LEGO Architecture: Empire State Building Review

• 16th Mar 2012

Empire State Building

Pieces:    77

Ages: 10+

Mini Figures: 0

Price: £19.99

What’s Inside:

Fact & Instruction Booklet

1 Bag of Pieces

Background:

LEGO Architecture is a series aimed more at the adult office crowd. The Empire State Building is pne of the early models put together for the series and also one of the cheapest.

The Empire State Building has appeared in countless movies and is often used as a landmark shot to establish the films location. But perhaps the most famous use of all was way back in the 1930’s when a certain giant ape decided to scale its heights to do battle with biplanes – King Kong!

Building:

Despite being aimed at big kids, this is a very easy build and you will be done in 10 minutes of so working from the base up. The smooth topped tiles are a particular selling point on this series giving the model a polished look.

Finished Product:

This is purely a display and no play item. The tower will easily come loose if there is too much fiddling going on. It’s best out together and then put on display to be admired for the amazing piece if engineering that it is.

The booklet is there to help you build the piece, and I have to say it’s one of the nicest guide books that I have seen for a LEGO set yet. As well as the guide and a word from the artist; you get a couple of pages of background information and statistics about the real building itself – and also the odd snapshot so you can compare how close they got to the design for this miniature.

It’s 20 quid which makes it one of the cheapest of the series alongside the Burj Khalifa;  the Seattle Space Needle and the Willis Tower. The pieces to pound ratio isn’t great as it is over 30 pence per piece. But this is a new classy signature series and the end result looks good on your desk. This is perhaps a decent gateway model into the Architecture series. From this it is easy to decide whether you’d want to be a collector of the series; which continues to expand on well-known structures around the world!

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Empire-State-Building-21002

Steven Hurst