LEGO LEGO Stores: The Ultimate Ultimate Guide

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published August 1, 2022.

The LEGO Store is a magical place where dreams of kids and AFOLs alike come true. The look on the face of a child excitedly leaving the store with a brand new set or minifigure is almost the same as the look of an AFOL who just got a rare part in bulk on the Pick-a-Brick Wall or finally found a Galaxy Explorer set to take home. Perhaps the ultimate expression of LEGO nerdiness happens when LEGO makes a LEGO Store set, so join us today as we jump into an Inception-like guide to LEGO LEGO Stores, both official sets and fan creations.

The new kid on the block, 40574 LEGO Brand Store, together with some other recent LEGO LEGO STORES

A model of a LEGO store built from LEGO, you say? Yes, quite a few of these actually exist. Most of the sets that mainly consist of a LEGO Brand Store building have been either given away at store openings (after reaching a certain purchasing threshold) or offered for sale exclusively through LEGO. Other sets include a mini-LEGO Store or reference. So let’s kick things off with the newest entry to the LEGO LEGO Store club.

Official LEGO Brand Store Sets

The latest in this line is 40574 LEGO Brand Store, which officially hits the shelves today, on August 1st. (In North America, the set is only available in-store. In the rest of the world it should be available online.) It’s a minifig-scale store with graphics to match LEGO’s 90th-anniversary theme, “90 Years of Play”.

Bright and colourful, with lovely giant (for the customer) or miniature (for us) models in the windows

She seems to agree that the ladder solution is hilarious

The set features pretty much everything you’d expect from a LEGO model of a LEGO store—the mandatory Pick-a-Brick (“PAB”) wall, a sticker referencing a mosaic maker, LEGO sets from a bunch of different themes on the shelves, miniature models of LEGO sets on display, and one addition that I’m absolutely certain, for health and safety reasons, that no real LEGO store contains—a ladder to reach the top floor.

It might seem strange that LEGO would release two store sets in less than a year, as 40528 LEGO Brand Retail Store came out on New Year’s Day, but there are a couple of essential differences between these two sets.

This year’s new LEGO store releases: 40574 LEGO BRAND STORE and 40528 LEGO Brand Retail Store

40528 is not minifig scale and has never been offered for general sale. Instead, it has been handed out to customers as a gift with purchase for spending a qualifying amount of money at an official LEGO Brand Store opening this year. Notable features of this set you can see in the pictures below include a staircase leading to the top floor (are you taking notes, 40574?) and an absolutely enormous “miniature” version of the classic LEGO Duck sitting in the storefront window.

So, two sets came along in only eight months’ time, but it had been four years since the previous release, namely 40305 LEGO Brand Retail Store from 2018. This one is, again, minifig scale, and the only other LEGO Store set so far to be offered for “regular” sale through LEGO.

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40305 has a 6x16-stud footprint, is designed in the same modular style as so many of the contemporary City sets, and features two full floors with LEGO Store goodness: the PAB wall, miniature models in the windows and, hilariously, an ATM outside so the customer can get some money to shop for his son—after all, LEGO prices are increasing (even if it’s not unreasonable from a business perspective that they do).

Before that, the previous set to depict a Brand Store was 40145 LEGO Brand Retail Store (yes, there’s a certain lack of creativity when it comes to naming these sets) from 2015—the set previously used as a store opening giveaway, and the first minifig-scale store to be released. This was also the first set to feature something I’ve found a bit weird with these promotional sets: the included stickers that represent LEGO sets don’t follow the logical graphic language of the actual sets.

Why the Arial-style lettering, and not proper logos?

I can understand why LEGO wouldn’t necessarily want to depict actual sets on these boxes—after all, LEGO’s normal retail sets have limited shelf life, so the otherwise relatively timeless LEGO Store set would quickly be outdated—but why they’ve chosen to write “Ninjago”, “City”, “Creator”, and so on in a regular bland sans-serif font instead of the actual logos, I don’t get. Surely, there would be more promotional value in using the familiar logos? The same graphic language appears in 40305, 40528 and the new 40574, and even in 40359 LEGO Store Picture Frame.

Retail Sets Referencing LEGO Stores (sort of)

Wait, was that a reference to a LEGO Store Picture Frame? Yes, because LEGO stores have also featured in a number of other unrelated sets. Brickset has a very good list of these “cameo” appearances, and there are a few that one wouldn’t necessarily think about. We’ll look at them in chronological order, and the first one worth mentioning isn’t really a LEGO store, but does most certainly have to do with selling LEGO sets: 3221 LEGO City Truck, from 2010.

