The LEGO Animal Crossing range brings various characters from Animal Crossing: New Horizons to cube life in five sets (at least initially) that allow you to connect them to create your very own Animal Crossing island in a Lego brick.
Avid Lego fans will notice a resemblance to the deceased Fabuland theme, now Nintendo-flavored, and we’ve been looking at all the launch kits to see how they fare against other Nintendo X Lego offerings.
Here, we’re watching Nook’s Cranny and Rosie’s House — the largest set in the launch lineup. Let’s see if the mild-mannered loan shark from Animal Crossing can conquer the Danish plastic market…
What’s in the box?
You get seven bags in the box, this time clear, with Rosie’s House and Nook’s Cranny divided into bags one to four and five to seven respectively.
Importantly, you also get two separate instruction manuals, meaning two people can assemble the set at the same time — a good option if you have another family member who wants to get involved semi-autonomously. If you’re building solo, it makes no difference, but it’s great to see this level of thought go into the building experience.
This is an age 7+ build compared to the 6+ categorization of other sets in the range, and there are a lots of small pieces. This set also reaches an unknown Lego part count threshold that warrants the inclusion of a Brick Separator. Come in.
We’ll follow things in the suggested order and start with Rosie’s house.
Building Rosie’s house
First off, Rosie herself looks great, with an optional bow and a tail element we haven’t seen before. Although the tail presents problems when it comes to sitting in an armchair or riding a bicycle, it is still a cute detail. Hey, you can’t ride a bike in the game, right?
The rest of the first bag is exterior parts, including an orange tree, a tea set and umbrella, and a blue bicycle. We especially enjoyed the small detail of the toadstool under the tree. There were a lot of extra pieces left from the beginning — according to our calculations, there are 10 extra pieces in the first bag alone.
Then it’s time to start building a house with the remaining bags. If you built Fauna’s house in the Isabelle’s House Visit kit, this follows the same template, with interchangeable windows depending on your taste (from rounded brown and square pink here, we personally prefer the pink) and some nice touches like a lantern hanging by the window and a reachable street lamp outside.
It’s not a long or complicated build, but the little elements and intricate details make things interesting.
Let’s go to bags five, six and seven, and Tom Nook’s shop…
Nook’s Cranny construction
First out of the bag is Tom Nook himself, and he looks stunning in minifig form. He wears a short-sleeved island shirt and has a bushy tail. We don’t mean to suggest that it’s worth buying a set just for it, but if you like minifigures, this one is a winner.
The store itself follows the same pattern, although there is a tinge of disappointment with this particular building. It’s good, but it’s also hard to shake the impression that this iconic store deserved more attention than the farmhouses. In the back of our minds was that adorable fan-made build dedicated to Lego Ideas — It is the kind of lavish detail we’d like to see here.
Again, what’s here is nice enough. You’ve got cute little canopies over the color-changing windows, a rich blue roof, and printed lettering — no cheap stickers here, thank you very much. The Bell bag is fantastic, as are the seeds and fish food in the cabinet. Everything is colorful and fun to build and charming enough.
However, despite all the details of the set, things are missing and, unlike the houses where small sizes feel comfortable, the shop feels overly cramped. A little more kid-based real estate would have made room for Timmy and Tommy, for example, whose presence is sorely missed by anyone who played New Horizons.
This is already the most expensive set in the current Lego Animal Crossing range, but we wonder what could have been included if another 10 or 20 units of your local currency were added to the RRP. Did we maybe get a bigger roof, room for more items on sale or a hinged recycling bin lid?
Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s house cost
Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House is the most expensive of the Animal Crossing Lego sets, going for $74.99 / £64.99 / $74.99.
That price gets you 535 pieces, which is just over 14 cents a piece — which is expensive, even for licensed sets.
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