Disney

Villain Icons

A shelf of fake Disney VHS tapes with villains hiding inside, and it's very charming.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 43227 · 2023

Pieces1,540

Minifigs4

Year2023

Set number43227

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The verdict

This one is pure nostalgia bait and I mean that as the highest compliment.

It's a little stack of brick-built VHS cases, a poison apple, a storybook and a pocket watch, all celebrating Disney's nastiest characters, with four minifigs tucked away inside. If you grew up rewinding tapes and you love a clever display piece, you'll grin the whole way through. If you want a big engineering challenge or figures you can actually show off, this isn't quite that.

Best for: Disney nostalgics who want a clever, conversation-starting display piece

The full review

What it is

There's something so cheeky about this LEGO® set that I fell for it before I'd even opened a bag. Instead of building one villain's lair, you're building a little shelf of Disney memorabilia: two chunky VHS cases done up like Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty, a loose 'tape' nodding to The Little Mermaid, a storybook for Beauty and the Beast, a Queen of Hearts playing card for Alice in Wonderland, a poison apple for Snow White, and a pocket watch for Captain Hook. It's a greatest-hits box of the characters we love to boo, and the whole thing reads like a memory shelf from a 90s living room. At 1,540 pieces it lands right in that comfortable weekend-project size, and the way each object references a different film gives the box a real personality.

The catch

Now for the honest bits, because I love you too much to gloss over them. The four minifigs are the big sticking point. Maleficent, the Evil Queen in Disguise, Gaston and Genie Jafar are all lovely, and three of them are brand new, but they're tucked away inside the models with no stand to show them off. The Evil Queen hides in the apple, Gaston pulls out from the book's spine, and reviewers kept comparing it unfavourably to the Hogwarts Icons set, which gave you a proper display option. It stings a little to have such nice figures playing hide and seek. The other thing worth flagging is that this is a set of small builds rather than one grand structure, so the momentum stops and restarts a fair bit. You finish the apple, feel great, then start something totally unrelated. Some people love that variety, some find it a touch disjointed. And I'll be straight with you, the magic here runs almost entirely on nostalgia. If VHS tapes and old Disney intros pull at something in you, this set sings. If they don't, you might just see a pile of small decorative objects.

Who it's for

So who should grab this one? Disney nostalgics, hands down. If you had a video cabinet full of clamshell cases and you still hum the villain songs, this belongs on your shelf and it'll get more comments from guests than half your bigger sets. It also suits builders who like variety and clever small-scale techniques over a marathon build. I'd steer past it if you're after minifigs you can display front and centre, or if you want that big satisfying one-model payoff. It retired in late 2024, so it's off shelves now and prices have crept up on the secondary market, which is worth knowing before you go hunting. Personally, I think it's a genuinely warm, well-made little tribute that just made one frustrating call on those figures. Very good, with real caveats.

The parts story

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

The build hops around, and that's the fun of it. You put together these self-contained objects one at a time, so you're constantly starting something fresh: the ridged texture of a VHS case, the round curve of the poison apple, the layered pages of the storybook. The apple and the cassette cases in particular lean on sideways-building and offset techniques that are genuinely satisfying to work out, and several reviewers said they'd happily steal those methods for their own creations. It's not a hard build and it won't test a seasoned fan, but it's inventive in a way that keeps you leaning in to see how each shape gets faked out of standard bricks. Total build time runs around four hours.

On parts, this is a quietly generous box. For a licensed Disney set the price per piece is strong, and those 1,540 pieces skew toward useful stuff: loads of tiles, plenty of basic bricks, and a good haul of curved and sideways elements rather than one-use specialty parts. There are some lovely recolours in here that MOC builders singled out as a real supply, plus printed accents that sell the VHS-label look. The four minifigs are the headline pieces, with Genie Jafar, Gaston and the Evil Queen in Disguise all making their debut here and Maleficent getting fresh printing. It's a set that gives back to your parts bin long after the display value wears off.

Fun facts

01The whole set is a love letter to VHS nostalgia, styling its two big builds as clamshell video cases for Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty, right down to a loose 'tape' referencing The Little Mermaid.
02It was released as part of Disney's 100th anniversary celebrations in 2023, packing seven different films' villains into one box.
03Every villain is hidden in a themed spot: the Evil Queen lurks inside the poison apple, and Gaston slides out from a secret drawer built into the spine of the Beauty and the Beast book.
04The set retired in December 2024, and sealed copies have since climbed above their original 129.99 dollar price on the secondary market.