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LEGO Ideas 21351 Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas – a beloved classic comes to life [Review]

zaterdag, 17 augustus 2024

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Since its premiere in 1993, Tim Burton’s Disney animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick (who went on to direct other stop-motion classics such as James and the Giant Peach and Coraline), has been a favorite holiday tradition for families and children-at-heart worldwide. LEGO fans have been eager for an official set and had their appetites whetted somewhat by the release of collectible minifigures for Jack and Sally as part of the second Disney CMF series. The LEGO Ideas platform has had several projects inspired by the film submitted over the years but they have never been approved to become official sets… until now. LEGO Ideas 21351 Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas comes with 2,193 pieces and will be available starting on September 3rd for LEGO insiders and September 6th for everyone else for US $199.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £189.99.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Unboxing the parts, instructions, and stickers

The set comes in a large black, 18+ branded box with the three sections of the finished model featured against a slight lavender glow. The movie branding and the Disney logo are also prominent. Along the bottom of the box is the usual strip of LEGO elements, in lavender to match the glow.

The back of the box shows the finished model from another angle, with all of the characters arranged throughout the scene along with many Christmas elements like the presents, wreaths, bow-adorned skulls, and a stocking hidden in the basements and attics of the structures.

There is an inset image showing the removable roofs of the town hall and another showing the inside of Jack Skellington’s house. Finally, there is a small diagram showing the set’s dimensions.

Inside the box, there are 16 paper parts bags, 3 instruction booklets (1 for each section), a small sticker sheet, a fabric banner for the town hall, and a large yellow moon made from thin cardboard.

The first instruction booklet includes a few pages of special content about the LEGO fan designer, the overall project, and the LEGO designers who brought it to life.

The build

The build starts with the brick-built mayor, who has printed cones for both his torso and his 2-sided head. The claw-footed tub is also included, as well as Lock, the leader of Oogie-Boogie’s minions.

Moving on to the town hall, the section starts with a base of black and dark gray plates stacked. The overall shape is rounded with one straight section on the left which will attach to Jack Skellington’s house later. We start with the building’s foundation, a crawl space with lots of details like a hidden wreath, a skeleton, a cauldron, and a spider.

Built into the foundation are two sets of three attachments for angled pillars that will line each side of the finished building. The base of the town hall finishes with a scattering of stepping stones and red-orange flowers.

Now it is time to build the town hall itself. The front wall has a skewed opening for the door which gives the building a leaning look. On either side of the floor are long benches for citizens to sit during the emergency town meeting that Jack calls after returning from Christmas town. The front and back walls are angled outward, and there are clips built into the inner frame that will be used to hold up the angled outer walls.

Speaking of outer angled walls, the set uses the same clever technique to attach all of the walls for both buildings. Two hinge bricks are attached to the bottom of the wall, and a click hinge plate loosely connects to a clip plate with just enough tension to keep it from falling, but not so much as to make it hard to separate if you want to peek inside later.

Some dark gray curtains are added and a podium for Jack to make his dubious declaration to take over Christmas.

With the town hall firmly in place on the base, we move on to the 6 crooked pillars that attach to the front, along with the orange and black Halloween banner. The countdown to X-mas is also added before we build the roof.

The roof is fairly simple and includes several Christmas decorations like a wreath, a stocking, and several presents. While removable roofs are nothing new to LEGO, I don’t think I have ever since this particular technique before. The roof panels are framed with downward-facing brackets and cheese slopes that fit perfectly together with no stud connections.

In the foreground of this section is the town square fountain that Sally sabotages with a potion to create the soupy fog that almost puts a stop to Jack’s plans. The base of the fountain is made with asymmetrically arranged sections of various curves and sloped elements surrounding a green swampy mix of studs and a crystal.

The star of the fountain is the long twisted gargoyle statue which does a pretty awesome job of capturing the iconic Tim Burton look of many of the background scenes and settings. The last part of the town hall section is a knarled black tree attached to the right side of the base next to the building.

