A note about our latest testing: In addition to sending Lego sets to kids all across the country, we recently hosted a Bring Your Kid to Work Day in our Long Island City, New York, office, where children ages 4 to 12 built and provided feedback on more than 30 different Lego sets across a range of themes.
The latest update of this guide includes a couple of our findings from that day. An upcoming larger revision will incorporate several more new picks.
We chose specific sets to test based on the following criteria:
- Age: We looked at Lego’s recommended age ranges for each set, but naturally the difficulty of assembling each set varies from kid to kid based on their experience with building toys. We separated our kid testers into four age ranges based on Lego’s age guidance, but in some cases, if we knew that someone had a lot of building experience, we bumped them up to a higher age category. We were especially interested in seeing how tweens did with a few sets marketed to the 18+ crowd.
- Versatility: Lego makes playsets that cover a huge range of themes, from space exploration to licensed properties like Disney princesses and Minecraft. We aimed to include a mix in order to appeal to different interests.
- Price and value: You can spend anywhere from $10 to hundreds of dollars on a single Lego set. Because licensed sets are more expensive, we paid close attention to how many bricks and minifigures are included in those—the amount of pieces per penny varies widely across options. The cheapest set we tested costs about $10, and the most expensive in the test group is $130. Prices go up as you add complexity and outside intellectual property, but there’s plenty of quality to be found in the $10 to $100 range, and we recommend starting there.
We didn’t test Duplo sets. For kids ages 1½ to 4, chunkier Duplo blocks are a great place to start. It’s tough to elicit critical feedback from toddlers, but the littlest ones on hand during our in-office testing enjoyed the Duplo Number Train 10954, the Duplo Brick Box 10913, and the Duplo Town Alphabet Truck 10421.