also make for a desirable LEGO Disney set? Here’s an early look at the upcoming LEGO Disney Duos set.
Product Details
Set Name: Disney Duos| Set Number: 43226 | Pieces: 553 | Theme: Disney
RRP: £42.99/$44.99/47.99€ | Number of Bags: Bags x 5 | Instructions: Paper booklet + Builder App | Stickers: Sheet x 1 | Characters: Lumiere, Cogsworth, Pua, Hei Hei, Nemo, Squirt, Meeko & Percy
Availability: LEGO Stores, LEGO Online & General Retail from June 1st
Buildable LEGO characters are nothing new, for a number of years many iconic faces have been transformed into BrickHeadz. Others have become larger-scale builds and more recently, various superheroes have been transformed into action figure-type builds. For this set a new style of build has been sort to craft 8 Disney sidekick characters from four different Disney films. Each duo has its own instruction booklet, meaning the set can be built by numerous people at the same time. Each pair of characters are mounted on a similar display stand, which makes use of the island plates introduced in the LEGO Super Mario sets. These are connected together with an angled bracket plate, which also acts point upon with a printed 2×4 plate featuring the Disney 100 logo.
The first duo are from Disney’s 1992 masterpiece, Beauty and the Beast. Within the Beast’s castle, a curse has caused the residents to become once household objects. These include Lumiere, a candle stick and Cogsworth, a clock. These are by far the best of the eight builds, in particular, Lumiere. The elements used to create him are perfect and they are all existing pieces. Both characters include unique printed elements to recreate their faces. With both builds capture the animated feel of each character, really well.
The second pair of characters you build are from Pixar’s 2003 undersea adventure, Finding Nemo. They include the Squirt, the young sea turtle and the little clownfish Nemo. These are also impressive recreations of both characters, especially Squirt. The use of different coloured bricks to create his flipper-like limbs looks great as does the printed shell and his big eyes. Nemo is an interesting construction, it’s not easy crafting the curved shape of a natural object at this scale. I also like the way the fins are done.
Skipping ahead to 2106 and Disney’s much-loved Moana. Characters represented from that film include Pua the piglet and Hei Hei rooster. Both are vastly different builds, with Pua being much more detailed compared to Hei Hei, but this is due to the nature of the animals they are recreating. I’m not a big fan of how Pua’s ears have been added, the connection method is too visible but understandable at this scale.
For the final pair of Disney Duos, it’s a trip back to 1995 and the animated retelling of the story of Pocahontas. Unfortunately, these characters aren’t as popular as the others featured in this set. They include Percy the Pug and the mischievous raccoon, Meeko. The LEGO version of Percy does a decent job of capturing the character’s cocky expression thanks to the printed plate featuring his eyes. Unfortunately, Meeko isn’t good. It looks like a Creator 3-in-1 build, which isn’t a bad thing but makes it look out of place alongside the other characters. Part of this is also due to the eyes used, more on that below.
Overall, this is an interesting collection of characters, with some of them more interesting than others. Those from Beauty and the Beast are amazing but the ones from Pocahontas aren’t good. It’s nice that something different has been attempted as these characters could have easily been BrickHeadz. One thing that could have been done better is the 1×1 eyes used on three characters. They all use the same printed piece, similar to BrickHeadz, but it doesn’t work for these characters. In particular, Meeko, these eyes make the characters almost feel a little disconnected due to the clashing style of build within the character pairs. Above all, it’s nice to see the 100th anniversary of Disney marked in so many different ways.
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31st May 2023
Mrs H is gonna love this…