Hidden Side

Paranormal Intercept Bus 3000

A haunted school bus that folds open into a whole ghost-hunting command center.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 70423 · 2019

Pieces689

Minifigs5

Year2019

Set number70423

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The verdict

This one won me over faster than I expected.

The Paranormal Intercept Bus 3000 is a chunky yellow school bus that pops open into a rolling ghost lab, and it plays as good as it looks. Five minifigs, two of them possessed workers with wild glowing hair, and a portable toilet that turns into a slime-spitting monster. The whole set was tied to an augmented reality phone app that got shut down in 2023, so you are buying it now purely as a bricks-and-play set, and honestly it holds up just fine without the phone.

Best for: Kids (and grown-ups) who love a playable vehicle with hidden gimmicks

The full review

What it is

The Paranormal Intercept Bus 3000 is a LEGO® set from the short-lived Hidden Side theme, and it might be the most fun of the bunch. Picture a classic American yellow school bus, then imagine some ghost hunters got hold of it and welded on a radar dish, a de-haunting cannon, and a fold-out desk full of gadgets. That is basically what you are building. It comes with five minifigs: the theme heroes Jack, Parker and J.B., plus two construction workers who have been possessed by ghosts and given the most gloriously ridiculous glowing green hair and beard. The bus is the star though. It looks great parked on a shelf, all chunky and cartoonish, and then it splits open and unfolds into a proper rolling command center, which is the kind of surprise that makes a kid gasp.

The catch

Here is the honest part you need to know before you buy. This whole theme was built around an augmented reality phone app. You were meant to scan the bus with your phone, and ghosts would appear floating around it for you to capture. That app got discontinued in 2023, so that entire layer of the experience is simply gone now. If you go in expecting the ghost-hunting game, you will be disappointed, because it does not exist anymore. The good news is the physical set was never boring on its own, and it plays perfectly well as a straight ghost-buster vehicle. The other niggles are smaller. There are a lot of stickers, including four big ones on the rounded corner bricks, and applying those neatly is nobody's idea of a good time. And at roughly 690 pieces for the original 59.99, the value is fine rather than a steal, partly because the bus is a fairly open, hollow build.

Who it's for

So who should grab it? If you love a vehicle that does things, that opens and folds and hides little gadgets, this is a joy, and kids around eight to twelve will get real mileage out of the play features. Ghost and spooky-theme fans should absolutely snap it up while it is still findable, because Hidden Side got cut early and these sets are quietly drying up. Parts hoarders have a good reason too, since the color mix is genuinely useful. The people I would steer away are the display-shelf purists chasing realism and anyone who was only in it for the app, because that ship has sailed. For everyone else, this is a warm, silly, playable set that is aging better than the tech gimmick it was born with.

The parts story

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

Building this is a satisfying multi-bag job that keeps changing what your hands are doing. You start with the chassis and the fold-out interior, which is where the clever stuff lives, then you work up the bodywork of the bus itself. It is 8 studs wide at the core and stretches to about 10 with the exterior panels, so it feels substantial without being fiddly. There are some genuinely neat little techniques tucked in, like a portable toilet built from a coupling plate and a mini hat element that flips into a slime-monster, plus a rotating radar dish and a color-changing cannon that kids will spin and flick endlessly. It never gets repetitive, which is exactly what you want from a play set.

For parts people, this is a fun one. The two possessed workers bring brand new molds: a wig and a beard in Spring Yellowish Green mixed with transparent fluorescent green, so they literally look like they are glowing. There is a Spring Yellowish Green pickaxe and a toothed plate that were Hidden Side exclusives, four big 5x5 rounded corner bricks in orange (sadly hidden under stickers), and handy recolors like a bright red inverted 2x2 tile and a black 2x2 round brick with pin holes. Add four printed tiles that look like little cell phones and a strong pile of Dark Azure, orange and medium grey, and you can see why builders raid this set for the bin. At just under 700 pieces for 59.99 it is not a bargain-bin part-count, but the quality and novelty of those parts is what makes it worth it.

Fun facts

01Hidden Side was LEGO's first theme built entirely around augmented reality, launching in August 2019 with sets you scanned using a companion phone app.
02The theme was cut short after just three waves, wrapping up in 2020, and the app that powered the whole ghost-hunting concept was switched off for good in 2023.
03The bus is modeled on a classic American yellow school bus, then retrofitted with ghost-hunting gear for heroes Jack, Parker and J.B. in the fictional haunted town of Newbury.
04You are basically getting two minifigs in one with the possessed workers, since each has a normal look plus swappable glow-green hair or beard to show the ghost has taken over.