The beloved 6692 alongside my own modernised version

One could argue that if this truck makes the list then even the classic 6692 Tractor Trailer should be included, one of my absolute favourites from my childhood (so much so that I built an updated version of it), but that obviously lacks one essential thing that 3221 has: The LEGO sets. We all know that LEGO has had some problems keeping enough stock on the shelves in recent years, and maybe this old set offered a glimpse of things to come, because the cargo compartment is clearly big enough to hold much more than nine LEGO set boxes. But at least it has them:

Nine boxes! In that huge cargo compartment.

The boxes feature pictures of actual LEGO sets: 7236 Police Car from 2008 and 7942 Off-Road Fire Rescue from 2007, in addition to the (very meta) inclusion of 3221 itself. These have box designs similar to the actual sets, and not the later generic sans-serif font, but here’s a different quirk: all sets have set number 3221…!

It’s also worth mentioning that a re-coloured and re-branded version of the 3221 truck appeared the same year as 7848 Toys R Us Truck, with the addition of a little Toys “R” Us store which, among other toys, offers LEGO sets. On the shelves we find the same 7942 fire set, and what is clearly 7235 Police Motorcycle from way back in 2005. This time, they don’t come with set number 3221 though, they don’t actually carry set numbers at all. Another reason that this set is notable is that it marks the only appearance of the Belville teddy bear outside the Belville and Scala themes. (And while we are mentioning trucks, we should at least mention LEGO-branded cargo containers in sets 7939 Cargo Train and 4549 Road 'N Rail Hauler.)

The Toys R Us truck from 2010, with its huge teddy bear and sets that were just about to disappear from store shelves

The most eagle-eyed of you may have noticed another strange thing about the three minifig-scale LEGO store sets I mentioned initially: None of them contain a LEGO Brand Store employee! Maybe LEGO was counting on people acquiring the 5001622 LEGO Store Employee polybag from 2013 to go with it? Either way, this is what he looked like:

The LEGO Store Employee in his natural habitat - keep reading to see more of that habitat

Photo FROM Brickset

He also came with a standard red 2x4 brick (part number 3001), which you can find a large-scale version of at a lot of LEGO Brand Stores (and in several of the LEGO store sets), and he was essentially re-used as a giveaway to celebrate the opening of the 100th LEGO Brand Retail Store in North America in January 2019. Brickset and BrickLink calls the limited edition re-relase 100STORESNA, and it’s identical to the previous offering save for two details: it was given out in a blister pack instead of a polybag, and both the 2x4 brick and the minifig torso was printed with “100 STORES NORTH AMERICA”.

The next LEGO store “cameo” after that original store employee came in a train set, of all things, in 2014: 60050 Train Station. It may not be obvious from the box art below, but there is actually a miniature LEGO store inside the station building, with two LEGO sets on the shelves: 60056 Tow Truck, released the same year, and what seems to be a unique set featuring only the police car from 60042 High Speed Police Chase.

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Then, in 2015, LEGO released 60097 City Square, which is the only regular retail set to date to contain a full, stand-alone LEGO store—and this one is packed with AFOL-pleasing details:

60097 City Square. Rarely has a regular retail set featured so many details for AFOLs to pore over

The building dates from 1932, the year when Ole Kirk Kristiansen founded the woodworking company that would two years later be known as LEGO

The boy visiting the store is wearing the sweater with the classic white LEGO spaceman on it

Speaking of spacemen, there’s a green Futuron minifigure on display in one of the top floor windows, standing next to a Castle knight

The set is the first one to contain the yellow LEGO employee torso—in fact, it has two of them, one for the store worker inside and one for the driver of the yellow LEGO truck

Sets on the shelves include (simplified versions of the box art for) 60067 Helicopter Pursuit, 60074 Bulldozer and 60082 Dune Buggy Trailer

Worth a mention is also 31105 Townhouse Toy Store, which came out in 2020. It admittedly isn’t a LEGO store, but certainly sells LEGO sets. On display is the same Dune Buggy Trailer, plus something that would raise a few eyebrows among AFOLs if they found it in a store, namely 10182 Café Corner (!) in the shape of the printed 2x3 tile that made an unexpected reappearance three years after being featured in 2017’s Assembly Square.

While that was a welcome reacquaintance, finding the Dune Buggy Trailer again—six years after its release—in this cute little polybag from 2021 does maybe feel a bit cheap. But the vendor in 30569 LEGO Stand offers two of those boxes, and rounds off our list of retail sets… except, we have one more outlier to offer you, this one maybe even weirder than that train station!

