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Queer Eye: The Fab 5 Loft

The minifigs steal the whole show, and honestly, they earned it.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 10291 · 2021

Pieces974

Minifigs7

Year2021

Set number10291

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The verdict

This LEGO® set won me over faster than I expected, and it was entirely down to the little people.

The Fab 5 are so recognizable it's almost silly, and the loft they live in is bright and cheerful in a way LEGO's grown-up sets almost never allow themselves to be. It's not a technical build and the sticker sheet is heavy, so if you want engineering, look elsewhere. But if you love the show, or you just want something warm and colorful on the shelf, this one's a delight.

Best for: Queer Eye fans and anyone who buys a set for the minifigures first

The full review

What it is

Some sets you buy for the build and some you buy for the people living inside it, and this one is very much the second kind. The Fab 5 Loft recreates the airy Kansas City apartment from Queer Eye, and the moment you line up the seven minifigs on the finished floor you understand exactly why it exists. Antoni gets his kitchen island, Tan gets a clothing rack, Jonathan gets a swivel salon chair, Karamo gets the couch and scrapbook, and Bobby gets, well, the whole beautifully designed room to be proud of. The likenesses are so specific you can name each one before you read the sticker. That's a level of detail LEGO doesn't always nail, and here they really did.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about the caveats, because there are a few. This is a relaxed build, mostly furniture and walls, and it never asks much of you technically. If you live for clever parts usage you might find it a touch plain. The bigger gripe from most builders is the sticker sheet, which does a lot of heavy lifting here, and yes, the famous sliced avocados are stickered when everyone on earth wanted them printed. There's also the price question. It launched at 99.99, which was fair for what you get, but it retired back in March 2023 after only about seventeen months, so finding one sealed now usually means paying a premium over that original number.

Who it's for

So who should grab it. If you love the show, this is an easy yes, because the characters are the whole point and they're wonderful. If you like bright, personality-packed display pieces and you're tired of grey buildings and black boxes, it'll make you smile every time you walk past it. If you're a hardcore engineering builder who measures a set by its techniques, this probably isn't the one that'll thrill you, and that's fine. For everyone else, especially anyone who watched the makeovers and cried a little, the Fab 5 Loft is a warm, generous set that's genuinely hard not to like.

The parts story

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

Building this is a gentle, feel-good few hours rather than a puzzle. You lay down a colorful printed rug base, raise the loft walls, and then furnish it section by section: the kitchen with its island and induction cooktop, Tan's fashion corner, Jonathan's salon spot, and Karamo's living area. The one bit of actual mechanism is the before-and-after makeover chamber, which uses splat gears to spin a minifig around for a transformation, and it's a genuine joy to operate. Nothing here is difficult, which is rather the point. It's the kind of build you do with a coffee and a good mood.

The pieces that matter most are the minifigs, and there's a small mountain of extras to go with them. You get ten unique torsos, nine legs, eight hairpieces, plus caps, laptops, phones, books, purple handbags, pots and pans, so you can mix and match outfits across the crew. Kathi Dooley comes with both her before and after looks, including a glorious mullet. Elsewhere, 85 white masonry bricks build a lovely tiled kitchen backsplash, and the printed neon sign reading Style, Taste, Class is a nice touch on translucent glass. There's a fair bit of stickering to accept, but at 974 pieces with seven characters and all those accessories, the part-count value holds up well against the original price.

Fun facts

01This is widely considered the first LEGO set to depict real, named LGBTQ people as minifigures, with Jonathan Van Ness believed to be LEGO's first non-binary character.
02It retired in March 2023 after a run of roughly seventeen months, which is short for an Icons set.
03Designer Diego Sancho hid the blueprints of his own mother's apartment on the brainstorm blackboard as a personal Easter egg.
04A small red baseball cap is tucked in as a nod to the Season 1 Cory Waldrop episode, a quiet symbol of finding common ground across differences.