LEGO Stranger Things The Upside Down (75810) Review

In a surprise announcement yesterday, LEGO revealed the new LEGO Stranger Things The Upside Down (75810). The set has 2,287 pieces and retails for $199.99 and it features the Joyce Byers house from the hit Netflix series. Note that the box shows ages 16+ which means this set is aimed towards the older audience but it is LEGO so it could appeal to everyone even if they don’t know what Stranger Things is about.

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Box

The set is called The Upside Down and you may have noticed that the box itself is able to flip around to show the alternate dimension. This is pretty unique as I haven’t seen LEGO do that in recent years. The back of the box just shows some of the play features of the set which I’ll take a look at a bit later.

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Instructions

There are two instruction booklets and each book allows you to build each of the “houses.” The first book deals with the real world Byers’ house along with the minifigure stand and Hopper’s Chevy Blazer. The other book is for the Byers’s house in the Upside Down. Both books give some detail of the show itself along with pictures of the characters as well as a background of how the set came to be from LEGO designer Justin Ramsden.

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Minifigures

There are eight minifigures in this set: Eleven, Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson, Will Byers, Joyce Byers, Chief Jim Hopper and the Demogorgon.

Eleven wears a pink dress and blue jacket. There’s also a pink skirt piece that goes around the medium sized white legs. She has a single side head showing her with a stern expression. Eleven does not have short hair but she does have the long blonde wig. Her accessory is a printed 1×1 round tile of the Eggos waffle.

Mike wears a tan jacket over a striped shirt and has medium sized green legs. He has a double sided head with a concerned look on one side and an angry expression on the other. His accessories include a flashlight and his walkie-talkie.

Lucas wears a dark red jacket over a blue shirt and he has a brown belt on the waist. Like with many of the other kids, he also has medium sized legs and his is in brown. His facial expression shows him with a scared look and he has a bandana on his head. His accessories includes a flashlight and a slingshot with yellow bands.

Dustin is probably my favorite character from the show and he is shown wearing the teal Waupaca Wis. shirt and blue jacket. For his medium legs, they are of the tan variety. He has a double-sided head with his signature smile on one side and a worried look on the other. His hairpiece has his cap molded on to his curly hair.

Will is wearing the red and yellow vest over a blue shirt and he has some light-blue medium sized legs. He has a double-sided head with a worried expression on one side and a scared expression on the other. His hairpiece is his bowl cut. Will has no accessories.

Joyce is Will’s mom and she spends most of the time in the show looking for him. She wears an olive colored jacket over a red and yellow striped shirt. Her double-sided head shows her with a concerned look on one side and a scared look on the other. Her accessories include a flashlight and a printed 2×2 tile of a drawing of Will the Wise.

Hopper is in his tan police chief outfit which shows his badge right above the pocket. He bearded facial expression shows him with a stern look. He doesn’t have a hair piece but he does have a cowboy hat that he wears throughout the show. His accessory is a white coffee mug.

Lastly, we have the Demogorgon who is one of the antagonists of the show. The body is mostly brown and the features on it is pretty nice. The torso shows a lot of it’s skin detailing on the front and back. The legs use the faun-style legs and they also have some printing on them including the claw toes. The head shows a closed mouth but it also has a piece going on it showing its open petals and sharp teeth. It has a pair of claw pieces for each hand.

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Build

The first part of the build is the Stranger Things minifigure stand. It does want you to put on a large sticker of the Stranger Things logo on a black 6×8 slope piece. There’s room for four minifigures but technically you can have six total with two behind the sign but you can’t see them.

Hopper’s Chevy Blazer is a six stud wide vehicle and it’s something that isn’t really need for the set but is a welcome addition. The build is a pretty standard vehicle that could fit into a City layout. The doors have some stickers for the Hawkins Police Dept and the back pillars have some stickers as well. The back of the Blazer has a pumpkin to reference the contaminated pumpkin patch from Season 2 of the show. The roof is removable to put Hopper in the truck.

Now on to the main build which is the Byers’ house. The foundation of the house is made of a lot of various plate pieces and the way they are put together makes it very stable.

The walls are next to be built as well as some of the interior details. The living room has the most detail out of all the rooms and your eyes will go straight to the alphabet on the wall with lights Christmas lights which Joyce uses to communicate with Will. To enhance the play feature, there’s also a light element to shine on the wall.

