LEGO 21347 Red London Telephone Box detailed building review
Hi everyone, this is Balazs from RacingBrick! Today I have brought you the latest LEGO Ideas set, this is the 21347 Red London Telephone Box! What you can see on the front of the box is a red telephone box located in London with a small part of the street built around it. The back shows a different angle and some of the features, but I think we want to see it for ourselves, so we’d better open it up! The set has 1460 pieces, it will be released on February 1st for LEGO Insiders and on the 4th for
everyone else, and costs 115 EUR / USD. To check your local prices, please use the link on the top right or in the description. In the box you will find 11 numbered bags, 2 loose plates, the instructions and the sticker sheet. The manual starts with the introduction of the fan designer John Cramp, who already had 4 successful Ideas projects with 10k supporters before the phone booth was officially released. The next page is about how iconic these phone boxes are in the UK, and they are consistently called phone kiosks, which is a bit odd. I’m not
a native speaker, but I’ve asked a few people and they really don’t call these phone kiosks. Then we learn about the anniversary of the red kiosk design, which is
with a few words from the LEGO designer Marina Stampoli, this was her very first LEGO set. Here’s the parts list if you’re interested, and now let’s start building! The process begins with a the base that has brackets all the way around, we add another layer and then basically cover it completely with tiles, yes, you can see 56 1×1 tiles here, which means bag 1 is a tolerance for monotony and OCD test all in one, because these tiles are almost impossible to align perfectly. I show the result of the next 2 bags in one, because we
are building a single layer red wall with many windows all around, this is the result. I have to admit that this section didn’t look any more exciting to me than the first one, so I asked my wife to build it. She said it was relaxing. So as you can see, we have quite different expectations. The next step is to cover the edges, first with these, then with these. And there you have it! Now we can decide whether we want a classic look with an old rotary phone or a more modern interior. I opt for the
classic look first. We have lots of stickers here, but they are full of Easter eggs. You can see references to other Ideas sets such as the Jazz Quartet or the Typewriter, but the designer has also hidden some personal references in the numbers and letters, such as anniversary dates and initials of his family members, which means that this time TC is not a reference to Tiago for once 🙂 The phone is simple, but looks great. We have a coin there, the look is pretty authentic based on the photos I found online. The door is a bit
more complicated as we had to build the hinges, and yes, the shade of the axle with pin hole Technic pieces is still different than the other parts, the problem exists with both the red and the lime pieces, that’s a shame. You just need to find the axle holes, it’s not that hard, and the door works perfectly, that was the end of phase 5. Then we move on to building the upper part, and there are a few nice tricks here. We added these triangular pieces earlier, and the white assembly will sit on top of them, but
upside down. Printed 1×8 bricks, we’ve got 4 of them, then a couple more tiles and this goes in place, too. This will be pretty cool, we have this assembly with a big pile of transparent bricks in the middle. And here’s the magical component, the light brick! It fits into the slot there, and then we have these transparent parts, which are surprisingly not new, and we build this very nice lamp for the ceiling. It also attaches upside down to the white parts that we added earlier, and then the top comes with two main assemblies. We have
parts here with printed crowns. These don’t look exactly like the originals for multiple reasons. Those were perforated because they were used as ventilation holes, and the design is protected so it’s a LEGO interpretation that you see here. Then comes the other section, which is easy to attach, and then both are put in place. The last element is this tricky little assembly, that fits into the cross axle hole of the light brick, and so we can activate it – very nice! In bag 8 is the base, another LEGO mosaic in disguise, which luckily I didn’t have
to build myself, then comes some brick laying and another layer here, then the finish with tiles and slopes. Here are the moisture vaporators, I mean bollards, fixed in place by these cross axles with stop from below. The next element is the fence with quite an interesting use of parts, we’ve got Technic cross axles and other parts, spikes, lots of rods, the end result looks pretty cool. Here’s the other section with the street sign, and this is how the base looks like before the final bag. Going back to building tiny things: We have flowers, lots of
them! Then comes the lamppost, and for the top we have this cool trans-clear crystal ball, which is quite old but I’ve never seen it before. I’m very impressed with this assembly, all these unrelated pieces form this very authentic look at the end! We still have to assemble two flower pots to hang on the lamppost and the last piece is the phone box itself, then we’re done! Oops, I thought the phone book was part of the second interior, but apparently it belongs here. So, here’s the end result, and it looks nice, a small portion of London
from long ago. Everything is pretty stable, except for the lamppost, which wobbles quite a bit when you move the base. In terms of functionality, there’s an opening door and the light inside looks pretty good, especially in the dark. There is also a hidden function of the build, it can serve as a mobile phone stand! This is quite an unusual move from LEGO, and you can’t really use it for anything interactive as parts of the build are in the way, so it’s not even a fancy stand for video calls, and you also have to be careful
how you take your phone out when someone calls you. This opening could be for the cable, which is fine as a concept, but you probably don’t want your phone standing on a bent cable like this. A very interesting feature, but I’m not sure it was really necessary. As for the interior, as mentioned before, you can create 2 versions, but the instructions don’t really say if you can build both at the same time or not. Unfortunately, you can’t, and it’s quite a challenge to remove those parts in the first place. As you can see, the other
design is similar, but also different enough to maybe start over. That’s a shame, because we’re talking about a few dozen parts here. It would have been nice to have included enough parts to assemble both versions. So here’s the new variant, and this is what’s left of the old one. There are a few LEGO references here too, but also Easter eggs from the fan designer. Speaking of which, let’s take another look at the original submission and the final result. There were some changes in terms of the environment, the mailbox was removed as it would have required
the involvement of another license partner, but there were also some additions. What may not be obvious at first glance is that the original design was huge, probably twice the size of this one. The lamppost here was made of 2×2 elements instead of 1x1s, the tiny handle there is this big, it was massive. The reduction in size was somehow logical in order to keep the price down, but many things and ideas were retained. As far as authenticity goes, I think the set is pretty good. I’m not an expert of phone boxes, but it looks ok. The
biggest difference, which we also had with the original, is perhaps the number of rows of windows. The original box had 6 rows, here we only have 5 due to the limitation of the available pieces. So, can you display anything British with the set? We have 2 vehicles, the double decker bus is a completely different scale, but the Mini might work for the first sight. I did some calculations beforehand using the data available at the reveal, but apparently the height given in the product description referred to the lamppost, so the box itself is about 26cm high.
According to online sources, the K2 phone box was 9 feet high, or about 275 cm, which corresponds to a scale of 10.5:1. The scale of the Mini-Cooper is 12:1, so it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close. We can also add a few Italian visitors to the scene if we feel like it. By the way, I don’t have any LEGO figures that would fit this scale, the Star Wars guys are too big, the driver of this motorcycle too. According to the team, the Jazz Quartet figures would fit, but unfortunately I don’t have them. So, what do
we get for 115 EUR / USD? The aforementioned Jazz Quartet is in this price range from the Ideas theme, then the BTS Dynamite set, the Office or the Fender Stratocaster. From this perspective, it doesn’t look bad, but if I had to choose something in this price range, it would be the Fender for sure. For me, the build process was too repetitive in many places, although there are some cool and tricky solutions that I liked. But others find this kind of building relaxing and fun, so I can accept that. I think the mobile phone stand feature
is more of a gimmick, I don’t know how many people will actually use it. All in all, it looks good. So if you think something like this could work for you as decoration and you’re not afraid of some brick stacking, then go for it. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments folks, if you liked this video, then please give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications because there will be more exciting LEGO videos coming soon. See you next time, bye bye!
