The Lego Builder app made building the Shire set a breeze

I love Lego, and I love The Lord of the Rings, so when Lego offered me a chance to build its recent The Shire set, I obviously said yes. And I’m so glad I did, not just because I got to act like a kid again and build some Lego, but also because building Lego has changed a lot in recent years.

For the first time, I got to try out Lego’s Builder app (free on iOS and Android). The Lego Builder app isn’t exactly new, but it was new to me, and it really changes the game when it comes to building compared to traditional paper instructions. That said, some people do prefer paper instructions (such as my wife, who helped me build the Shire set), and Lego still includes those in the box, which is great.

But what I really liked about using the Lego Builder app was that I could see a 3D virtual model of the set I was building and rotate it to see different angles. That made figuring out the steps a lot easier because I could see the steps from above, below, or whatever other angle I needed to clear up any confusion. I used the Lego Builder app on a 13-inch iPad Air, and the large screen gave me tons of room to see the steps and manipulate the virtual model. The app works on phones too, but I do think the bigger screen of a tablet is better suited to this kind of app.

Lego Builder is my favourite way to build

The Lego Builder app has a ton of little things that make it extremely fun to use. For example, whenever you need to open a new bag, the Lego Builder app shows the numbered bag on screen. The app makes a noise that sounds just like the sound of Lego pieces in a plastic bag when you shake it. When you tap the bag, it bursts open and sprays virtual Lego pieces in all directions. I also found that the app showed the colours of the pieces more accurately than the paper instructions, which was helpful when dealing with the various shades of green and brown in the Shire set.

Another nice touch is that you can ‘skip’ repetitive steps. For example, when building the Shire set, there were several instances where I had to assemble branches for a tree, which was the same process four or five times over. At first, the Lego Builder app annoyed me because I would build all the branches at the same time and then have to tap through the rest of the steps. But then I realized there was another button you could tap if you already built all the branches and were ready to move to the next step.

I also found the Lego app wasn’t great if I wanted to jump around to steps out of order. The Shire set, for example, had three paper instruction books, each covering different portions of the build. While I worked on bag one with the app, my wife started on the second paper book, which began with the seventh bag. So when I caught up and wanted to skip ahead to steps my wife hadn’t done yet, it was surprisingly annoying to do in the app.

There’s a little bar you can drag your finger along to adjust where you’re at in the build, but it doesn’t say which bag numbers correspond to which points on the bar. Instead, it just shows which sections of the build are completed in the virtual model. This setup forced me to guess where a new bag started, resulting in me jumping in and out of the instructions to see the bag number. It’s not a big deal overall, but it’d be great if the app were updated to allow builders to jump to specific bag numbers.

It’s worth noting that Lego Builder has a mode for building with multiple people, which might address this issue, but I didn’t use it with the Shire build since my wife preferred to use the paper instructions over the app.

Building the Shire was like a trip down memory lane

Beyond the Lego Builder app, the Shire set is absolutely fantastic. The over 2,000-piece set mainly comprises Bag End, Bilbo Baggins’ underground dwelling, where The Lord of the Rings story begins. Along with Bag End itself, the set includes portions of Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party, like a giant cake, fireworks, and even Bilbo’s infamous disappearing prank, Gandalf’s cart full of fireworks, and several characters including Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and a few other hobbits.

What I think truly makes the Shire set stand out are all the little details hidden throughout. There are some more obvious ones — Gandalf’s cart loaded with fireworks, for one. I also adore the Merry and Pippin mini figures, which come with alternate faces and hair options so you can have them look like they just got blown up by a stolen firework, as it happened in the movie.

There’s also the aforementioned disappearing Bilbo, which can be played out with the Lego set thanks to a spinning mechanism hidden within the tree portion of the set. With a little flick, it spins the platform, hiding the Bilbo minifigure so it looks like he vanished. Similarly, there’s a mechanism that allows you to transform a letter in the fire into the One Ring, another fantastic little reveal.

But beyond these more obvious ones, there are many other small details hidden in Bag End. There’s a chest that contains treasures from Bilbo’s adventure in The Hobbit, including the mithril shirt he eventually gives to Frodo. You can also spy Bilbo’s map to the Lonely Mountain, there’s a short sword (possibly Sting?) tucked into a barrel with an umbrella, and there’s even a room with a writing desk featuring Bilbo’s red diary, which you can even open to reveal a title page that reads “There and back again.”

All these little details are fantastic and had me reminiscing about my favourite books and movies throughout the building process. And as much as I enjoyed everything about the Shire set, there were a few small gripes I had with it.

First, all of the details, while fantastic in the final product, did make some of the build quite tedious (after building 14 nearly-identical boughs of leaves for the trees, I never want to build another tree again). Of course, that’s a very small gripe, but one worth pointing out for anyone who might not have the patience for that kind of thing. As a small aside, the set is rated for ages 18+ and is certainly intended as more of a set piece rather than as a set for kids to play with.

Another very tiny issue I had was with some of the hobbit mini figures that need to sit. Normal-sized mini figures have bendable legs and can easily be made to sit down. But hobbit minifigs have shorter legs that don’t bend, so instead, Lego includes alternate legs for hobbits who need to sit down. These alternate legs are basically just one-by-one bricks with a little piece on the end to give the appearance of feet.

While on one hand, this works well to make sitting hobbits, but I found when moving these figures around, the legs easily fell off or got stuck on what they were sitting on. For example, Bilbo has a set of alternate legs to allow him to sit at his writing desk, but every time I tried to remove him from his chair, the whole chair would come up with his legs.

Further, the Shire set was the first Lego set I’ve built that was missing pieces. I don’t bring this up to criticize Lego, but instead to talk about the surprisingly easy process for getting missing or broken pieces replaced. (Also, the two missing pieces were really small, internal blocks that aren’t noticeable in the final product, so it really isn’t a big deal.)

In short, if a Lego set is missing pieces, you can just hop on Lego’s website and go through the steps to request the new pieces. All I had to do was tell Lego the set that I had and which pieces were missing — each piece has a unique code you can use to do this. Once I’d entered the number and quantity of missing pieces, the next step was to enter my shipping address and wait for the pieces to arrive. A very simple and straightforward process to address the issue, which was great to see.

Overall, despite my small criticisms, the Shire build was incredibly fun and a great time for both my wife and I. And Lego sets in general are incredibly fun, and they come in all shapes and sizes. So, if you’ve got a nerd in your life, they make a great gift (maybe even for Father’s Day — as MobileSyrup’s resident dad, I’m uniquely positioned to comment on Good Father’s Day Gifts, and Lego absolutely gets my stamp of approval). So, whether the dad (or nerd) in your life loves The Lord of the Rings like me, or is a fan of something else, there’s almost certainly a Lego set of it that they would have an incredible time building.

Lego’s The Shire set costs $349.99 in Canada and is available to purchase from Lego.