Hidden Side

Phantom Fire Truck 3000

A cracking ghost-hunting fire truck with a heartbreaking asterisk attached.

Brick Rated Score

3.6/5

Set 70436 · 2020

Pieces760

Minifigs5

Year2020

Set number70436

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The verdict

This was designer Niek van Slagmaat's favourite Hidden Side set to make, and honestly it shows.

The truck is bristling with dark azure ghost-hunting gear, the rear folds out into a proper jointed mecha, and you get a whole cast of figures plus the big Harbinger boss. The catch is a real one: the AR app that made Hidden Side tick was switched off for good in 2023, so half the intended play is simply gone. If you buy this as a build and a toy on its own merits, it earns its keep. If you were hoping for the full ghost-catching experience, that ship has sailed.

Best for: Kids and collectors who want a wild, gadget-heavy truck build and don't mind the app being dead

The full review

What it is

The Phantom Fire Truck 3000 is the set where Hidden Side really let its imagination off the leash. It is a fire engine, technically, but one that has been kitted out for chasing ghosts instead of putting out fires, with dark azure cannons and gadgets bolted along every panel. Designer Niek van Slagmaat called it his favourite Hidden Side set to design, and you can feel that affection in the details. The thing I kept coming back to is the rear section, which folds out into a walking mecha with jointed knees, a feature LEGO mechs almost never get. There is a lot of toy packed into this box, and for a nine-year-old with a good imagination it is a genuine playground.

The catch

Now for the part I can't skip past. Hidden Side was built around augmented reality: every set doubled as a scannable marker that, through the free companion app, turned into a ghost-hunting minigame. That app was officially switched off at the start of 2023, the multiplayer servers went dark, and it was pulled from the app stores entirely. So the single biggest selling point printed on the box, the AR ghost hunting with boss battles against Blaze M. Barr, is now a feature that does nothing. That stings, because when this set launched at around 60 dollars, a real slice of that price was you paying for the tech layer, not just the bricks. Judge it purely as plastic and it is a decent-value 760-piece build. Judge it as the experience LEGO advertised, and you are buying something with its heart removed.

Who it's for

So who should still go for it? Anyone who wants a big, expressive, slightly chaotic truck that plays beautifully as a plain old toy, ghost app or not. The transforming mecha, the piles of figures, and the towering Harbinger give kids plenty to invent stories around without ever touching a phone. Collectors who liked the short-lived Hidden Side experiment will want it on the shelf too, since the theme was quietly retired in 2021 and these sets are only getting harder to find. The people I would steer away are anyone specifically chasing the AR gimmick, or a builder who wants a clean, realistic fire engine. This is neither of those things, and it never really pretended to be.

The parts story

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

Building this one is a lot of fun precisely because it refuses to behave like a normal vehicle. You start with a fairly conventional truck chassis and cab, then spend the back half of the build hanging weird ghost-hunting gadgetry off it and rigging the rear so it can unfold into the mecha. That transforming section is the clever bit of engineering here, and getting the knee joints to hold their pose is oddly satisfying. It never gets fiddly enough to frustrate a nine-year-old, but there is enough going on to keep an adult builder interested through the whole 760 pieces.

The palette is the real signature. Hidden Side leaned hard on dark azure for its supernatural gear, and this set is loaded with it, so those weapons and accessory elements are the parts collectors tend to prize for the colour alone. The figure selection is the other draw: alongside Jack, Parker, J.B. and Shadow-Walker you get the TeeVee character (a little screen-headed robot the designers spent years trying to sneak into a set) and the enormous Nehmaar Reem, The Harbinger, a boss figure standing around 17cm tall. That big villain is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on part-count value once you factor in how much presence he brings to the box.

Fun facts

01Designer Niek van Slagmaat said this was his favourite Hidden Side set to work on, and had sketched early concepts as far back as January 2019.
02The TeeVee character had been something Niek and fellow designer Nick Vas were trying to get into an official set since 2016, and a convincing prototype finally sold their boss on it.
03Hidden Side as a theme was retired in early 2021, and the AR app that powered it was officially discontinued at the start of 2023, taking the ghost-hunting minigame offline for good.
04The Nehmaar Reem Harbinger figure stands over 17cm tall, towering over the minifigures and doubling as the set's big-bad centrepiece.