The LEGO Movie

Welcome to Apocalypseburg!

A grimy, gorgeous Mad Max diorama built around a toppled Lady Liberty.

Set 70840 · 2019

Pieces3,178

Minifigs12

Year2019

Set number70840

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The verdict

If your mate loves post-apocalyptic worlds and a build packed with story, this one's a genuine gem.

It's a big, characterful diorama with 12 minifigs and enough grimy detail to stare at for weeks. The catch is the price, which felt steep even at retail, and now that it's retired it's climbed into serious money territory. Tell them to grab it if they can find it fair, but nobody should feel bad walking away from the aftermarket asking prices.

Best for: Display builders who love story-soaked, weathered diorama sets

The full review

What it is

Right, let's talk about one of the most characterful things The LEGO Movie ever spat out. Welcome to Apocalypseburg! is a LEGO® set that takes the sunny Bricksburg you remember and drags it through a George Miller Mad Max nightmare. The whole thing is built around a collapsed Statue of Liberty, half-buried and repurposed into a scrappy survivor town, and honestly it's the kind of model that rewards a proper long look. There's a chill-out room tucked inside Lady Liberty's head, a cafe run by Larry the Barista, Scribble Cop's office, an armory, a barber and tattoo parlor, Lucy's hideout, Fuse's workshop, a rooftop diner, a gym and a spa. It's less a single build and more a stack of tiny scenes, and every one of them has a joke or a bit of grime waiting for you.

The catch

Now the honest part, because that's what mates are for. This thing was never cheap. At $299.99 for 3,178 pieces it raised eyebrows on day one, mostly because Ninjago City landed at the same price with nearly 2,000 more parts. That value gap is the single most common gripe you'll read, and it's a fair one. It's also worth being clear about what you're buying: this is a display diorama, not a playset. Once it's assembled it mostly sits and looks moody, so if your mate wants something to swoosh around or rebuild constantly, this isn't that. And here's the kicker for 2026: it retired back in December 2019 after a short run, so you're now looking at heavy secondary prices, often several times the original RRP for a sealed box.

Who it's for

So who should chase it down? Display builders and grown-up LEGO fans who love a weathered, story-soaked scene will adore it, and reviewers across the board landed on it as easily the best set from The LEGO Movie 2 lineup. Anyone who mainly wants play value, or who winces at aftermarket pricing, can comfortably let this one go. If your mate finds it at something close to fair money, tell them to jump. If the only copies around are the wild collector-priced ones, there's no shame in admiring it from afar and putting the cash toward something they'll build sooner.

The parts story

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

The build is a proper journey rather than a slog. You start with a chunky Technic frame at the core, which is the skeleton that lets the whole tower lean and sprawl the way a ruined statue should. From there it's modular in feel, working section by section through the little rooms and rooftops, so you get a steady drip of payoffs instead of one long repetitive stretch. Because each area is its own vignette, the techniques keep shifting: sturdy structural work down low, then fiddly greebling and sideways detail up top to sell that lived-in, scavenged look. It's engrossing, packed with clever bits, and it never feels like you're just cloning the same wall twenty times.

For parts nerds this is a genuine treasure chest, mostly thanks to sand green. The set brings 17 elements that were brand new in sand green, and it even revives six sand green pieces that hadn't been produced in 14 to 17 years, riding the wave that the Architecture Statue of Liberty kicked off. That makes it a fantastic donor set if you build in that palette. On the value side, roughly $299.99 for 3,178 parts works out around 9 cents a piece, which is fine but not amazing given how much of that cost is really the 12 minifigs. Speaking of which, that lineup is the other big draw: Emmet, Lucy, Batman, Harley Quinn in her Suicide Squad outfit, a rugged Green Lantern, Scribble Cop, Where Are My Pants Guy, Larry the Barista, Chainsaw Dave, Mo-Hawk, Roxxi and Fuse, with 11 of them exclusive to this box.

Fun facts

01The town is a direct homage to George Miller's Mad Max, reimagining sunny Bricksburg as a gritty post-apocalyptic wasteland after the events of the first movie.
02The centerpiece is a collapsed Statue of Liberty, and the finished model stands around 52cm tall, making it a towering display piece.
03It rides the sand green revival started by the Architecture Statue of Liberty set, introducing 17 brand-new sand green elements and bringing back six that hadn't been made in 14 to 17 years.
04It had a famously short shelf life, released in February 2019 and retired by December 2019, and sealed copies have since climbed to several times their original $299.99 price.