When BrickNerd was offered the January wave of LEGO DreamZzz sets before images were released, I had a terrible idea: why not try building LEGO sets from just the pieces without ever seeing the official sets? Why not do an “all pieces, no pictures” experiment to answer the question nobody has asked: how easy is it to tell from a pile of bricks what the designer had in mind?

So when they arrived, I ran for a stack of paper bags, blindfolded myself, and began the difficult task of separating each set from its box and instructions so that participants could get the pieces without ever seeing the set. After that, I was off on a delivery route to several members of my LUG and some fellow BrickNerd contributors for them to randomly select a bag of parts to build a set without ever seeing it. Ideally, they would follow the bag numbers to create a set before looking at what it should have been.

And then the real challenge began: what on earth is all that neon yellow for?

Michael and the Flying Video Game Controller

Michael: I drew Cooper’s Flying Video Game Controller (set 71489). Honestly, I had seen a picture of the set early in December, so I wasn’t entirely blind going into the build, but it had been long enough that I only vaguely remembered a spaceship sort of shape.

I started by opening Bag 1 which builds the controller. It had lots of interesting red parts and a big trans pink and white brain! I wanted to use the 4 x 8 slope pieces as intakes (like the F-104 long-time BrickNerd readers know it’s a favorite of mine), but that didn’t pan out. But without knowing what was in Bag 2, I was stuck, so I dumped everything out.

Bag 1

Bag 2

Initial Table Scraps

Right away, the large Opalescent Trans Blue blades stood out, and there were the Technic pieces to make helicopter rotors! That at least gave me a path. White and black seemed to be the color scheme that went with the brain, so I quickly made a little robo-suit-like thing for it, which reminded me of something from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

But then I struggled with building a satisfying cockpit, though after a couple of iterations, I got a mostly closed cockpit that I was happy with. After completing the helicopter, I had a lot of pieces left over including the 4x8 slopes. These became a detachable parasite aircraft for the helicopter—double the swooshability!

My experiment done, I took a look at what the set should have been and I was quite happy with my model. I did construct the set per the instructions. I didn’t end up building the set’s aircraft A model, but the B helicopter model is fun and swooshable, if a little tall for a helicopter proportion-wise. It’s a good parts pack and a fun concept for anyone in the set’s age range. Also, this was my first DreamZzz set, and the artwork in the manual is a nice touch that I really enjoyed as well.

Geneva and the Tiger Mech Plus Hot Rod Nightmare

Geneva: I began building Cooper’s Tiger Mech & Zero’s Hot Rod Car (set 71491) on a rough foot: a small Bag 1 full of small pieces that gave no indication of the set’s identity. There was no making heads or tails of the set from there, so I began dumping. Bag 3 proved to be bits for a brain-spider (what on earth is with those squiggly azure things!?), which I assembled with a tiny bit of restored confidence.

By this point, I was feeling sure that the main build was a mech—an assurance that sorely dashed my personal confidence, for mechs are the glaring hole in my MOC portfolio, and I knew I didn’t know what I was doing.

And then before I knew it, I was staring at four wheels, smack dab in the middle of the bag count, whaaat… and along came a tiger face on a shoulder piece, and then a skull print on a totally different kind of shoulder piece, and all this with a bedlam of shocking colors. I gave up in hysterical despair and went to bed.

I began to come reluctantly to the conclusion that what I was looking at was a mech that was meant to break down into multiple vehicles. This was not something I felt remotely qualified for, so, with a momentary regret for my pet project, I swallowed the fact that I could either 1) build something that looked decent but nothing like the original set or 2) build something that looked hideous, and also nothing like the original set.

From there, I just started playing with the parts. With all these colors and constraction parts, there was no hope of making anything medieval-themed (I had secretly been hoping that this wave of sets would be like the Stable of Dreams wave), so instead, I went for a spaceship—because any part is a spaceship part, right?

After that was done, there were quite a few pieces left over, so I kept tinkering, coming up with several small builds for the various characters in the set.

a pirate brainspider and his roman legions (run)

i don’t know if that thing is a spyglass or an hourglass

i do love these cyberpunk roman warriors

There were still a shocking amount of pieces left over after making my sub builds, but at this point, my creativity was spent. I don’t know what possessed me to choose the largest set to essentially blind build. (The moral of the story is: don’t be greedy.)

leftover parts after I thought I built a **lot**

After I’d built all I could think of, I pulled out the box and instructions and immediately felt justified. An airplane mech and a full-on car to the side? Who would have guessed!?