The couch is an interesting build as the back cushions are slotted behind the seat cushions. The side wall has a sticker showing some framed drawings and a cabinet for the mail and to do list.

The coffee table has Will’s “Have you seen me” flyer which is a sticker on a 2×2 tile. In front of the door is a spot of an axe and a bear trap for the Demogorgon.

On the other side of the pillar is a green armchair, some boxes for the Christmas lights, a stickered Dungeons & Dragons rule book, and a potted plant.

The room to the left of the living room is Will’s bedroom which has a bed and a desk. Sitting on top of the desk is a boombox and a lamp. On the wall is another sticker of some of Will’s drawings and a Jaws movie poster.

Lastly on the interior of the house, we also get a small attic space that has a video recorder on one side and a stickered drawing of the Mind Flayer and a purple wizard hat for Will the Wise. The roof is made of mostly plates stacked on top of each other and they attach to the two angled sides. Be careful when putting these on because I did manage to knock off some of the columns on accident.

The front of the house is fairly bland with some rocks scattered throughout the grass. The porch has a chair and table along with a couch and a porch swing. The large rock in the corner has a pin which allows you to attach the Chevy Blazer to it so it won’t fall over when you flip the model over.

After that’s completed, we now move on to the Upside Down version of the Byers’ house. It is pretty much another build of the house but everything is reversed and is in a dark gray and blue color scheme.

We still the same details as in the regular house but there are some slight differences. Firstly, the stickers are the same ones as on the regular side but they are now in grayscale. Some more details that are different are that the plants are now plants and vines coming out of various openings including some dark blue one that fans may enjoy.

Now that both houses are built, you combine them together using the Technic ball joint gear on the edges. This part may be somewhat difficult because you have to hold both sides up to snap them on to the joints.

The last two sets of bags are dedicated to building the trees that on the sides of the house. They are made mostly out of Technic bricks and plates with some slope pieces throughout. To make it easier, I suggest building both at the same time since they are the exact same.

In the middle, there are some ball joints to snap to the sides of the house. While doing this, you’ll also have to slide the plates on the sides of the houses between the little gap on the trees. I feel this is the most difficult part of the whole build and I had pieces fall off left and right putting them on. To keep them more secure, there are more ball joints on the interior side.

The outside of the trees have a missing person poster for Barbara Holland, aka, Barb.

Now that everything is built and held together by the trees, you can see that it doesn’t look bad at all. As you can see, the Chevy Blazer is held very securely even when it is upside down.

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Results

To some, the Stranger Things theme is a very interesting for licensing due to the subject matter of the hit Netflix show. Personally I enjoyed the show and can’t wait to see what season three holds in store for the characters. As for the set itself, I didn’t think the rumors of the set were that credible until pretty recently, more specifically two months ago. A majority of the readers also were pretty skeptical of it but others were excited to see what would come out of it.

That brings us to today where the LEGO Stranger Things The Upside Down (75810) is now available for purchase and it actually is a fun set to build. There’s a ton of details that are straight from the show and I do like the inclusion of the lights for the alphabet wall. From just looking at it, the set doesn’t seem too sturdy considering the houses are held up by the two trees on the sides. I do suggest displaying it somewhere that pets can’t access it because I did knock it over a few times but surprisingly, nothing broke off of it.

The minifigure selection is almost spot on however I do wish Steve and Nancy were included as well. Other than that, the minifigures are spot on and I do like how the Demogorgon came out.

There are some tiny negatives I have with The Upside Down. One is connecting the houses to the trees. I’m not sure if others were having this issue or just me but it was somewhat difficult snapping in the ball joints in while trying not to break anything. This step took me the longest as I was being really careful about it and there’s not much to hold on to while snapping it in.

The appeal of this set is obviously to fans of the show as well as fans who are interested in interesting building techniques. Other than that, people won’t exactly know what is going on with it. The subject matter is a slippery one as it is science fiction horror but it is in line with some of LEGO’s other themes like Star Wars and Super Heroes.

The price tag of $199.99 may deter folks from immediately picking it up but I would say it is worth it considering you’re getting over two thousand pieces and eight minifigures. There’s also a lot of new pieces and also existing parts in new colors.

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Thank you to LEGO for sending in this set for me to review. The content above represents my own opinion and not the company. Review sets sent in does not guarantee a positive review.