Trolls: World Tour

Rainbow Caterbus

A caterpillar bus with real charm and a sticker problem it never quite solves.

Brick Rated Score

3.1/5

Set 41256 · 2020

Pieces405

Minifigs2

Year2020

Set number41256

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

I wanted to love this one more than I did.

The Caterbus itself has genuine personality, those googly moving eyes get me every time, but the build leans on stickers to fake colors the designers didn't actually give it in brick form, and that's the kind of shortcut that nags at you set after set. Poppy and Cooper are fine minifigs, Cloud Guy and his three cloud babies are the real stars here, all felt pieces and soft shapes that feel different from a normal LEGO box. If you or your kid are deep into the Trolls movies, get it. If you're shopping purely on build quality, there are better ways to spend forty dollars.

Best for: Trolls World Tour fans and younger builders who want the movie characters more than a technical challenge

The full review

What it is

The Rainbow Caterbus is the biggest set to come out of LEGO's Trolls World Tour lineup, and it's built around a genuinely fun idea, a caterpillar-shaped school bus with a face that moves. The eyes shift when you tilt it, the mouth is built from little dot pieces that give it real expression, and honestly the first time I got it rolling on its ball wheels I grinned. Poppy and Cooper ride along, and Cloud Guy shows up with three tiny cloud babies, all built from soft felt pieces instead of hard plastic, which is a nice tactile surprise if you've never handled that material in a set before.

The catch

Here's the part that bugs me. Instead of molding the Caterbus body in the four colors the character actually has, LEGO used two base colors and slapped stickers over the gaps. It's a corner-cutting move that shows up more than once in this set, and once you notice it you can't unsee it. At 405 pieces for around forty dollars, the piece count also feels thin next to what else was on shelves that year, and a chunk of that count goes toward oversized body panels rather than clever technique. The bus stop add-on with its swinging seat is a sweet touch, but it can't fully make up for the sticker sheet doing work the bricks should be doing.

Who it's for

This one is for kids and collectors who are attached to the Trolls World Tour movie and want Poppy, Cooper, and Cloud Guy on their shelf, felt pieces and all. If you're buying LEGO for the building experience itself, or you already have your fill of Trolls sets, I'd let this one pass. It was a store exclusive for a reason, and the retail run reflected that, quiet and short.

The parts story

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

Building the Caterbus is quick and playful rather than technical, most of your time goes into the long segmented body and the face mechanism that lets the eyes swivel. It's a build better suited to a younger builder working alongside an adult than someone chasing an engineering puzzle, and that's fine, it's clearly aimed that way. The bus stop microbuild goes together fast and is honestly one of the more satisfying parts of the box, small and detailed with a working swing.

The standout pieces are the felt elements used for Cloud Guy and his three cloud babies, a softer, fabric-like material LEGO uses sparingly, and they genuinely change how the set feels in your hands compared to standard ABS bricks. Cooper's minifig comes with printed medium azure sunglasses that are unique to him, and the ball-jointed wheels on the Caterbus are a fun functional touch. The rest of the part count, though, leans heavily on large curved panels and the sticker sheet doing color work that plain new molds or established recolors could have handled instead.

Fun facts

01The Rainbow Caterbus was a store exclusive, meaning it was never sold through general retail alongside the rest of the Trolls World Tour wave.
02The set includes four buildable felt-piece characters, Cloud Guy and his three cloud babies, alongside the two standard minifigures, Poppy and Cooper.
03Cooper's minifigure is unique to this set and includes printed medium azure sunglasses not found elsewhere.
04The finished Caterbus measures about 15 cm long, and its face uses small dot pieces to build an expressive mouth that moves along with the eyes.