The actual set is quite cool, and both the car and mech are pretty substantial—though they are heavily reliant on stickers. It is designed in multiple sections for plenty of reorganization options. I have mixed feelings about this kind of modularity in a set; it must add quite a bit to the parts count and, therefore, to the price… without any of the reordered assemblies looking quite as cool as the main one. Besides, by its nature, a LEGO set is already prime for being disassembled and reimagined, so having larger chunks that can also be reimagined but in a much more restricted way seems overkill. I’m not sure I would have cared for that as a kid, but there must be kids who love it—I’m sure LEGO does their homework.

As with other sets in this wave, there are more extra parts than usual to accommodate the B models, though not nearly as many as there were after my builds.

Brian and the Gaming Bunny

Brian: Starting off my build (unknowingly Izzie and Bunchurro the Gaming Bunny set 71490), I made the first mistake quickly. I dumped out Bag 1 and Bag 2 together (drats!). Similar to Michael, I was not completely unfamiliar with this set, having seen one image. However, I had no recollection of it at all. But it was obvious from the large lavender face it was intended to be a bunny of sorts.

Having some familiarity with the DreamZzz line, I knew this was likely no ordinary bunny! The carrot came together first, and it was fairly obvious the parts needed as those were the only ones in orange.

Next, I started on the bunny. I saw two sets of separate-sized macaroni in lavender to match the head and some slopes I assumed might be the ears. But the body was not as evident. There were two pairs of corner slopes, both in dark azure and white. I thought the white might be the feet, so I used the azure to create what seemed like a very tiny torso.

It is interesting that the pieces in the set very much guided me toward the official intended set. After building the official set, I saw I was on the right track! Though my bunny looks substantially thinner. I didn’t actually think there was a skateboard in the set. I thought it was roller skates, so that was a nice surprise.

Overall, the set is really cute. The bunny has some absolutely adorable shoes that I wish I had thought of!

Beth and the Z-Blob Action Race Car

Beth: I got Mateo and the Z-Blob Action Race Car (set 71491) but unknowingly built the set as intended first. It was a very cute and creative set. I didn’t know much about the DreamZzz characters before this, but took this opportunity to learn a bit about them. The two minifig characters were expressive, the Spider Brain Spider monster was terrifying (I dislike all spiders), and the Virtual Reality Dreamling had a unique look that I fell in love with immediately.

The various choices on what to build had that “choose your own adventure” feel. One build was a 4-wheel car, while the other was a 2-wheel motorcycle, both with an attachable shooter for Z-Blob. Both of these vehicles were well built and would hold up well to playing. I tested the shooter and it worked well… maybe too well. I quickly realized that the tiny translucent green pieces were going to be a nightmare to find before my pets ate them.

The colors on these builds were a lot of fun and very bright. And the building techniques that allowed the two different builds were intriguing. I wasn’t expecting to learn as much about SNOT as I did, so I was very impressed by the multiple uses of the bricks provided.

I wanted to test out both builds, and my favorite was the motorcycle. I was impressed by how stable it was with only two wheels. It held up well to being rolled across the table and even to being dropped a few times. Clearly, this was because D-Shock was winning the battle right before Mateo and Z-Blob came back for the dramatic last-minute win! (…right, now back to the review.)

I also decided that the VR Dreamling was just so adorable and needed their own vehicle that was as fun as they were. Enter my one-wheeled twister MOC for the VR Dreamling and Z-Blob to escape in.

Overall, I thought this set was wonderful for inspiring creativity and play. The adult in me could have lived without the tiny green shooters and the creepy spider villain, but my inner child liked all of it (okay, maybe not the brain spider). Could I have built the intended set from just the pieces? Absolutely not.

Grover and the Small DreamZzz Sets

Grover is a lifelong LEGO builder with an interest in Castle and City MOCs. Their spouse became a LEGO fan after their marriage, and specializes in mosaic MOCs, and enjoys sci-fi and fantasy sets. Their grade school child is a fan of the DreamZzz show and sets.

Grover & Family: We received these sets blind: the sets were unboxed and we only had the pieces. We were instructed to build something with the parts and then look at the box and instructions that were in a separate bag and see how close we came to the original build.

After discussion, we decided on a few rules to guide our builds:

We would try to use as many pieces as possible. We could probably make something interesting with half the pieces, but this seemed to defeat the purpose of the build since we were blindly trying to get as close as possible to the original build.
We would limit our build time to 15 minutes. This seemed like a reasonable time for an appropriate age builder following the instructions. If you allow yourself hours of build time, you could probably come up with something amazing, but we wanted to be fair to the set and see what we could do.

With those rules in mind, we present our blind build attempts, followed by the original set.

71488 Bunchu’s Creative Animal Adventures (Grover)

After assembling the obvious minifig, I looked at the parts and tried to imagine what kind of build this set would be. The printed face and many Mixel joints suggested that we had a creature build of some kind. I was a little dismayed, as creatures are not my strong suit, but I dove in and started imagining what I could build.

