LEGO Juniors: A grown-up LEGO superfan weighs in

Jesse Lyons, our marketing whiz, is the guy to talk to when it comes to LEGOs: he hasn’t stopped collecting them since he was a kid, and he knows what makes LEGO-loving kids tick. Here’s his take on the new LEGO Juniors series. Take it away, Jesse!

It’s not just your imagination, LEGO sets have gotten drastically more complex since you were a kid – take it from me, Magic Beans’ residential LEGO expert. It can seem like the days of just a bucket of multicolored bricks are over as LEGO releases a plethora of fantastical heroes, galactic warriors and prettiest princesses, but this year LEGO has launched a new line that brings back some of the elegant simplicity to LEGO: LEGO Juniors.

Designed for children between the ages of 4 and 7, LEGO Juniors is the perfect stepping stone from oversized DUPLO bricks to classic LEGO building. The sets are made out of LEGO bricks, but with a focus on smaller hands and developing fine motor skills. This means fewer small pieces and larger easy-to-assemble portions, and it is a great introduction to LEGO for first time builders.

Drawing from classic LEGO themes like construction, police stations, castles and more, LEGO Juniors really excels at providing the play experience of some of the large sets at a much more reasonable cost. Personally, I’m a huge fan of sets that tell a complete story as a single set, and Juniors does a great job at this. Whether it’s a construction job about laying down a water main, a red versus blue racecar challenge, or even Batman and Robin stopping the Joker, these sets contain all that is needed for a play experience.

The sets are easier to build thanks to numbered bags (so there isn’t a tedious process of finding a single brick in a sea of hundreds). Instead, you never have more than 50 bricks at any one time. The modified directions make the step by step guide easier to follow for new builders, and have stronger call outs on what bricks are needed where, thanks to oversized arrows. The set itself utilizes many of the new “Easy-to-Build” pieces that allow sets to be built with fewer pieces, like nearly complete cars or large walls consisting of just one or two bricks instead of a dozen. It certainly makes reassembling the set much easier when it breaks apart.

Some of the sets are also packaged in Brick Boxes for storage – these look great and actually stack like regular LEGO bricks! And they are able to hold a few extra sets, when a few more are inevitably picked up.

When I put together the LEGO Juniors Batman set, I was impressed with how complete the set felt – it has everything a budding Batfan would want: Batman, Robin, the Joker, a Batmobile, and the Batcave itself, including a jail cell and the Batcomputer.  The building process includes plenty of basic steps, and thankfully doesn’t have a single sticker (I still can’t put stickers on straight): everything is stamped with decals, and the whole set ends up just looking really good with an Adam West Batman feel to it.

The LEGO Juniors line is a fantastic way to introduce kids to LEGO. The building process is streamlined for a younger audience, and the sets are fully compatible with all LEGO. Come to our stores, or to mbeans.com, to see the entire line! If you have any LEGO questions, please ask by leaving a comment, posting on our Facebook page or sending us a tweet!

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