Hello, today I'll be taking a look at on of the LEGO Art sets, this is the LEGO Art 31202 Disney's Mickey Mouse set that was released January 2021. Retailing at £114.99/$119.99 this set contains 2658 pieces giving a price per part of 4p/4c.

There are two possible designs to make Mickey or Minnie. I've built Mickey so will be mostly talking about Mickey but will try to go into some detail on Minnie as well. You can only make one design per set.

Parts & Unboxing

The packaging for this set is not your normal LEGO unboxing experience. There are a few compartments for pieces. The box is a IDEAS style box, when opened your greeted by a large box at the bottom this contains the 9 16x16 bricks that are the main structure of the set.

Then above that in the top right corner are your tiles, all colours in separate bags from other colours, making the building easy. Finally, there is a cardboard flap that has the instructions on, underneath this flap are all the pieces for the frame and some other pieces. There is a bag 1 that is the only numbered bag which contains a few pieces which I'll talk about in a bit.

Most of the 2658 pieces included are 1x1 round tiles, but 205 pieces are not studs here are most of the interesting pieces you get. I'm going to focus on exclusive or hard to find pieces

- 9x 16x16 bricks with technic holes - Black - only in LEGO art sets

- 1x Large Brick Separator - Black - only in LEGO art sets

- 1x 2x4 tiles printed with Disney Logo - Black - exclusive

- 2x Technic panels with place for a screw - Black - only in 7 sets, all over £100

- 1x Crowbar - Pearl Gold - only in 14 sets

Building Tools

As I said above there is one numbered bag, bag 1, this contains the large Brick Separator, Crowbar and a 1x12 plate with 2 of each colour tiles, this is made to be a colour chart to use if building with someone else.

Each tile colour has a number in the instructions these are

1 - Black

2 - Dark Grey

3 - Light Grey

4 - Dark Blue

5 - White

6 - Tan

7 - Red

8 - Dark Red

9 - Dark Brown

Now the Brick Separator which is new for the Art theme is another interesting piece. This is much larger than the typical 2 wide one. It is smaller at the top where is had 4 anti-studs to remove 4 studs at a time, then there is the flat side which you use to pop off tiles, this is 8 wide so you can pop 8 tiles off at a time, this could also be used for studs as well. This tool is handy when wanting to build a new model from the Art theme.

There is also the Gold Crowbar which seems a weird inclusion but its actually quite handy, this is used to pop off one stud or tile that might be in the wrong place, this is really useful when it is in a built-up area as this piece can go between tiles saving you a lot of time.

Building Experience

I don't usually describe my experience building but this set had a unique feel when building. As the instructions are your conventional instructions they don't have a step-by-step guide instead 9 steps for the actual art piece that just show the completed tile with numbers for each tile that represent the colour - obviously in colour.

The build was very calming and wasn't hard at all, took me and my sister 3 and half hours to build in one sitting. This build did require a bit of space to do and I recommend a storage compartment to pour to tiles in, I used an Advent Calendar insert when building mine.

Mickey Mouse

Now to the main show, the Mickey piece. As I said this is 2 in 1 so Minnie can be built if you prefer her. I chose Mickey but I plan to buy another one for Minnie in the future.

There are 2453 1x1 round tiles in this set, and being a 48x48 space for the design you use most of them, leaving only 149 spare, the lowest spare count of any Art set which I personally see as a good thing.

There are 9 colours as shown above but there are a lot of most of them, here are the quantities

- Black - x662

- Dark Grey - x79

- Light Grey - x59

- Dark Blue - x409

- White - x835

- Tan - x32

- Red - x213

- Dark Red - x96

- Dark Brown - x76

The picture is built in 9 sections, each section being on the 16x16 bricks. You build from top to bottom, left to right. The first section is Mickey's ear which uses a few white, black and dark blues. Then you carry on Mickey's right ear in the next section with a bit of his head. Then finally the last section for the top row pretty much is just dark blue with a little white.

Next row, the far left completes Mickey's left ear, then the middle one starts his face with bits of his mouth starting to be built, this uses a bit of red and dark red. Last for the middle row builds Mickey's nose and eyes.

Finally, the bottom row. The far left tile is pretty unexciting just carrying on the background, but you also place the 2x4 Disney tile here if you want, if you don't you can add 8 tiles instead. The next tile starts Mickey's body with his arm this starts to use a lot of reds. The last tile completes the image with most of it building Mickey's red pants.

Going a bit in depth on the picture, the background is Dark Blue with half of the iconic Mickey ears in white, if you get two of these sets and build Minnie you can combine them and the white background makes a pair of Mickey ears.

In the Mickey image along with the Whites, Blacks and Reds there are the greys and browns mixed in for some texture and shading. The Dark Reds are used for shading on his suit and for his mouth as well. With the shading this helps give the picture more life. The shading is also used on Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse

Now as I haven't built Minnie I can't too much but just describing what I have seen here is a little summary of Minnie.

Minnie has her iconic white dotted red skirt and hat combo. The Disney 2x4 tile can be placed on the bottom far right plate, opposite to Mickey.

The Mickey & Minnie images can be merged together which is very easy just requires a little deconstruction of the frame which we'll talk about next.

The Frame

Finally, for this set the frame for the art work. This is quite a simple build that involves a few large black bricks and a few 1x2 bricks with technic pin, 24 to be precise. The frame keeps the model together quite smoothly. Built using a mixture of 1x4, 1x8 and 1x16 black bricks. These are tiled off at the top to give the frame a smooth feel and look to go with the rest of the set. At the back of two of the 16x16 plates you also add the two screw rest where the image can be hung. You could easily hang a single image up with just one screw. If combining two sets together I'd suggest using at least three.

When combining the two design, Mickey and Minnie, the frame is quite easy to rebuild just requires taking a side of each design and then connecting the top and bottom of each set together to get a smooth large Mickey and Minnie image.

With the frame the whole set is 50x50 studs wide, the combined one is 98x50 studs wide.

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Overall

Well, what to say now. This set is an amazing LEGO display piece that I highly recommend. Although the £115 RRP seems high considering what you get the price is actually not too bad. I also appreciate that you have a bit of choice to what to build. I personally am excited to get another one to make Minnie and join both images together.

I also like the experience with the tools included like the big brick separator and the crowbar, pieces I used a couple of times when building.

I recommend this to any Disney fan looking for something to stand out in their collections, I'd also recommend this to AFOLs and TFOLs. I wouldn't recommend this to a child though as it doesn't have any play value. Personally i think this set could easily be a 16+ set.

Pros - Amazing display piece, a relaxing build, brick separator and crowbar, great selection of pieces, not too many spare elements from each build, good value for what you're getting

Cons - Maybe could be a bit cheaper, but the price as it stands is reasonable