The Monkie Kid LEGO Store

80036 The City of Lanterns: A feast of colours and details

80036 The City of Lanterns hit the shelves in January this year and has been described as a “light” version of the Ninjago City sets with loads of details crammed into a tight space. The set itself contains a number of delightful obscure LEGO references, including BIONICLE, Hero Factory, ZNAP, the Town monorail and LEGO’s 90th anniversary—you can read more about those in Brickset’s thorough review from December. The reason we’re mentioning it here, though, is this little gem:

A Monkie Kid LEGO Brand Store! I have to admit that I don’t know that much about the Monkie Kid storyline, but by looking at the store shelves I can immediately tell that this is the kind of store AFOLs dream about visiting—and I mean that literally: I have had several conversations with LEGO friends who admit that while sleeping at night, they’ve dreamt of visiting a store that had all the sets from their childhood for sale, brand new in pristine boxes. I’ve had that same dream myself!

The most prominent sets on display are 6416 Poolside Paradise (Paradisa, 1992), 6285 Black Seas Barracuda (Pirates, 1989), 497 Galaxy Explorer (also known as 928 Space Cruiser and Moonbase, 1979), 5988 The Temple of Anubis (Adventurers, 1998) and 375 Castle (the iconic yellow one from 1978), in addition to last year’s 80107 Spring Lantern Festival, which I guess makes sense as it’s also Asian in theme. Truly an AFOL’s dream store—a quick BrickLink search reveals that those five classic sets would probably set you back at least $10,000 in new condition… if you could find them, that is.

Instantly recognisable iconic LEGO set boxes. But why did they turn the sleek Paradisa sports car into… a bus?

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Other Retail Sets Featuring LEGO Stores

The City of Lanterns is the latest regular retail set so far to contain a reference to LEGO stores, but there are a few other LEGO sets that should also be mentioned. 40178 Iconic VIP set was a GWP (Gift with Purchase) set from 2017 featuring a brick-built LEGO VIP card and a tiny LEGO store with a PAB wall and several contemporary LEGO sets on the shelves. Notably, this small set is one of the largest polybags ever and comes with both the store and a LEGO employee minifigure!

The big 40346 LEGOLAND set was released in 2019 and contains a number of attractions from the LEGOLAND parks, including an even tinier booth offering LEGO sets—with proper branding! These sets have City, Duplo, Friends, and Ninjago logos. (Picture courtesy of Brickset)

Then there’s the aforementioned 40359 LEGO Store Picture Frame, which is—no big surprise there—a picture frame, but with a LEGO employee selling sets and bricks from another tiny LEGO store. And finally, we have to mention another odd one out, one that’s in that weird “semi-official LEGO set” category: 910009 Modular LEGO Store, one of the sets that came out of the second round of the BrickLink Designer Program.

If you consider this an official LEGO set, it’s clearly the biggest LEGO store released so far, with 2149 pieces, and it fetches a premium at BrickLink at the moment. Created by BrickLink user “Krisnow” from South Korea, it is compatible with LEGO’s own modular buildings and was, like the other BrickLink Designer Program sets from Round 2 onwards, a LEGO Ideas entry that reached 10,000 supporters but failed to make it past the review.

Beautiful to look at, and compatible with the official modulars: Krisnow’s Modular LEGO Store

And the fact that it’s a fan-designed model means it’s the perfect store to mark our transition from official sets to MOCs of LEGO stores!

So… Here’s One I Made!

But wait a minute. I hear you complaining that I omitted one of the official LEGO Brand Store sets earlier? And not just any set, the first and arguably most iconic one? Well, that’s because now is the perfect time to mention 3300003 LEGO Brand Retail Store (yeah, they weren’t that creative naming them even back in 2012). This was the very first LEGO set depicting a LEGO store. Designed by Mel Caddick, it’s wonderfully simplistic while also being architecturally interesting.

The original. Clean and simple architecture, but instantly recognisable as a brand store

The second I saw it in a picture, I knew I had to have one. Living in Norway, a country that still has NO brand stores (please, LEGO, pretty please? Just one?) I couldn’t hope for a “Grand Store Opening” where I could get my hands on the set, so I resorted to BrickLink and paid what felt like ridiculous money for the little thing. Obviously, they’re worth even more today, so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I built it as soon as I received it… and a few years later, when I was missing something to fill a city corner on a layout for a show, I suddenly realised it would probably look lovely if I scaled it up and turned it into a proper modular building.

My scaled-up version, with most of the same details in place, only bigger

The result can be seen above. As I mentioned, it needed to be a corner building, so it made sense to swap the “2x3 brick” on the roof for a proper 2x4 and turn it the other way. There are anti-studs on the ceiling, and they’re transparent to let light through. And on the pavement there’s the iconic red 2x4.

