It's nearly Halloween, so what better time for LEGO to unveil its new LEGO Ideas set for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Designed by UK-based LEGO fan Simon Scott, the 2,193-piece set is comprised of three locations from the movie: Spiral Hill, Jack Skellington's house and Halloween Town Hall.
It joins the recently-released Jaws set in the LEGO Ideas range, which also includes the Sanderson Sisters' cottage from Hocus Pocus and the Home Alone house.
To mark its release and as a dedicated fan of the movie, I got my hands on the new Nightmare Before Christmas set and built it, singing along to the likes of 'This Is Halloween' and 'What's This?' as I rewatched the movie while I did it.
(Don't fancy Nightmare Before Christmas? We've got you covered with the best Star Wars LEGO sets, the best Marvel LEGO sets, the best Disney LEGO sets and the best LEGO deals around, among many others.)
Pros
- Brilliantly realised design
- Flexible display options
- Packed with details from the movie
Cons
- Delicate parts of the build
- Stickers over printed bricks
Nightmare Before Christmas key specs
| Pieces | 2,193 |
|---|---|
| Minifigures | 6 (+ Zero and buildable Mayor) |
| Dimensions | 32cm x 51cm x 27cm |
LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas features
The LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas set contains 2,193 pieces, spread across 16 bags with a separate moon piece for the Spiral Hill location of the set.
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While you can display all three locations separately, they all connect together for a bigger Halloween Town scene which measures 51cm wide and 27cm deep. Jack Skellington's house is the tallest of the three locations at 32cm high.
The set also comes with six minifigures – Jack Skellington, Sally, Santa Clause, Lock, Shock and Barrel – as well as Zero the dog and a brick-built figure of The Mayor, who comes with a double-sided head. Lock, Shock and Barrel also get their own brick-built walking bathtub to display them in.
Fans might be disappointed at the lack of Oogie Boogie and Dr Finkelstein (who was in the original LEGO Ideas submission), but LEGO Ideas creative lead Jordan David Scott explained the reasoning behind their absence last month (via Brick Fanatics).
"[Oogie Boogie] is a very iconic character. However, he doesn't really appear in any of the scenes [in the set] and having the Town Hall without The Mayor seemed a little odd," he noted.
"We took the liberty of talking with Simon and saying we're not going to include [Dr Finkelstein], but we're going to do The Mayor instead."
There's still plenty of variety to recreate scenes from the movie though in the figures you do get, as well as multiple places to place them. Although why you'd put Jack and Sally anywhere other than at the top of Spiral Hill is a mystery to me.
How to buy LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas set
The LEGO Ideas Nightmare Before Christmas set is available to buy right now after being released widely on September 6 on the official LEGO store.
It costs £169.99 in the UK, $199.99 in the US and €199.99 in Europe and if you're a LEGO Insiders member, you can get more than 1,300 points for the purchase.
Buy the LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas set
If you're not a LEGO Insiders member, it's free to sign up and you can use any points earned on purchases towards rewards, exclusive offers and early access to new sets. For instance, this set was available to Insiders members from September 3.
LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas build: How many times can you rewatch the movie?
For an immersive experience, I popped on The Nightmare Before Christmas as I set down to build the new set. (If you want to do the same when you build the set, the 4K Blu-ray is on Amazon or you can watch it in 4K on Disney+.)
Of course, Henry Selick's stop-motion classic is barely 80 minutes long, so I was prepared for multiple rewatches as I built the 2,193-piece set. I'm dedicated to the job and, after all, what's a few more watches when I've already seen it every Halloween and Christmas for more than two decades?
The three locations of The Nightmare Before Christmas set can be built in any order, but I stuck to the order LEGO recommends with Town Hall first, Jack's house second and Spiral Hill last.
There are 427 steps in total with the entire build taking me just over five hours and 20 minutes, enough time for four-and-a-bit watches of the movie. I had barely got past 'Jack's Lament' in my fifth watch when I put the final touch on the Spiral Hill set.
It's not a set for LEGO beginners as there are several intricate moments across the build, ones where I had to pay attention to the bricks and not to the movie. There were times I cursed it when I had put one brick in the wrong place, leading to several others in the wrong place, and had to start over.
The Spiral Hill set is also a bit delicate when you're putting on the final details, and I unintentionally broke some pieces off. It was easy enough to fix though as it's the smallest location of the three.
It's all worth it in the end though as it's undeniably impressive to look at, perfectly capturing the crooked lines of the architecture from the movie and the curves of the trees. Certain sections are repetitive in order to create the effect, but it's ingeniously designed by LEGO, so the effort is matched by the end result.
As you'd expect with LEGO, there are several excellent details for fans, such as Jack's Christmas experiments to be found in his house, several tombstones that recreate the ones in the movie and the countdown to Christmas on Town Hall.
If there's a disappointment to be found, it's that there are a lot of stickers for the design, rather than the printed bricks we got in the recent Jaws set. But that's a minor thing and they're all fairly easy to place.
You can also remove the roofs of both Town Hall and Jack's house to reveal what's inside, and the backs of the two buildings are open so you can see details such as the lectern in Town Hall.
The three sets connect together, but it's delicate – especially as the roof sides aren't fixed and just rest in place – so we'd suggest moving each location separately and connecting them again once you've decided where to put it.
The bonus with this set is that you don't need to display them all together and each location looks great on its own, but they come together to make a terrific whole.
LEGO Nightmare Before Christmas verdict
It's hard to imagine any Nightmare Before Christmas fan being disappointed with this LEGO set, which impressively recreates the locations from the movie in all their crooked and weird glory.
The set is versatile if you're short on display space, but you are missing out on the visually spooktacular effect of all three locations put together. It's a build that requires concentration at various points, yet nothing too tricky for a seasoned LEGO builder, and once you see the end result, you'll know it was worth it.
It's one of the best new LEGO releases this year and a worthy tribute to one of the best Halloween and/or Christmas movies of all time. If you need to kidnap the Sandy Claws to get a set, do it.
Pros
- Brilliantly realised design
- Flexible display options
- Packed with details from the movie
Cons
- Delicate parts of the build
- Stickers over printed bricks
Nightmare Before Christmas key specs
| Pieces | 2,193 |
|---|---|
| Minifigures | 6 (+ Zero and buildable Mayor) |
| Dimensions | 32cm x 51cm x 27cm |
LEGO's Nightmare Before Christmas set is available to buy now.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
