Review: LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum

LEGO Icons Botanical Chrysanthemum 10368 New Release Review Brick Banter - 2024 July

The LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum is a flower a Minion would love – riddled with Bananas!

It’s been a while, but here is a snap review of one of the two LEGO Icons botanical plants coming this August! Bright coloured, vase and all, how do these middle-price range botanicals hold up under scrutiny? In this review, we’re taking a look at the LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum!

RRP AUD $49.99 – CA $39.99 – EUR €29.99 – UK £24.99 – USA $29.99
278 pieces
Available from LEGO.com and LEGO Stores for pre-order now, releasing 1st August 2024.

LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum – 10368

The Pot

The LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum flower vase brings us a lovely sand green shaped pot, using 4×4 corner domes inverted for the shape. These parts were previously exclusive in the Gringotts bank set, and a nice surprise to see here.

The pot is banded in a metallic gold, a colour becoming more commonplace in sets. The pot is also resting atop a small stand, using brown Unikitty tail elements as the feet and identical to LEGO Icons Plum Blossom.

The Flowers

Moving upwards from the vase we see the earth green stems of the flower, splaying outwards into four different directions. These four directions lead to three stages of growth with the Chrysanthemum flower, budding, small opening, and revealed.

The budding flowers make clever use of dark green flower bases and orange cupcakes to personify early stage budding. The texture of the cupcake works really well for the smaller flower, is a classic NPU moment.

The small opening LEGO Icons Chrysanthemum flower uses a repeating pattern of orange clip elements for the flower top, all tightly compacting a yellow core. Keeping to the texture, the central core uses yellow Minion hair for the unfurling pattern in the middle.

Bananarama

The last stage of the Chrysanthemum is the revealed flower, made out of three different shades of bananas! Yes, an undeniable talking point of the set, the largest titular flower gives us two new recolours – orange and flamish-orange.

I like that there is a lot more structural rigidity with this compared to the sunflowers LEGO have made in the past. The bananas can be a pain to line up correctly, but you don’t feel like you are going to lose half of them for simply grabbing them wrong.

Verdict

My thoughts with the Chrysanthemum are all good ones, as there isn’t much here to dislike. To be honest, there isn’t much here at all, but that’s a good thing. There are lots of botanical sets that start at $100+ AUD, and the ones that are ~$20AUD aren’t as refined as the higher price tag ones are.

This is a good middle medium, and I’m keen to see more like it.

The price-tag might just be a sign of the times, and not truly comprehending how much LEGO has inflated over time.

It seems like this should be $40, instead of the $50. Am I just stuck in my ways? Who knows.