DOTS

Animal Picture Holders

Three little cube faces that turn a shelf of photos into a tiny zoo.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 41904 · 2020

Pieces425

Minifigsn/a

Year2020

Set number41904

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The verdict

I love that this set trusts a kid to decide what a cat's face actually looks like instead of handing them a picture already decided for them.

You get three boxy little heads, a pile of circle and square tiles in genuinely pretty pastel colors, and a suggestion card for cat, dog and llama that you're free to ignore completely. It is not a complicated build, and it is not trying to be. This is for the kid who wants a fast, satisfying craft project and a cute little display piece at the end, not the kid chasing an engineering challenge.

Best for: kids who want a quick decorating project and a cute shelf display, not builders chasing a technical challenge

The full review

What it is

I love that this set trusts a kid to decide what a cat's face actually looks like instead of handing them a picture already decided for them. You get three boxy little heads, a pile of circle and square tiles in genuinely pretty pastel colors, and a suggestion card for cat, dog and llama that you're free to ignore completely. Snap the cube together, pick your tiles, press them in, and you have a little animal face holding a photo upright on a desk or a shelf. It took me less time to build all three than it takes to plan out one bigger LEGO set, and that's honestly the point of it.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about the two things that annoy people. First, the photo slot is tight. Slide in a standard thin printed photo or a folded piece of paper and it's fine, but anything thicker, like an instant-camera print or a photo on glossy cardstock, can crease or resist going in cleanly. Second, at 425 pieces you're getting a lot of tiles you won't use on just these three cubes. Unless you're already collecting other DOTS sets to mix and match colors, a good chunk of this box ends up as leftover odds in a drawer.

Who it's for

This is for the kid who wants a fast, satisfying craft project and a cute little display piece at the end, not the kid chasing an engineering challenge. It was one of the more reasonably priced DOTS sets at $14.99, and it makes a nice small gift or a rainy afternoon activity. If you want a serious LEGO build, or you want every piece in the box to get used, look elsewhere in the DOTS line or beyond it.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this is less LEGO construction and more LEGO craft project. Each cube goes together in a couple of minutes, it's the decorating afterward that takes the real time, especially if you're debating with a kid over whether the llama needs bangs. There's no instruction pressure to follow exactly, the box art is a suggestion, and that openness is what makes it fun for the age group it's aimed at.

The real value here is in the tile assortment. This set carries some of the best pastel color choices in the whole DOTS line, and a few of those shades only appeared in this particular box, which matters if you're a completionist trying to build up a full DOTS tile collection for freeform designs. There are no minifigs and nothing structurally unusual, this is a parts pack dressed as a display craft, and judged as a tile supply it's actually one of the stronger DOTS releases.

Fun facts

01Animal Picture Holders was one of the last sets released in the original wave of the DOTS theme, launching in spring 2020.
02At $14.99 it was one of the most affordable sets in the entire DOTS lineup.
03It officially retired in March 2021, giving it just over a year on shelves.
04The box suggests cat, dog and llama designs, but nothing about the cube shape locks you into any of them, kids commonly reinvent them as foxes, pandas or entirely made up creatures.