LEGO is still making incredible sets for under £30 – but it needs to broaden its scope

The LEGO Group is still making incredible sets for under £30 if you know where to look, but that only leaves us wishing it would broaden its budget portfolio beyond its currently quite narrow scope.

You don’t need to look far to find someone taking the LEGO Group to task over its increasingly expensive sets: a £400 Avengers Tower here, a $1,000 Death Star there. But the portfolio of LEGO sets is still vast, and for every £250 The Legend of Zelda model there’s a £9 LEGO City car. In fact, there are currently 516 products in the ‘under £20’ category at LEGO.com, compared to just 58 in the ‘over £200’ category.

The problem for us as adult collectors is that most of those cheaper sets are intended first and foremost for kids, and the designs and complexity of the builds very much reflect that primary demographic. It’s the LEGO Group’s primary demographic too, so it does make sense – but if you’re an adult shopping on a cheaper budget, where do you look for interesting and engaging builds?

Well, there are two really good options right now: LEGO Botanicals and LEGO Speed Champions. Both of these themes have things to offer adult builders who don’t necessarily want to spend hundreds of pounds on (or sacrifice entire corners of their homes for) LEGO sets.

Yet while Speed Champions has been pumping out quality sets in the sub-£30 category for years (more on those further down), it’s something of a recent phenomenon for Botanicals. Back when it was still under the Icons banner and known as the Botanical Collection, this budding theme of plants and flowers was restricted mostly to sets around the £50 mark, with the occasional venture into £90 territory.

There were and are pocket money-priced additions too, like 40460 Roses and 40524 Sunflowers, which offer a taste of the theme for £13 or less. But if you wanted to dial up the complexity without spending at least £45, all you could do was wait for one of the pricier sets to receive a discount – until 10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom debuted last year.

These two potted plants, which were followed by 10343 Mini Orchid and 10344 Lucky Bamboo in January this year, established a new price bracket for Botanicals at £24.99 / $29.99 / €29.99. And they’re arguably not only the best Botanicals sets money can buy right now – regardless of their entry price – they’re also some of the best LEGO sets you’ll find for under £30.

It’s within these sets that the LEGO Botanicals design team has really drilled down into and perfected the essence of what makes a buildable plant work so well: unusual build techniques, innovative part usage and – perhaps most importantly – the overall composition, ensuring the finished model is evocative of its inspiration without leaning too heavily into the novelty that defined and at times overshadowed earlier Botanical Collection models.

Yes, the Chrysanthemum’s colourful bananas are a fun talking point, but here you can also look past them to see the wood for the trees (so to speak), in a way that you couldn’t necessarily achieve with purple pirate hats or pink frogs. It does help for sure that bananas are a more generic shape, but that too just speaks to clever part usage from this set’s designer(s).

The Plum Blossom, meanwhile, serves up a surprisingly considered build for only £25, with an assembly process that will leave you feeling sort of like you’re channelling your inner florist. That both these sets are complete display pieces (with buildable pots) only strengthens the value proposition – you don’t need to add your own vase as with the bigger bouquets.

Collecting the entire quartet of the Four Gentlemen, as they’re named in Chinese art, adds up to just a smidge under £100. But the beauty of this collection is that you can dive in a little bit at a time, or even just pick your favourites, and you’ll never need to spend more than £25 at a time (or less if you find them discounted). LEGO Speed Champions manages much the same feat, splitting its collection of cars every wave across a range of sets that mostly come in at less than £25 apiece.

Their price may slowly be on the rise, but for now the solo cars – including the recent Formula 1 wave – can be had for £22.99 each in the UK. And as we’ve discussed before, it’s here where you’ll find some of the most interesting and innovative ways to use LEGO elements at the moment, necessitated by the eight-studs-wide template to which (nearly) all LEGO Speed Champions must adhere, and driven by the fact the theme 'aims for the adult [market]'.

But what if you’re not into cars or flowers? Well... bad luck. There are great and fun sets to be found in themes like City and Creator at this price point, but they're still not really on the level of Botanicals or Speed Champions as far as building techniques are concerned.

Licensed themes especially don’t seem interested in offering complex builds like Speed Champions or Botanicals for under £30, or perhaps can’t when so much of the focus is on minifigures in the likes of Star Wars and Marvel. The sets intended for adults in those themes (which is to say, those marked 18+) typically start around the £60 mark, with a couple of exceptions at £45 or so.

It's a shame because Botanicals and Speed Champions both demonstrate what the LEGO Group is capable of on a more limited budget, and it would be great to see other themes taking cues from them to find new ways to appeal to budget markets. Because while we are all adults, that doesn’t necessarily mean we all have unlimited disposable income to spend on LEGO – and for all the LEGO Group’s talk about finding new adult fans of LEGO, the sub-£30 market is one that’s oddly underserved by 18+ sets right now.

10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom are available now. The copies featured here were provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes.

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