Classic

Bricks and Eyes

A tub of bricks with a face, and that face changes everything.

Brick Rated Score

3.6/5

Set 11003 · 2019

Pieces451

Minifigsn/a

Year2019

Set number11003

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The verdict

I love what this box is trying to do.

Give a kid (or an adult who never grew out of it) a pile of ordinary Classic bricks plus a handful of googly eyes, and suddenly every lumpy little creation has personality. Slap two eyes on a blob of studs and it stops being a brick tower, it's a monster, and that shift is genuinely delightful to watch happen in real time. Where it stumbles is that the box art shows a whole family of little creatures, but you only get two of the stem pieces needed to actually mount eyes onto a build, so you're really only building one creature at a time, not the crowd pictured on the front. That's a real letdown if you bought this expecting a menagerie.

Best for: kids and casual builders who want an easy way to turn plain bricks into characters, not collectors chasing rare parts

The full review

What it is

I love what this box is trying to do. Give a kid (or an adult who never grew out of it) a pile of ordinary Classic bricks plus a handful of googly eyes, and suddenly every lumpy little creation has personality. Slap two eyes on a blob of studs and it stops being a brick tower, it's a monster, and that shift is genuinely delightful to watch happen in real time. The eyes come in different sizes and expressions, and figuring out which pair turns your build into something goofy versus something a little sinister is honestly most of the fun here.

The catch

Where it stumbles is that the box art shows a whole family of little creatures lined up together, but you only get two of the stem pieces needed to actually mount eyes onto a build. So despite what the packaging promises, you're really building one creature at a time, not the crowd pictured on the front. Brickset reviewers have landed around 3.6 out of 5 for this exact reason, it's a fun idea that oversells itself slightly. There's also no instruction booklet for specific models, this is a free-build set through and through, which is either freeing or frustrating depending on your kid (or you).

Who it's for

If you've got a young builder who likes making up their own characters, or you want a cheap, easy add-on to an existing brick collection to inject some personality into it, this is a sweet little pickup. If you're expecting to build several distinct creatures straight out of the box the way the packaging implies, temper your expectations, or just grab extra stem pieces separately.

The parts story

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

Building with this set doesn't feel like following a manual, it feels like play. You dump out the bricks, pick a shape, add eyes, and see what looks back at you. Kids especially seem to gravitate toward building something small and weird first just to see the eyes go on, and then get more ambitious once they realize how much personality two dots of plastic can add to a pile of studs.

The eyes are the real standout part here, they come in a spread of sizes and pupil styles so you can go for cute, cross-eyed, alarmed, or menacing depending on the arrangement. The rest of the inventory is otherwise fairly standard Classic-tub brick assortment in basic colors, nothing rare or printed, so the 451-piece count is good bulk value for general building but the actual highlight parts are just those eyes and the stems that hold them on.

Fun facts

01The set launched in 2019 alongside sibling Classic sets Bricks and Houses (11008) and Bricks and Ideas (11001) in a wave built around themed brick-and-accessory tubs.
02Despite the box picturing several creatures at once, the set only includes two stem pieces, so builders have pointed out you can really only mount eyes on one creation at a time.
03Original US retail price was $29.99, and since retirement sealed copies have held value reasonably well, trading a bit above that original price on the secondary market.
04It carries a modest 3.6 out of 5 rating from Brickset reviewers, reflecting a set that's fun in concept but a little thin in delivered content relative to what the packaging promises.