City

Modular Space Station

A rearrangeable ring of space pods that doubles as a train, if you play more than you display.

Brick Rated Score

3.8/5

Set 60433 · 2024

Pieces1,099

Minifigs6

Year2024

Set number60433

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The verdict

This LEGO® set is one of those quietly clever City boxes that got better the more I sat with it.

The whole thing is a ring you can pop apart into pods, snap back in any order, or string into a space train, so it rewards fiddling rather than a shelf. It's built for kids who narrate their own missions, not for adults chasing engineering fireworks. Grab it if you want play value and six figures for the money, skip it if you wanted a display piece that stands up on its own.

Best for: space-obsessed kids age 7 and up who love rearranging their own worlds

The full review

What it is

Here is what won me over about the Modular Space Station. It is not one model, it is a kit of parts that becomes whatever story a kid is telling that afternoon. The heart of it is a big circular ring, and around that ring clip a run of pods: sleeping quarters with a hinged bubble hatch, a plant habitat, a science lab with fiddly experiment gear, a little galley, and a tool store, plus a landing pad with a small craft. You can arrange those pods around the loop, pull them off and rearrange them, or unclip everything and connect the pods nose to tail into a space train. That one design choice is why this set has more life in it than the average City box. It does not have a single 'finished' state, and for the right kid that is the whole point.

The catch

Now for the honest parts, because there are a few. If you buy this on its own, it can feel a little repetitive, because you are essentially building similar pods one after another, and the reviews that call it thin as a standalone have a point. It really sings as one piece of the wider City space wave, clipping onto the other sets, rather than as your only station. The other quirk is display. A real station floats, so this one has no feet and no natural way to stand upright, which means it slumps onto its side unless you rig up your own stand. And for a set marked 7 and up, there is a genuinely fair chunk of Technic in the ring stages that younger hands may need help with. None of these are dealbreakers, but they are the things builders actually grumbled about, so you should know them going in.

Who it's for

So who should bring this home. If you have a kid who plays hard, invents missions, and loves gear they can pull apart and reassemble a hundred different ways, this is a lot of set for the money and six figures is generous. The retail price was 109.99 dollars, which lands right around the usual ten cents a piece, and on sale (plenty of people paid closer to 68 dollars) it becomes an easy yes. If you wanted a slick spaceship to sit on a shelf and admire, this is not that, and you will be happier with a display-first model. But as a play set built to be rebuilt, it is one of the more thoughtful things City did in 2024. Worth noting it is on the way out, with a retirement slated for around now, so if you want one at a store price rather than a reseller markup, do not sit on it too long.

The parts story

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

The build comes in nine numbered bags plus a loose bag for the big ring pieces, and it splits across six instruction booklets, so two or three people can build different pods at the same time. It flows sensibly: you start with a command vehicle to warm up, then assemble that central ring, then work through the pods one by one. The ring is where the real assembly lives, and it is packed with more Technic than you would expect from a 7+ box, pins and connectors and beams that lock the loop together so tightly it is honestly a pain to pull apart later. That sturdiness is a feature, though, because it is what lets the finished station hold together while a kid swings pods around. Each pod is a quick, satisfying little sub-build with its own hinge or hatch, and the whole thing runs about two to three hours.

On the pieces themselves, this is more of a play-value box than a parts-monster, but there are nice bits. You get plant and food elements that dress the habitat and galley (the food is a touch stingy, fair warning), transparent bubble canopies for the hatches, and a good scatter of the space-airlock connectors that let pods clip to each other and to other City sets. The six minifigs are all exclusive to this set, and the crew includes a dark-green suited astronaut with a sci-fi eye-patch face print, the most futuristic face in the whole City space line, plus a little robot figure. At the standard dime-a-piece math the 1,099 parts land at fair, and on discount the value swings clearly in your favor.

Fun facts

01Every pod clips together with a standardized space-airlock connector, so the station is designed to physically link up with the other sets in LEGO City's 2024 space wave rather than living on its own.
02It ships with six instruction booklets across nine numbered bags on purpose, so a group can build different modules at the same time instead of one person working front to back.
03One green-suited astronaut wears a face print with a futuristic eye patch, which fans flagged as the most sci-fi face in the entire LEGO City Space range.
04The whole ring is engineered to come apart and reconfigure into a straight-line space train, so there is no single correct finished model, which is unusual for a City set.