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Inside, microscale LEGO sets are on display, including 497 Galaxy Explorer (or maybe it’s the fantastic new 10497 tribute set?), 70810 MetalBeard’s Sea Cow, 71006 The Simpsons House, and more—have a look at the Flickr album and see if you can spot the others! There is also a PAB wall with a proper selection of LEGO colours, and on the bench in the tiny backyard, Max is slacking, so he’s getting a proper telling off by the store manager.

My LEGO LEGO Store has since received the ultimate honour of being displayed at LEGO Campus, LEGO’s new headquarters in Billund, since the opening in April. I’ll reluctantly bring it back home come the Skærbæk Fan Weekend in September!

The LEGO LEGO Store, proudly sitting in its display case at LEGO Campus in Billund

A Shelf of Other LEGO Store MOCs

Obviously, I’m not the only one who’s built my own version of a LEGO store. I’ve already mentioned the BrickLink Designer Program set, which technically at least started out as a MOC, but I’ve picked three other builds that for one reason or another stand out to me. Let’s start with this beauty by British AFOL Adeel Zubair:

This lovely building wouldn’t look out of place alongside the official modulars. Photo by Adeel Zubair

The architecture is typically European (echoing the design language of 10243 Parisian Restaurant) and would fit right in with LEGO’s official modular sets. And while the exterior is very discreet, the inside is full of lovely details—which shouldn’t come as a surprise as Adeel used to work at the LEGO Flagship Store at Leicester Square in London, so he knows what the LEGO store essentials are. I’m sure any AFOL minifigure could find a deal here!

A nice colourful PAB wall, stickers from official LEGO sets, and few cool micro models here - I’m guessing Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Attack on Avengers Tower! Photo by Adeel Zubair

For our convenience, he’s gathered the best of his brilliantly-designed miniature set models on one 32x32 baseplate, so we can really appreciate them. Check out Adeel’s Flickr album for more details!

How many sets do you recognise? Find the answers in Adeel’s Flickr album! Photo by Adeel Zubair

Next up is a totally different take on a LEGO store, built by Vincent Lai from Hong Kong. Vincent works as an architect, which really shows in the facade featuring a number of bright LEGO colours, while at the same time uniquely managing to show off the Wooden Minifigure released in 2019. I’m not going to lie: I love that big chunky thing, and this is a perfect way to display it.

The wooden minifig (megafig?) is neatly recessed into the facade of the building. Photo by Vincent Lai

The inside is also properly colourful and contains everything you’d expect from a LEGO store… plus an unusually cranky employee. (I think maybe somebody’s asked why they don’t sell Playmobil.) More details can be found in Vincent’s Flickr album.

Whoa! A Café Corner on the shelf? If that goes at retail price it’s every AFOL’s WET dream… Photo by Vincent Lai

Meanwhile, we move on to Malaysia and our final stop on this MOC tour: Shirley Yoong’s version, which has a very nice and classy (and very fittingly yellow) exterior…

The LEGO driver brings new stock to the shelves of Shirley’s LEGO store. Photo by Shirley Yoong

…but what really makes this one something else is its incredible interior, specifically the work that has been put into creating custom stickers. I’m counting at least 39 - thirty-nine - different scaled-down versions of actual LEGO set boxes on the shelves, and I’m pretty sure there are more! The attention to detail is mind-blowing.

That’s what I call dedication! So many different stickers representing official LEGO sets. Photo by Shirley Yoong

Shirley’s MOC (more pictures in her Flickr album) also gives us a great way to close this article on LEGO LEGO stores, because what do we find right by the counter in this LEGO store?

Maximum meta, courtesy of LEGO store cashier Joshua Lee. Photo by Shirley Yoong

That would be a 40145, a LEGO model of a LEGO Brand Retail Store offered for sale inside a LEGO model of a LEGO Brand Retail Store. Surely, it can’t get much more meta than that! I hope you’ve enjoyed our little round trip in the world of LEGO LEGO stores. Maybe you’ve been inspired to do what Adeel, Vincent, Shirley and myself did, and build your own version?

DISCLAIMER: The LEGO Group sent BrickNerd a copy of 40574 LEGO Brand Store so we could check it out and write this article before it hit the shelves. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

Do you find LEGO’s official Brand Retail Store sets interesting? Do you have a creative suggestion for what to call the next one? Did we miss any LEGO store references in LEGO’s back catalogue? Have you built a LEGO LEGO store for yourself? Let us know in the comments below!

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