DA-DUM, DA-DUM, DA-DUM… no two notes are more iconic, or stressful, and the creature that those notes invoke is as classic as they come. Jaws, the original summer blockbuster movie, has an outsized share of iconic elements, scenes, and lines, and with the 50th anniversary of the book this year and the movie next year, it’s perhaps no surprise that we’re getting a LEGO rendition of one of those classic scenes. LEGO Ideas 21350 Jaws contains 1,497 pieces and 3 minifigures, and will be available August 6th for US $149.99 | CAN $199.99 | UK £129.99. LEGO Insiders will have early access starting August 3rd. Let’s dive in… ehhhh maybe we’ll stay on the beach for this one.
Unboxing the parts, instructions, and sticker sheet
The box follows a familiar format for 18+ Ideas and Icons sets, with the Jaws logo and the diorama version of the build shown on the full front cover, and the separate full shark-on-a-stand, how the shark transitions between diorama base and stand, and some inset detail panels on the back. One of the box sides also shows how the shark stand can display the 3 included minifigures – check out the gallery at the end of our review to see that and many more additional photos.
A new box format has been showing up recently that calls back to vintage 1980s LEGO packaging. With the company’s push towards 100% renewable materials, the plastic trays are no longer here to present the pieces and minifigures, but it’s still a nice format and makes the box more easily reusable. The cardboard is still thin, unlike the premium smaller Ideas sets that have tabs that can re-close, so this won’t be a long-term sturdy storage solution, but it’s much nicer than thumb punches in our view.
Inside are 13 numbered paper bags, 3 loose dark blue “road plate” bases, a cardboard envelope protecting the instructions and stickers, and an unnumbered plastic bag with a large black plate and a flexible element for the bow of the boat.
The instructions feature Bruce the shark on the front and a Bruce’s-eye view of the Orca on the back. The included sticker sheet is quite small, with five stickers total, though two are duplicates. The instructions as usual include a number of nicely done pages with information on the fan designer, Jonny Campbell, along with background about the movie, the LEGO design team, and more, all included in our gallery.
The build
We’re going to build a big boat first (the Orca), then a big shark (Bruce – the animatronic sharks for the movie were named after Steven Spielberg’s lawyer), and those are definitely going to need a bigger diorama base. (The Lemur says that we should be done with this joke now. I’m not so sure. We’re probably still way under the median “you’re gonna need a bigger…” references for reviews of this set still.)
We start with the hull, which makes use of some 1×6 – 2×6 inverted brackets that first showed up earlier this year in Speed Champions sets. The sides of the boat are clearly going to be studs-out.
Tiles finish much of the deck, with plenty of studs to attach structure, furnishings, and minifigures to later. The front of the boat has some door rail plates that will be used later when attaching the bow.
The rear of the boat is interesting. It’s both cleverly built to be sturdy – note how in the first picture below, the black bracket and the dark red inverted bracket are essentially reversed – attach anything to both of them, and it’s not going to slip either right or left, because the brackets are secured in either way. If both brackets were facing the same way, then they’d disconnect at the same place and the assembly would be more fragile. But you can also see in both photos how the whole section can be lifted up off the rest of the boat and how it separates. In a roundtable interview with the LEGO team that worked on this set along with the fan designer, they mentioned this when asked if play features for the shark destroying the back of the boat had been considered, so we wonder if it’s fully intentional, as opposed to a structurally weaker area of the build.
The cabin of the Orca has a number of key accessories, from the radio that Quint smashes to prevent someone else from getting credit for catching the shark, to the seating where Quint and Hooper compare more and more extreme scars. The map of shark sightings is interesting, because there wasn’t official source material for it, and not all of the locations are clear from the movie. So LEGO worked with Universal and was told to “work out” one of the locations as best they could, and then basically approved that as now canon for Jaws. Almost 50 years later. Amazing. The newspaper gets two references in one – first, of course the girl first attacked in the movie is Chrissie Watkins, so who is Campbell? That’s Jonny Campbell, the fan designer, getting a shoutout in the set. And the illustration of the shark is an homage to Quint’s (let’s face it: comical, but terrible) blackboard chalk drawing at the town meeting.
The bow is one of the best bits of building in this whole set. We start with an assembly that features brackets along the sides and hinge plates that angle to make the lines of the bow, set to the correct angle with mixel joints.
The bow is filled out by building on the brackets, including some slopes and complex bow elements – thanks for those also, Speed Champions – along with tiles and black and dark red bows.
The finished bow is an upside-down joy, looking sleek enough to carve through the seas.
The completed bow assembly slides, studs down, onto the door rails at the front of the cabin and attaches in securely with the clips to the rounded-plate-with-bar-handles element. The tan hinge plates are still free at this point; they’ll be used later.
The bow pulpit – distinct from a bowsprit because it’s not just a spar, but there’s a platform for crew – makes use of a relatively recently introduced technic beam with pin holes on alternating sides, along with medium nougat sausages, the flexible rope-like element from the unnumbered bag, some droid arms, and tiles. It’s quite effective.
