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The Majestic Horse

A gorgeous galloping horse that turns into a Shiba Inu in red sneakers, and you'll never own one.

Brick Rated Score

4.3/5

Set 010423 · 2023

Pieces492

Minifigsn/a

Year2023

Set number010423

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The verdict

I want to be upfront with you before you get your hopes up.

This is not a set you can buy, not on Amazon, not anywhere. LEGO built roughly ten copies of The Majestic Horse as a 2023 April Fools' prank for fan media, and the whole joke is that the elegant dark red and sand green horse on the box is not what you get. Build it and the head becomes the doge meme, that famous Shiba Inu, complete with a pair of red sneakers standing in for horseshoes. I'm scoring it high anyway because as a piece of LEGO design mischief it's genuinely brilliant, the kind of thing that makes you appreciate how much craft goes into even a joke. Just know you're reading this for the story, not for a shopping decision.

Best for: LEGO history buffs and meme lovers who enjoy the story more than the shelf display

The full review

What it is

The first time I read about The Majestic Horse, I laughed out loud at how far LEGO took the setup. This is a 2023 April Fools' prank, and I mean that literally, LEGO's model design team built a small batch of prototype sets, maybe ten in total, and mailed them to outlets like Brickset and Jay's Brick Blog with a straight face. The box shows a beautifully proportioned galloping horse in dark red with sand green accents, the kind of animal model you'd expect from the Icons team at their best. Then you build it, and the head that goes on isn't a horse's head at all. It's Kabosu, the Shiba Inu from the doge meme, and the legs end in a pair of red sneakers instead of hooves.

The catch

Here's the honest part. You cannot buy this set. There's no listing, no retail run, nothing that will ever show up in an Amazon cart. LEGO designed it, printed instructions that were locked with a password and made unprintable on purpose, and handed the physical models to a handful of fan media people for review videos. So when I score this, I'm scoring the achievement, not a purchase. If you came here hoping to add it to a cart, I'd rather tell you now than let you go looking.

Who it's for

So who actually gets something out of this review? Anyone who loves LEGO's sense of humor, anyone who follows the design side of the hobby, and anyone who enjoys reading about the weirder corners of set history. If you're shopping for a horse model to actually build, look at the Creator 3-in-1 horse sets instead, they scratch the same itch and you can genuinely own one. This one's a story to enjoy, not a box to chase.

The parts story

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

From what reviewers who actually held one described, the build reuses a lot of real large-scale LEGO animal engineering, the kind of leg and joint system you'd see in a proper Icons-tier horse, articulated at the shoulders and hips so it can hold a galloping pose. The dark red and sand green combination is unusual and striking, not a palette LEGO reaches for often on an animal model, and it's part of what sold the joke, it looks convincingly like a serious, premium set right up until the head goes on.

The punchline pieces are the real stars here, the doge head unit and the red sneaker feet that swap in for hooves. Brickset's reviewers noted the rear legs got more detailing attention than the front, a small asymmetry you'd only notice because everything else about the build is so deliberate. None of these pieces are available separately or through any parts marketplace since the whole run was locked down, which is exactly what makes this one of the more talked about oddities in modern LEGO history rather than a shelf item anyone can complete.

Fun facts

01Only about ten physical copies of The Majestic Horse are known to exist, sent to Recognised LEGO Fan Media outlets for April Fools' Day 2023
02It was designed by Nathan Dias and Steve Guinness, the pair who won LEGO Masters UK in 2017
03The building instructions were locked with a password and made unprintable, so even the lucky recipients couldn't pass along a buildable copy
04The doge head and red sneaker feet were added onto a real, structurally serious horse body rather than being an entirely separate model