LEGO Everyone Is Awesome [REVIEW]
Overview
Theme: Seasonal/Promotional
Name: Everyone Is Awesome (40516)
Year: 2021
Price: €34.99 | $34.99
Pieces: 346
Minifigs: 11
The Everyone is Awesome set is LEGO’s way of celebrating diversity and the LGBTQ+ community. The set is based on the Pride flag with extra colours to represent the inclusion of the Coloured and Transgender communities.
The set contains 346 pieces, 11 monochrome figures and retails for €34.99. It released June 1st of 2021 in celebration of Pride month.
The set does have minifigures, obviously, but the lack of printing makes the Minifigure Production section of this review pointless. Instead, I will combine the Minifigure Selection and Production sections into one, simply called ‘Minifigures’. There’s also no stickers, so that section wont be included either.
Unboxing
The box is as basic as it can possibly be really. It simply shows the set in the typical 18+ box format. The name of the set in the top left is multicoloured, as is the 1:1 scale reference at the top of the box. The conga line on the top of the box is really fun, and if anything is a better representation of the set than the cover. I’ll get more into that later.
The set comes with your standard 18+ LEGO instruction manual. It’s about the same size as other instruction manuals at this price with two staples to keep its spine together.
You get two pages of preamble with a lovely picture of the Vice President of Design smiling with the set. There’s a nice message on the left that perfectly sums up the intent of this set. It’s a short message, but its an important one that I think a lot of people need to see.
Minifigures
The set comes with 11 monochrome minifigures. Each figure represents a colour from the flag and has a matching unique hairpiece to suit.
Monochrome figure collecting has been a niche sub-collection for a lot of people in recent years, so if nothing else this set presents a great opportunity for others to get into the niche, or to just provide some easy parts for those already involved in it. Collecting monochrome figures is usually very expensive, with monochrome packs costing upwards of 300 euro. I think many people will appreciate this set as a cheap and accessible way to get into the hobby. You can almost think of this set as a “starter pack” if you wanted.
In their effort to be as inclusive as possible, LEGO even balanced the minifigures’ “genders” as best as possible. If you take the hairpieces of each and assign them a gender based on which characters would normally have them, you have 6 males and 5 females. In other words, as close as they possibly could get to 50/50. Of course, in this context, the gender of each hairpiece is irrelevant, as any figure can be transgender/non-binary, but still. Honestly, assigning genders almost defeats the entire point of the set, but it’s a nice detail to mention I think.
The figures in this set are not just a great symbolic gesture, they’re also a greatly appreciated practical one. I think everyone can appreciate the minifigure selection in this set for one reason or another so well done, LEGO.
Build Experience
The build experience for this set was at best, incredibly simple and at worst, boring and repetitive. The build is as basic as it gets, with absolutely no interesting techniques used anywhere.
There was definitely a novelty to opening the bags and seeing all of the different colours together in piles. Theres also the innate satisfaction of pressing a tile down onto a plate, of course. But beyond these small joys, the build was very lacklustre and dull. You can probably guess how to put this set together just by looking at it. Its just brick on brick construction, straight upward. It is exactly as basic as it looks.
It was also fairly repetitive. To build that multi-coloured back wall requires to you repeat the same 2 steps over and over until you reach the top. The top is very slightly different, but I mean slightly. The build experience was honestly just on-par or worse than a free gift-with purchase set. It brings nothing new to the table and is overall just boring.
Design
The design of this set is beautiful in its simplicity. It conveys its message excellently and makes for a lovely little display set when its done. I do have a few issues with it though.
The White Base
The first issue I have is with its base. I think the white base stands out a bit too much and doesn’t look all that amazing. I think building it onto a black base would look classier and allow the colours on top to really ‘pop’ a bit more. A small plaque with “Everyone is Awesome” written on it would work well here as well. I think doing this would’ve worked better for its display-ability and wouldn’t detract from the set’s idea either.
The Figures' Pose
The next issue I have is equally as easy to fix. In a way, it’s a credit to the set that you can fix it so easily, but I digress. My problem is with the default configuration of having all the characters in a diagonal line-up. It is extremely boring and weirdly ‘clinical’. If the point of this set is to celebrate diversity and have everyone get along, then I think the conga line would’ve been a much better default position. Just think about it, having everyone in a conga-line is connecting them physically and metaphorically by having them dance together. The characters partying together also changes the tone of the set to be more celebratory, which is WAY more appropriate, I think. At least you can easily switch the positions of the studs and make the figures do this yourself. I really don’t understand why this isn’t the default position for them honestly. It’s a real missed opportunity.
With both these suggestions in mind, I photoshopped together my version of this set. You can compare both images below.
My next problem is also my biggest gripe with this set… why is it 18+? Surely this is a set you want children and young teenagers to see and experience. Young teenagers figuring out who they are, or who are being bullied for their race or sexuality are exactly the demographics that need this set most. This message is so important for them to hear, so giving this set an 18+ rating is ridiculous to me.
Value
As mentioned in the Overview, the set retails for €34.99 with 346 pieces and 11 monochrome minifigures. In this case, I think price per piece is a fair metric, and the set is priced very fairly.
The set has no direct competition really, as its not comparable to any other set out there right now. I think whether you should buy it or not boils down to the following:
- Are you interested in the look of the set?
- Do you want to show your support to guests in a fun little display piece?
- Do you want to get into the niche of collecting monochrome figures, and don’t know where to start?
If you answered yes to any of these, then I’d highly recommend this set.
I’m going to say something unusual here, and say that this is one set I think they should have overpriced. I think the ultimate gesture of support would be to price this for €10 more than they did, and donate a portion of it to an LGBTQ+ charity. I would happily pay more for this set especially if I knew the extra was going towards a good cause. The whole point of this set is to show their support, so I wish they did something like that to really solidify the message.
Conclusion
I love this set. I love what it represents, and I love the gesture from LEGO to make it. But it’s being marketed to the wrong people, and they missed a few opportunities to make it truly awesome.
All Sets Rank
This set is completely unique and doesn’t really belong to any theme or subtheme. As a result, the only Ranking that matters here is relative to all sets. With that in mind, I’m going to rank it 76th out of 99 sets I own. It’s a great gesture and I do love that about it, but it’s just not as great as most other sets I own.
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