City

Deep-Sea Explorer Submarine

The great white is the reason to buy this, and it does not disappoint.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 60379 · 2023

Pieces842

Minifigs6

Year2023

Set number60379

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The verdict

This is one of the biggest submarines LEGO City has ever put out, and the thing that sold me was the great white shark with the spring-loaded platform that shoves it out to snatch a diver.

The build is detailed, the character count is genuinely generous, and the price per brick lands in fair City territory. The mech diving suit is the weak link and the sunken-treasure setup has been done to death, but if an underwater play scene is what you want, this delivers a lot of it. Best enjoyed by kids who want a full ocean playset rather than a shelf piece.

Best for: kids who want a big underwater play scene with a shark that actually attacks

The full review

What it is

I have a soft spot for LEGO City ocean sets, and this one is about as big as the theme's submarines get. You get a proper vessel with a bubble cockpit, an onboard science lab, a little underwater drone, and then a whole seabed scene sitting alongside it: a shipwreck, brick-built jellyfish, glow-in-the-dark fish, and three sharks including one seriously large great white. The moment that got me was the spring-loaded platform under the wreck that slides the big shark out to grab a diver. It is a genuinely fun play function, the kind that makes a kid gasp the first time it fires, and it is the reason this set has stuck in my mind more than most City boxes from that year.

The catch

I will be straight with you about where it wobbles. The mech-style diving suit is a lovely idea on paper and a bit of a letdown in the plastic. Reviewers and I agree the arms hardly move and the whole thing feels fragile and slightly out of place next to the sleek sub. Once the submarine is fully built you also cannot get at the back interior very well, which is a small frustration if your kid wants to pose figures inside. And then there is the story itself. The sunken-treasure, plucky-explorers-versus-the-sea premise has been recycled through City sets for years, so nothing here feels fresh even if it is executed competently. At its original 109.99 dollars it was fair rather than a steal, and one reviewer clocked the build at just under two hours, which tells you it is substantial but not a marathon.

Who it's for

So who should hunt one down now that it has retired? Kids who want a big, active underwater playset will get hours out of it, because the shark attack, the drone, the wreck and the fistful of figures all invite proper storytelling. Ocean-theme collectors and shark fans will want it for that great white alone. If you are after clever engineering or a polished display model, though, this is not the set for you, and if you already own a handful of City sub or explorer sets you have likely seen most of these ideas before. For everyone else, it is a warm, generous, genuinely playable box.

The parts story

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

Building this is a relaxed, satisfying session rather than a technical puzzle. It splits across two instruction books, one for the substantial submarine and a much shorter one for the shipwreck, and the sub is where the real construction lives. You work up a long hull in white, orange and dark blue, drop in the interior lab and cockpit, then assemble the seabed diorama around it. It is the sort of build a confident kid can manage alone in an afternoon, with enough going on to keep an adult builder entertained too.

The standout pieces are the creature elements. The oversized great white shark is a big printed showpiece, and you also get smaller sharks, brick-built jellyfish, and glow-in-the-dark fish that genuinely glow after a bit of light, which delights younger builders every time. The minifigs pull their weight with front and back torso printing and leg printing on several of them. At roughly 84 bricks per figure the value is average for City and strong against LEGO overall, so you are getting a lot of usable plastic, plus that shark and those glow fish are pieces you will happily raid for other ocean builds later.

Fun facts

01The set packs in six explorer minifigs plus a skeleton, three sharks, two brick-built jellyfish and four fish figures, an unusually large cast for a City box.
02Some of the fish are molded in glow-in-the-dark plastic, so the seabed scene actually lights up faintly in the dark.
03It ran from June 2023 to the end of December 2024 before retiring, a fairly short shelf life for a flagship City submarine.
04The great white shark rides on a hidden spring-loaded platform that slides it out of the wreck to ambush a diver, one of the more dramatic play features in the 2023 City lineup.