Review: LEGO London Creator Postcard 40569

LEGO takes a holiday to Europe and brings back some souvenirs!

LEGO 40569 – London Creator Postcard

RRP AUD $24.99 – CA $18.99 – EUR €14.99 – UK £13.49 – USA $.99
Available from LEGO.com and LEGO Stores from August.

About This Set

LEGO’s postcard series officially continues with the arrival of both the London and Paris postcards. Adding to the lineup alongside Beijing and New York. Diving into the iconic wonders of the world, London and Paris bring us new microscale versions of the Big Ben, the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

But we’ve gotten microscale of these things before. Is this taking it to a micro-scale? Is this pushing the idea too far? Read on!

Set Name

Okay, first thing is first. We have to mention the bowler cap and the moustache on the London sign at the front. I love this, and it sets a quirky and fun attitude to the build from the word go that immediately separates it from the previous architectural predecessors.

The build comprises of a few iconic locations, such as the Big Ben, the London Eye and Picadilly Circus. One of the largest commercial road junctions in London. LEGO take no shame in turning the normally large billboards of Picadilly for fun advertising for their own brand. As well as having the crown on there to reference the Queen (or maybe they are big fans of the Crown TV show?).

The London Eye part of the build makes excellent use of the cityscape backdrop as a way to provide structural support for the rounded shape of the Eye. As long as you don’t look to hard at the location of the pods as they aren’t equally spaced. The London double-decker bus is also an iconic grab at London culture, and a welcome addition.

Lastly, Big Ben is more like little Ben in this set, but is just as spot on as always. I can’t fault LEGO here at all.

Verdict

These cute little micro-builds are probably one of my favourite underrated endeavours from LEGO these past few months, but it does lead to me to question. Is does this spell the end for LEGO Architecture lines? I mean, they are made of popular locations for LEGO to make sets out of. If not already – and the postcards seem to be redefining the idea of the Architecture Skyline sets.

That being said – these are more affordable, more pint-sized for display, and allows for more of them to sit on a shelf together. But there is something sort of ‘lost’ with them compared to the Skyline sets. I guess we could simply put this down to the changing art form, and if we don’t look at them comparatively, these are actually super neat.

I like the postcards (LOVE the Paris one), and I openly welcome more of them. But I hope we don’t lose the LEGO Architecture line in the process.

These are small, quaint, little builds that bring a splash of colour to these iconic buildings. They’re inexpensive, what you see is what you get and just all round fun.