The large blue leaves seemed to be ears to me, and the large printed face was obvious as well. After several attempts at getting a balancing figure together, I came up with this terrifying bunny monstrosity that was only balanced by its tail.

This Frankenstein’s creature left some other parts, which I imagined as a small nearby plant. The odd printed 1x1 tiles looked like little fruits to me, so I tried to make something approximating a fruit tree with ripe fruit dropped on the ground around it with the leftover pieces. I had about a dozen 1x1 tiles and plates when I was finished.

Now, having completed the original build, I am a little surprised at the number of leftover parts (around 20). I have never seen a “20 in 1” set before, but these builds certainly had quite a number of leftover parts, so I am proud of myself for having fewer leftover parts than the main build!

The actual build was, of course, much more compact and sturdy than mine, and it made some very clever use of the Mixel joints to simulate very lifelike animal poses. The final creature looks much more like one would imagine a rabbit to look like than my horror show.

One difficulty, which I find with many of the current sets, is that it is difficult to distinguish colors accurately in the instructions. Most of the colors were diverse enough to avoid confusion, but the various shades of blue could be a bit challenging. Overall, this was a fun build. I think the number of plates and brackets could cause frustration for very young builders. The rabbit is very robust and stands easily.

71487 Z-Blob's Robot and Vehicle Adventures (Collaboration between Grover and spouse)

We tackled this build as a collaborative effort, although it wound up being more like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos while we snatched pieces as quickly as possible from the pile on the table to try to build our creatures.

I am a little ashamed to say that I think my years of building experience probably aided me in using more parts than my spouse, but the distribution in the end wasn’t too bad. I had the feeling this was some sort of Formula 1 car-mech thing that transformed into a plane or a hovercraft, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. My spouse had a much better idea of the mech form, and I wound up going to what I knew, which was building cars.

The original build was a very interesting mesh of our two blind builds. This was another “20 in 1” set, and there were some rather large plates and two wheels left over, which felt a little unusual for traditional builds.

The robot build was decent overall and was fairly well balanced, but the force required to connect the Mixel joints required very careful and firm support for connection to avoid exploding the build. This could be a tricky aspect for young builders. On the other hand, the wheels and propellers are a great way to explore the imagination for kids, so they may ignore the instructions and enjoy building what they want.

Some of the alternate builds are fun, while others are lacking, as was the case with the 71488 set. But I assume this set will sell well because of that quasi-classic space torso.

30698 Cooper's Flying Controller Mini Build (Grover’s spouse)

This small assortment of pieces was provided without any numbered bag, which was odd. I would only find out later that it was because the set was a new paper-based polybag with the set printed on the front.

The minifigure was obvious and put together first, followed by the octagonal bars with arms clipped on to make a spider-looking construct. From here, I played around with the various pieces but kept arriving at a large, flat red shape (which turned out to be not far from the actual build).

I noticed that the 1x1 tiles might make good facial features, so I devised a bunny head. From here, I put a handle on the spider construct and used the trans blue pieces to show the motion of the minifig launching a bunny-shaped rocket. Only a few 1x1 plates and tiles were left after this build.

I was a little surprised that the main build was largely a flat red shape—a controller in this case. I am unsure exactly what the large trans blue pieces signify. The pieces are fun, and I’m glad they are included for MOCs, but they seem to be an afterthought to the build.

I used the spider droid as a platform, but seeing it as its own entity was fun in the official build. The build is fairly straightforward and accessible for younger builders. There are no particularly tricky connections, and there are a bunch of interesting pieces so children can see how the various pieces work together in their own MOCs.

Did We Get Close?

In the end, our blind-building experiment with the LEGO DreamZzz sets proved to be as whimsical and unpredictable as the theme itself. There’s a pretty broad spread of similarity and total dissimilarity to the final set in these MOCs. From Frankenstein-esque bunnies to cyber brains, our creations showcased just how differently builders interpret a pile of bricks when left to their imagination. In general, it seems like if you got a rabbit, you were likely to do fairly well. If you got a set with more than one sub-build or vehicle included, you didn’t have a chance.

DreamZzz sets are among the most wild and wonderful sets in LEGO’s current portfolio, and I’d say that this wave has some especially bewildering sets, so it wasn’t quite a neutral control group for our experiment. But on the whole, I think we can conclude that it is not easy to look at all the parts and figure out what the designer had in mind!

DISCLAIMER: These sets were provided to BrickNerd by The LEGO Group. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.

Would you have been able to guess these sets from their pieces? Let us know in the comments below!

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, LeAnna Taylor, Monica Innis, Dan Church, Roxanne Baxter, and Steven Laughlin to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.