Technic axles secure the pulpit firmly to the bow. It’s possible when attaching it to push some of the bow assembly apart, so it’s helpful to have the bow firmly on a flat surface, or to keep pressure on the bottom of it with your other hand as you’re pushing the axles in. We also add the upside-down windscreen, which sits on the 1×2 panel elements, and we build the first two of the yellow barrels that are so key to the second half of the movie.
Angled assemblies that use technic half pins to evoke the portholes from the Orca’s front cabin attach to the hinge plates, and wedge plates complete the bow.
The mast and upper deck are next, and there are a number of nice recolors used here. The new triangular flag element from LEGO Friends appears in tan for the ship’s pennant, Mia’s tophat from Friends recolored from dark purple to black as a marvelous bell, the loop element from Dots in a verrrrry useful black, two drum-lacquered silver elements for scuba tanks, a somewhat surprisingly new pearl gold claw element, and the ring element from Sonic the Hedgehog in white for parts of the mast.
The mast and rigging are done next. The string and towball element is technically unique, but only in length – it’s existed before. The ship’s bell, utilizing the recolored magician’s hat with a paint roller handle, is particularly great.
The accessories built out – the exhaust stack for the boat, which will put out thicker and thicker smoke until it’s run under, the key scuba tanks, the details on the mast, the dots loop element holding the end of the rigging, and the tiles framing the cabin door complete the scene.
The upper deck is built separately and can be lifted off of just a few studs. The piece with the shark jaw made of handlebars is build upside down to match the angle of the 2x1x3 slopes.
Bo Peep’s shepherd crook recolored to light blueish gray is another piece of note. In this set it makes the ladder up to the upper deck work – not a lot of elements have the curve that this piece does, that represents this kind of nautical ladder. In the panel with the designers, this piece is one of the two, along with the inverted windscreen, that set the scale for the boat. It ends up pretty nicely minifigure scale as far as we can tell, but it’s fascinating to know what the key pieces were for the designers.
We mentioned that some of the back assembly of the boat is kind of detachable. And if you’re really paying attention, you might have noticed that our pictures don’t include the Orca printed tile on the back of the boat. Well… there are many sharks in life. Some of them are giant and animatronic.
And some of them are small, cute, and strike when a piece is left on a coffee table to be photographed for a review.
In any case, your reviewer had a spare 2×6 dark red tile, so we move on without the particular letters. The access ladder, the life preservers – for anyone but Quint, survivor of the Indianapolis – the fishing chair that Quint straps in to, the other barrels for the front, etc. The Orca is fully rendered, and looks good.
Bruuce, Bruuuce, I’m the piano man! Ok, so, Bloom County characters confusing pop stars aside, the shark build starts with a base, mostly making a square and providing curved sides for it. The very tail end of the shark, with enough structure for later builds to connect to, attaches to it, very tail-heavy for now.
The bulk of Bruce’s body takes shape next, with sleek sides a place for the dorsal fin to attach later.
Without the head, it’s very tail heavy still on the stand…
Starting the head/jaws of Jaws, we finally hit one plastic internal bag. The core of the head has studs facing in every direction, making it clear that this is not just stacking teeth.
The mouth is build up with pins, bars, and teeth, with some assemblies added that nestle in at an angle to finish the mouth.
Gulp. You’re gonna need a bigger build table, to get away from him. The cutouts in wedge plates add texture for the nostrils, and bar and towball pieces newly available in black make those dead, dead eyes.
From the side or the top, this is a magnificent predator.
Finally, we build the diorama base. The underside is perhaps surprisingly varied, with different sized plates and wedge plates filling gaps as the designers felt best served. The finished base has a good number of waves but otherwise is relatively simple leaving room for the shark body and the boat.
The completed model
Aaaaaasssghhhhhhhhh please build a bigger boat? Which, regardless of any kind of realism or colors, you can do with any LEGO collection. Bruce the shark nestles into the display like anything ready to launch from a canon, the the Orca sits on it, ready to slip away.
Closer up, it’s a great rendition of the movie scene.
The fully rigged and crewed Orca is ready for anything… almost anything.
Bruce the great white shark says “Hey!”
The minifigures
Quint, Brody, and Hooper are the three main characters on the Orca and really the only human characters for the second half of the movie. Brody’s expression in particular is meant to invoke his reaction when the shark first breaches right at the end of the boat, resulting in his famous quote. Quint seems mad at everyone, which checks out. And Hooper gets a hat + hair combo recolored from LEGO DreamZzz.
All of the minifigures have back printing, and Brody and Hooper have alternate facial expressions, showing queasiness or alarm.
Conclusions and recommendations
If you don’t like Jaws, or sharks, or fishing boats, thank you so much for reading this far! You can pass. If you’d like to know how this set compares to other LEGO fishing boats, then continue…
That’s the Orca next to the Great Fishing Boat from the BrickLink Designer Program. If anything, the fishing boat could be a bit bigger here, but isn’t crying out for more- and the model is pretty good as is. Piece count is good next to the model, and the minifigures have a good stand too:
LEGO Ideas 21350 Jaws contains 1,497 pieces and 3 minifigures, and will be available August 6th (early Insiders access August 3rd) from LEGO.com for US $149.99 | CAN $199.99 | UK £129.99. Also available from 3rd party sellers like Amazon and eBay.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Check out our gallery for even more images:
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