Look, we love Lego. We even love Lego when it’s destroying our wallets with incredibly cool yet buildable art canvases might be a bit too much.
This week Lego announced the Lego Art series, a new range aimed at adult collectors with vast quantities of time and money on their hands. Launching with four different kits — one themed around the pop art of Andy Warhol, another around the Beatles, and then two themed around Marvel (specifically Iron Man) and Star Wars (specifically the villainous Sith) — the Lego Art kits ask builders to create pointillist recreations of iconic characters and portraits using Lego’s teeny-tiny stud pieces that they can then display on their wall.
It’s a cool idea on paper — and each kit even comes with a curated soundtrack for you to listen to while you build. Which you’ll need, because even the speediest Lego builder will be taking a while; the vast majority of the pieces involved are those tiny little studs, each Lego Art set contains about three and a half thousand pieces. So try not to lose any!
But here’s the thing: one Lego art kit will set you back $US120 ($173), a high price that is expounded by the fact that the company is actively encouraging you to pick up multiples of each kit, because they can be built in multiple designs. The Warhol set, depicting the artist’s iconic take on Marilyn Monroe, at least just offers alternate colour schemes. But the Beatles, Marvel, and Star Wars sets have different buildable designs entirely — each member of the Beatles can be made into a canvas. The Iron Man set can be the MK III, Hulkbuster, and MK LXXXV armours. For Star Wars, you can make portraits of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, or Darth Maul. For Marvel and Star Wars specifically, instead of the three individual portraits, you can also combine three kits — nearly 10,000 pieces! — to create oversized renditions of Darth Vader and Iron Man.
Like that? It’ll set you back $US360 ($520). Ouch.
Sure, it’s not like there’s not been Lego that expensive — or even more expensive — before. But that’s still a lot to ask, especially when the build process of these is going to be much, much more basic than Lego sets of a similar cost: it’s just row after row of tiny studs, hours and hours of repetitive work. You could just buy some cool art of these characters, get it nicely framed, and shipped to you for less. Maybe in less time, depending on your Lego building speed. Maybe some things just don’t need to be Lego-ified?
If the Lego Art series does catch your eye, however, it’ll be available in the U.S. starting September 1, and in international markets a month earlier on August 1. Just… gird your wallet, I guess.