Moving on to the next section, Jack Skellington’s house starts with a very similar style of base as the town hall, but a bit narrowing and deeper. The foundation for Jack’s house is much smaller, and higher off the ground to add to the precarious look of his crooked domicile. A path of stepping stones is flanked by two curving rock walls that include clips to loosely attach to the two adjacent sections. Two tall iron gates are added to round out the base.

The first floor is small, consisting of an entryway with a Christmas tree and a sack. There is an eye sticker on Jack’s front door and the two walls are attached using the same method as the town hall walls.

Two spindly posts are added on either side of the front door.

The second floor is slightly larger, including Jack’s workshop. The outside front includes two small roof sections, a pair of yellow-paned windows, and three small posts. The second-floor walls are angled and attached the same way as the other walls.

The interior of Jack’s workshop has lots of details from the movie like the blackboard filled with Jack’s sketches and formulas for creating Christmas magic, his costume design, books, and the food basket that Sally leaves for him when he is deeply obsessed with his plans.

The front of the top floor also has several crooked panels and a small curved window, while hidden in the rafters are two more Christmas wreaths.

The last parts of the house are two detailed roof sections topped with curved slopes interlocked like teeth along the top. The left side is adorned with a tall and crooked chimney topped with a cone,

Before moving on to the third and final section, another tree is attached to the left of the house with fall foliage. The base attaches to the first section with a single clip right below the curved wall.

The last section starts much like the first two, with black and dark gray plates. Sand blue tiles and plates form the ground for the cemetery, including some plants that Sally uses in her concoctions. The back of the base is the tall black hill with a spiraling tip which is featured in two prominent scenes in the movie.

The cemetery is built around a central mausoleum for Zero, the ghost dog, with several more headstones surrounding it as well as pumpkins and flowers.

Finally, we add the large yellow moon, which attaches to the back of the spiral hill through a hole in the center.

The minifigs

The set includes 8 characters total, six minifigures, a molded Zero, and a brick-built mayor. First up are Jack and Sally. While this is not the first time Jack Skellington has appeared in minifigure form, this is a new version, using the long arms and legs commonly found in the Avatar sets. Jack has a printed torso and legs, and the head is a slightly different printing from the Collectible Minifigure Series with his mouth being more open. Sally also has printed torso and leg details that differ slightly from her previous version.

Both minifigures also have back-printed torsos and Sally has an alternate expression. Sally also features dual-printed arms.

Next, the Mayor and Santa (Sandy Claws). The mayor has a printed torso and two iconic facial expressions printed on different size cones. Santa has front printing on his torso and his long coat base. He also has a back-printed torso and an alternate angry facial expression.

Finally, we have the three young hooligans who work for Oogie-Boogie: Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Lock has a red outfit, Shock has her witch’s hat and a lavender skirt element, and Barrel has his printed skeleton shirt. They all have alternate expressions as well. I have two minor complaints about these three figures. One is that they do not include their iconic masks. I know this would have required custom molds and would add to the already high price but it would have been a nice detail. My other issue is that they have such simple clothes. It almost feels like they were test molds, with only Barrel having a few of the skeleton bones printed on his torso.

The finished model

The finished model is a fantastic display set, and while the sections are not interchangeable, they can be separated and arranged in any order as individual sections. The set is full of so many details from the movie, and the updates from the original submission make a lot of sense (including the mayor, for example) The scene can be displayed as original Halloween Town or the many Christmas elements can be added throughout to evoke the hijacked holiday instead.

Conclusions and recommendations

My family enjoys watching The Nightmare Before Christmas every year to help get us in the mood for Christmas and autumn in general, and I expect we are not alone. This set captures so much of the magic from the movie and would make a great display set. If you are a fan of the movie then I can highly recommend picking this set up and building it, maybe with family or friends while watching the movie. I think it would be really fun if LEGO released a holiday set that was Christmas Town sometime in the future, which would go perfectly with this one. LEGO Ideas 21351 Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas comes with 2,193 pieces and will be available starting on September 3rd for LEGO insiders and September 6th for everyone else for US $199.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £189.99.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.