We rebuilt LEGO Ideas 21330 Home Alone and… KEVIN!!!

Basing a LEGO set on a licence presents any number of challenges, each of which LEGO Ideas 21330 Home Alone more than masters.

One of the most Christmassy LEGO sets available at the moment isn’t actually the latest entry into the Winter Village collection, but rather a large scale LEGO Ideas set that is still available, having released in 2021.

That is 21330 Home Alone, which Zavvi have kindly sent over a copy of for us to take a look at, while they have it on promotion as part of their LEGO Black Friday deals. In the UK, Zavvi have marked the LEGO Ideas set down to £229.99 for a 12% reduction, whilst in the US, Zavvi is offering 10% off, with code BFHOMEALONE taking 21330 Home Alone down to $269.99.

21330 Home Alone is of course based on the 1990 movie that saw poor, young Kevin left alone in the family mansion as his parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins all flew to Paris for the holiday season, having to defend the house from a couple of bumbling robbers. The film spawned a franchise, made a child star of Macaulay Culkin and has provided several generations of young families with many iconic and funny moments in a piece of 1990s cinema history.

Creating a LEGO set based on such a popular and well-known film seems on paper to be a relatively easy task to accomplish – almost everything memorable and central to the film’s story occurs in the one location (the house), so you would forgive the LEGO Ideas team for simply recreating a basic shell of the mansion and stuffing it with as many of the recognisable references and details as possible and leaving it at that.

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And in some ways, that is what 21330 Home Alone is. It is absolutely packed full of everything you can possibly remember happening during Kevin’s exploits in Home Alone, from pigging out on junk food to having a fake house party to deter the robbers from entering the home, to a number of the tricks and traps he set up when they eventually did try to.

Yet, there are two elements that make such a stuffed LEGO set a success. The first of these is the sheer size the Ideas design team chose to build it at – 21330 Home Alone is a sizeable set, coming in as it does at 3,955 pieces. Such a piece count does come at an RRP of £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99, but it also opens up the set to be exactly what it needs to be, with room after room across a three-tier build, complemented perfectly with opening front, and a number of clever play functions nicely concealed within the framework of the house.

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And the second aspect that works to 21330 Home Alone’s success is the skilled design that has gone into making sure that even though there is so much to build, enjoy and play with in the set, everything still has its place and serves to contribute to an all-round, cohesive build and play experience – rather than one that could so easily have become chaotic.

Basing a LEGO set on a licence brings with it certain challenges, created in no small part through the expectations an existing fanbase will always have around what should and shouldn’t be included, how it should be built or not built, and so on. And 21330 Home Alone may come in at a higher price than most would hope for, particularly in comparison with other Christmas-themed LEGO sets of recent years.

Yet, through its size and for how well designed it has been, 21330 Home Alone delivers an authentic and festive experience for fans of one of the most iconic holiday season movies, and in a way that only the very best of LEGO sets could possibly achieve. All the way through piecing the set together and once you have it completed, on display and ready to be played from room to room, you’re continuously transported back to the first time you saw the film.

From the moment Kevin woke up in the attic by himself, to the hijinks he gets up to whilst unsupervised, to the various traps he has to set and spring as Harry and Marv try to break in, everything that made you laugh and smile in the film will do so again in LEGO form. It’s such a rare delight of an experience to have, whatever age you may be while building.

Thank you to Zavvi for giving us the opportunity to build this set again, while all editorial remains our own. Zavvi currently have 21330 Home Alone available on sale as part of their LEGO Black Friday deals, reduced by 12% to £259.99 for UK readers and by 10% with code BFHOMEALONE for US readers, while stocks last.

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