LEGO Ideas
One of the big criticisms of the LEGO Ideas program is how fan designers’ original project designs tend to have their more interesting elements sanded off as the designs are finessed and polished by LEGO designers. This is nowhere more apparent than with 21354 Twilight The Cullen House, which feels like the most basic possible version of what is supposed to be a beautiful home filled with beautiful monsters.
Release: February 1, 2025 Price: £189.99 / $219.99 / €219.99 Pieces: 2,001 Minifigures: 7 LEGO:
Less than the sum of its parts
The build experience for 21354 Twilight The Cullen House starts strong. The first bag contains Bella Swan’s red truck, which is a delightful little build. There are a lot of small parts used to construct the truck, which makes for a quite satisfying experience – but it does hint at a few of the set’s features that will either prove hit or miss for builders.
As subsequent bags lead the builder through the early stages of constructing the Cullen House itself, it becomes apparent that this is a set with a slightly inflated piece count. Often times, a lot of smaller elements are used where one larger element could have done the job just as well, if not better.
This is no doubt a cost-saving measure for the LEGO Group (it's more cost-effective to use two 1x2 bricks than a 1x4 brick if there are already 1x2 bricks used elsewhere in the set, for example), and whether it will count for or against the set will depend on your personal preference. On one hand, this does lead to a slightly longer build experience and an extra level of nuance in a build that is far from challenging. On the other hand, this leads to a less stable finished model as a result – it’s possible to see in photos how even a slightly uneven display surface causes the set to buckle, and a lot of the ground-level elements separate awkwardly.
The skin of a killer
In 2024, the LEGO Group’s graphic designers began experimenting in earnest with a bold new look for a lot of licensed minifigures: foregoing traditional black eyes in favour of larger, round blobs of colour. These have felt more relevant for some minifigures than others; monsters and aliens make a certain amount of sense with this style, but, for example, a completely human street rat Jedi makes a lot less sense.
This style of bright, colourful eyes has never been more suited to any minifigure than to those included with 21354 Twilight The Cullen House. All four of the set’s vampires – Edward, Alice, Carlisle and Rosalie – feature traditional minifigure faces on one side of their heads, and bright yellow eyes in the new style on the other side.
This is an absolutely perfect design choice that marries an ongoing LEGO trend with the visuals from the Twilight movies perfectly. Add in that Edward’s vampire face is appropriately sparkly, and these are no doubt going to be very exciting minifigures for Twilight fans. Alas, the non-vampire minifigures have far less noteworthy face printing, but then, the fanbase as a whole was never going to care too much about a Charlie Swan minifigure anyway.
True colours
One of the most jarring things about the finished set is its colour scheme, which doesn’t exactly feel like an accurate reflection of the cinematic source material. The original fan design for this LEGO Ideas project called for far darker and more muted colours, where the finished model instead uses a lighter shade of brown and grey instead of black. The result is probably closer to the colours of the actual house that was used for a filming location in the Twilight movies, but it’s a far cry from the films’ signature dark tint. And what should we be aiming for here: accuracy to the real-life building that few of us will know, or accuracy to our memory of what it actually looked like in the movie?
The house in general, in spite of its use of many smaller elements, feels a little basic when compared with some LEGO Ideas projects. Modernist houses are rare in LEGO, and 21354 Twilight The Cullen House does hint at why that might be: there are a lot of big glass panels, completely straight featureless walls, and not a lot of variation in the design of the structure itself.
Even in terms of decoration, the set feels a little more sparse than many. A few stickers are used to add some extra references to the set, but these are few and far between. Twilight fans are not served the same level of in-jokes and Easter Eggs here that have appeared in LEGO Ideas sets such as 21330 Home Alone or 21336 The Office (although in fairness it would probably have been difficult to top these sets for inventive use of references).
Our honest opinion: 21354 Twilight The Cullen House is a perfectly adequate if somewhat basic LEGO Ideas set. For Twilight fans, the Edward minifigure alone is bound to excite, but otherwise this a fairly forgettable build.
This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
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