Pop Culture Lego Sets That Don’t Exist, But Should
I’m not gonna lie: this article was way harder to write than I thought when I pitched it. There I was, building a Lego recreation of the Central Perk coffee shop from Friends that my own friend had generously gifted me with, and my first thought was “wow, they must have a Lego set for everything.” And it turns out that, yes, there is a Lego set for pretty much everything.
As a result, a fair amount of the ones I’m about to suggest are most definitely not kid friendly, because as it turns out, if it is kid friendly, it’s most likely already been made into Lego. So sit back and appreciate the completely inappropriate ideas for future Lego sets. Hey, maybe they’ll even take my suggestions on some of these. The Lego Company is Danish after all, and Danes seem pretty chill.
Game of Thrones
Would there have to be frequent mentions of incest, rape, beheadings, murder, poltical corruption, and war that the show itself depicts in the accompanying Lego set? Probably not, unless you want to get kids up on adult themes earlier than they normally would. But just think of all the awesome sets and characters that could be made into a set. Imagine building Daenerys’ dragons, or the King’s Landing Dragon pit, or even Highgarden out of Lego bricks. Imagine how cool a Snow King whitewalker character would have been, or maybe a gigantic figurine of The Mountain, or even a diminutive Tyrion Lannister (would that be offensive? Or a logistical nightmare? Eh, that seems like a problem for Lego HQ to work out). Sure, the biggest hurdle is the less-than kid friendly content, but tons of kids watched Game of Thrones anyway, so maybe Lego should stop being the moral police and just give us what we all want: and entirely buildable Westeros.
Futurama
A couple of housekeeping things: Futurama has been off the air for several years, it was never the most popular show even when it was making new episodes, it got cancelled so many times that there are at least four episodes that were written with the intention of being the final episode, and most of spinoff merchandise has had only moderate success. Ok, with all that being said, I would personally shell out way too much money for a Lego model of the Planet Express Ship.
The way I see it, Lego already caters to discontinued shows with huge fanbases, the Friends set I just built being the prime example, and Futurama still has an intensely loyal fanbase who would be more than willing to pony up a few bucks to build their favorite characters out of Legos. The way I see it, the Venn Diagram of people who watch Futurama and the people who buy Lego sets is a circle, so this one seems like a no brainer.
Football
Lego has already produced a NBA professional basket set, so what’s keeping them from diving into some of America’s other favorite sports? Baseball seems like a Herculean undertaking and hockey would be another logistical nightmare (how do you replicate ice?), but football seems like it would be in the sweet spot. A gridiron field, a goal post at either end, and a few figurines with helmets. That’s it! That’s all it would take to satisfy buyers wanting to get their kids a football Lego set for Christmas. The profit margin between production costs and what they would make off of it would be enormous. Time to make nice with the NFL, Lego.
The White Stripes
Musicians are woefully under in the Lego world. Even Kiss, the one band in the world who care more about putting themselves on figurines than putting any effort into an album, doesn’t have an official Lego set. You can get a Kiss Kasket but not a Kiss Lego Set. There’s something inherently illogical about that.
So deserves the honor of getting their own Lego set? Obviously a Kiss set would be a huge seller and a pretty obvious choice to boot, but what about other musicians who rely on highly stylized visuals? Lady Gaga would make a great Lego set, and if their estates signed off on it, I could easily see a David Bowie or Prince Lego set being massively popular (for now, let’s stay away from a Michael Jackson set because any association between MJ and kids is a non-starter). But my vote goes to The White Stripes, who made Legos cool to the indie rock crowd in their fully bricked video for “Fell In Love With A Girl.” Jack and Meg were into the child-like imagery of their aesthetic, so I don’t see any reason why this set wouldn’t make perfect sense.
Arrested Development
You’d think a show that mentioned Legoland as much as this one did would get some love from the company itself. I can see it now: the banana stand, the moving airport stairs. Hell, just make a recreation of Legoland and put the character’s figurines in it and call it a day. Just make sure George Michael looks extremely uncomfortable. That’s an important detail.
Fans have already been making mockups that adhere pretty closely to the original setting and characters, so I don’t see any reason why this would be a non-starter. Maybe even throw in a loose seal or two.
Monty Python
They went to all that trouble to film a recreation of the Camelot scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and didn’t end up putting any promotional effort into it? Shame on you, Lego. Comedy nerds would have been clamoring for those sets. They could have been collectables! Bet you didn’t think about that, did you, Lego? No, you only think about yourself. Damn Danish brick builders.
But seriously, this plays into the typical Lego buyer mindset that I’ve been using to pick these ideas. What do Game of Thrones, Futurama, and Arrested Development all have in common? Rabid fan bases who would be eager to get their hands on sets like this. Comedy nerds and Lego nerds are all just nerds, and their interests definitely overlap. A set of the various castles that’s actually just a single castle from different angles (just like in the movie), a bloodied bunny rabbit figurine, a Black Knight without any of his limbs? Come on Lego, this is gold just waiting to be cashed in.
