Hidden Side

Newbury Haunted High School

A gorgeously creepy schoolhouse whose best trick now lives only in your imagination.

Brick Rated Score

3.8/5

Set 70425 · 2019

Pieces1,475

Minifigs7

Year2019

Set number70425

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The verdict

The exterior of this one is the whole reason to own it, all crooked dark red brick and gargoyles and that lovely aging-building sag.

I fell for the look before I ever thought about the app. The catch is honest and it matters: the Hidden Side AR gimmick that once brought the school to life has been switched off, so what you get now is a very handsome haunted building with a light interior and a truly punishing 44 stickers. If you love spooky architecture and can look past the dead app, it still earns its shelf space.

Best for: Halloween-display fans who love creepy buildings and don't care that the app is gone

The full review

What it is

Some buildings just look haunted the second you finish them, and this LEGO® set is one of them. The Newbury Haunted High School wears its age beautifully, all dark red brickwork gone patchy and grey, a roofline that sags like it's exhausted, gargoyles perched where they can watch you, and enough broken-window drama to sell the whole ghost story before a single ghost shows up. It's a big footprint too, tall and imposing rather than sprawling, which is exactly what you want from a spooky schoolhouse. When I picture it on a shelf in October with a little warm light behind those windows, I'm sold. The exterior is the reason this set exists and it absolutely delivers.

The catch

Now for the part I can't skip, because it changes the math. Hidden Side sets were built around an augmented reality app, and pointing your phone at the school was supposed to bring the haunting alive with ghosts to chase and a boss called Mr. Nibs to beat. That app has since been shut down, so the headline feature is simply gone. What's left still works as a normal play-and-display building, but you're paying for a haunted house whose ghost machine has been unplugged, and that's worth knowing going in. Then there are the stickers. 44 of them, spread over two sheets, and they do a lot of the visual heavy lifting on this facade. If you're the kind of builder who feels a small heartbreak every time a decal goes on slightly crooked, brace yourself. The interior is the other soft spot. Once those handsome walls close in, the inside feels light on rooms and detail, and it's a touch cramped to actually play in.

Who it's for

So who should grab it. If you collect creepy architecture, if you set up a Halloween village every year, or if you just love a building with real atmosphere, this one still belongs in your cart, especially now that it's retired and the look is what you're buying anyway. If your heart was set on the phone-and-ghosts experience, I'd steer you elsewhere, because that magic isn't coming back. And if stickers genuinely ruin a build for you, know that this set will ask a lot of you before it looks its best. For me, it lands as a very good display piece with a real caveat attached, a school that's still worth haunting even though its best party trick has gone quiet.

The parts story

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

The build gives you that satisfying big-model rhythm where the ground floor goes down fast and then the walls start climbing into something genuinely tall. You spend a lot of the middle stretch on texture work, layering brick and grime and those weathered patches that make the school look decades old, which is slower and more rewarding than it sounds. There are a few clever transformation and play touches worked into the structure, and the roof and gargoyle sections are where it gets characterful. The stickers, all 44 of them, are threaded through the whole thing, so pacing yourself matters more here than on most sets this size.

For parts people there's real treasure. It brought new dark red elements to the table, including the lightweight construction Wall 3x3x6 and a Brick with Inside Bow 1x6x2, plus a plain Brick 1x3 that had never existed in dark red before, which is exactly the kind of quiet win facade-builders love. There are six spring yellowish green Claw modules with cross axles and half-circle plates, dark brown bow bricks, and Tile 2x2 with Bow in fresh yellow and coral. Best of all are two brand-new flexible molded wing pieces for the ghost form. At roughly 8.8 cents a piece across 1,475 parts, the value holds up nicely, and the dark red haul alone makes it a tempting parts donor if the theme ever loses you.

Fun facts

01Hidden Side was LEGO's augmented reality theme, where you pointed a phone at the physical build to hunt ghosts, but the supporting app was later discontinued, quietly retiring the feature this set was designed around.
02The set introduced a plain Brick 1x3 in dark red for the very first time, a small milestone that facade builders had wanted for years.
03Three of the seven minifigures each come with extra ghost heads and hairpieces so they can flip between human and haunted, and the set adds two newly molded flexible wing pieces for the ghost transformation.
04The school's resident boss ghost is named Mr. Nibs, the spectral villain players were meant to defeat through the app.