Review: LEGO Friends Friendship Tree House Hangout (42652)

LEGO® Friends Friendship Tree House Hangout - 42652 - New release January 2025 - Brick Banter review

A new Treehouse for the list of Friends Treehouses

LEGO Friends continues for another year, and we’ve been slated with the whole first wave of 2025. Taking a look into the Treehouse Hangout, how does LEGO Friends hold up for 2025’s first wave?

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LEGO Friends Treehouses are a given staple of the theme, showing varying degrees of success over the years. Filled with vibrant colours, play features and activities, this set is a comfortable addition to the lineup.

Filled with huge pops of colour, the set gives us coral coloured doors to lime coloured slides. There are also colourful planks attached across the model to give it a real ‘kid’ feel to it.

The set comes with various play zones for kids to enjoy, such as a music lounge, vegetable garden, trunk hideaway, kitchen, bedroom, rock climbing and lift. I appreciate how ‘full’ the space feels with things to do, with many stories to be made. A subtle play feature that I really like is the growing of carrots, and making them able to be removed.

The lift for the set is controlled by a rotating 2×2 round brick above the kitchen, and is hidden incredibly well within the model. It moves effortlessly up and down, and gives a fun way for the dog to enjoy games too.

Outside of our tree, we are also given a woodworking station for repairs or additions to the treehouse. It’s a small but welcome addition, but brings to question what kids/teens are doing with a bandsaw.

Lastly, the set also gives us some of the new flowers for 2025 – the sunflowers. We also get some of the Wicked roses recoloured green as a flowering plant next to the carrots.

Verdict

This set is full of life and has many ways for kids to engage with the medium. If I were to try and draw a negative to the set, there is only one.

The set is weirdly unappealing on the outside. There is so much fun interior details and stories, and there is a lot of passion behind it that surprised me. But as a consumer, I wouldn’t see this unless I rotated the box on the shelf. The set’s strongest strengths are hidden away by the front face of the set, which I feel won’t draw enough attention to it.