Here’s your first official look at 21342 The Insect Collection, a 1,111-piece LEGO Ideas set that will have you buzzing with excitement!
Fans and budding entomologists will get to build three highly detailed insects, a Blue Morpho Butterfly, Chinese Mantis and a Hercules Beetle, which are also accompanied by two smaller builds, a seven-spotted ladybug and honeybee.
21342 The Insect Collection has the honour of being the 50th LEGO Ideas set, and is set to be released on 4 September 2023 via Insider Early Access, and will retail for a very respectable US$79.99 / AU$124.99.
See below for regional pricing and product pages.
The original LEGO Insects Ideas submission was conceived by hachiroku24, and featured 5 varying insects, which were made simpler buildings techniques. The poor ladybug has been turned into a 1×1 tile!
You can see with the final model, LEGO have chosen three of the more impressive looking insects, and enlarged them, along with adding some bits of wooden bark and foliage to give it a diorama look.
Aesthetically, this is the right call as it also looks like the LEGO designer was heavily influenced by the LEGO Botanical Collection with some of the flowers and natural details here.
Here’s a look at the back of the box.
And here are the dimensions for each insect. These are some pretty big LEGO bugs!
- Blue morpho butterfly and honeybee (18 x 19 x 11.5cm)
- Hercules beetle (14.5 x 15.5 x 11.5cm)
- Chinese mantis and seven-spotted ladybug (17 x 17 x 11.5cm)
And here’s some more lifestyle photos supplied by LEGO so you can check out the LEGO Insects in detail, which look to have all-printed elements!
Really love that the Mantis’ eyes are printed!
Spectacular tiling and use of colours with the Blue Morpho Butterfly.
And I love that the bee utilises LEGO Minifigure Fairy Wings, and a printed egg for its abdomen.
To celebrate the launch of the LEGO Ideas Insects set, LEGO have also worked together with award winning and Emmy-nominated Foley artist, Sanaa Kelley to create Green Noise, a new nature-inspired ASMR playlist with LEGO clicks and sounds reimagined as the unique sounds of each insect using LEGO elements.
The LEGO Green Noise playlist can be streamed via LEGO.com/insects.
21342 The Insect Collection will be released on 4 September 2023 on LEGO.com for LEGO Insiders, ahead of a 7 September 2023 general release.
I’ll be reviewing the set closer to the release date, so keep an eye out for it!
What do you think of the LEGO Ideas Insects set? Will you be bugging out over it?
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