LEGO Ideas 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas review

Perfectly timed to coincide with this year’s Halloween season, is 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas the spooky LEGO Ideas set we’ve been waiting for?

Following closely in the wake of 21350 Jaws comes another LEGO Ideas set based on a winning 10K fan design and a classic movie. This time it’s the turn of 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas, an updated version of Simon Scott’s revised model and one that’s sure to bring a smile to the face of many a Tim Burton aficionado.

Release: September 3 (Insiders), September 6 (wide), 2024 Price: £169.99 / $199.99 / €199.99 Pieces: 2,193 Minifigures: 6 LEGO: Order now

“Oh, look. What’s this?”

Clocking in at 2,193 pieces, 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas offers up a trio of macabre modular builds. Each can be displayed separately or combined together to create a much wider and more impressive Halloween Town scene, complete with seasonal decorative elements to transform it into a festive holiday version.

On offer in the LEGO Ideas set are Spiral Hill, Jack Skellington’s House and Halloween Town Hall, each of which is packed with numerous details for fans to spot. In addition, each build channels the overall feel of director Henry Selick’s iconic 1993 stop-motion animated film, with some interesting building techniques employed to recreate the look of the three locations.

21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas also comes with minifigures of Jack Skellington, Sally, Santa Claus, Lock, Shock and Barrel, plus a Zero the dog figure and a brick-built version of The Mayor, but more on what’s sure to be that polarising character later.

This is Halloween

Each of the modular builds in 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas comes with its own dedicated instruction manual and can be constructed in any order that you like, although we found it best to start with bag 1 and Halloween Town Hall.

The predominantly grey and black edifice could almost have been a LEGO Star Wars build, if not for the splashes of vibrant green and orange, a twisted black tree and the crooked architecture that’s a hallmark of The Nightmare Before Christmas. In fact there are virtually no right angles in the entire set at all, which is a remarkable design achievement indeed.

All three of the locations in 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas sit on their own collection of black baseplates, with layers of construction used to great effect, not only to achieve their striking looks, but also to hide various creepy secrets within.

For instance, Halloween Town Hall conceals a spooky skeleton in its basement section, along with a number of festive brick-built gifts squirrelled away under the removable roof. Of particular note in this build is the use of Technic pieces to create the angled (but sturdy) pillars at the front of the building, a technique that works surprisingly well, and the fold down sides of the Town Hall that allow access to its modest interior.

Completing this section of 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas is a small fountain located outside, featuring a grey brick-built gargoyle and vibrant green studs representing Sally’s frog’s breath recipe. A stickered clock and Christmas countdown, plus a removable lectern round out Halloween Town Hall, along with an impressive orange and black cloth banner held up with a bone element.

“Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King!”

The most interesting part of the 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas build is up next in the shape of Jack Skellington’s House. The dark and twisted abode is straight out of the mind of Tim Burton and is assembled in three distinct sections. 

The black baseplate area features a simple path that leads up to two large gates with cleverly constructed black cat statues, which in turn are connected to grey walls, a colourful tree and various Halloween-themed decorations.

The first floor boasts a brown door with eye sticker that opens up to reveal a Christmas tree hidden within and hinged side sections complete with gargoyle stickers on shield pieces. The upper floor will prove the most exciting for fans though, as it houses Jack’s workshop packed with stickered chalkboard Christmas formula (see if you can spot the designer reference) and Sandy Claws sketch, telescope, book case, magnifying glass, work benches and more.

The fully assembled Jack Skellington’s House is topped off with two removable rooftop sections, revealing more Halloween goodies and Christmas wreaths tucked away in the attic, plus a crooked chimney stack. While this section of 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas is easily the most impressive, it’s also the most unstable, so you’re best to leave it as a display piece rather than a model to be handled and moved around too often.

Haunted hill

The third, final and smallest part of the LEGO Ideas modular build is Spiral Hill, essentially a brick-built graveyard that features an iconic curved backdrop complete with yellow moon. The latter is a particularly interesting element to have included in 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas, as it’s essentially a thin piece of plastic material (held in place with a Technic pin) that matches the visual look of the film quite effectively, something that may not have been possible with standard LEGO bricks.

Some may baulk at the use of such a dedicated piece, but it works very well and it’s likely the circle element may appear in future LEGO sets, as it could have all kinds of potential uses. The hill itself uses a selection of curved and angled pieces to achieve the coiled look of the mound, although it’s not as large as the one featured in Simon Scott’s original design. 

Spiral Hill’s graveyard is yet another treasure trove of fan-favourite details, including numerous gravestones, with many boasting stickers representing the various ingredients Sally uses in her drugged soup and frog’s breath potion, plus Zero’s doghouse.

Creepy cast

Rounding out 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas is its character selection, with six minifigures included in the LEGO Ideas set. Of these, Jack Skellington is the most eye-catching, with the Pumpkin King featuring longer arms and legs borrowed from LEGO Avatar minifigures, along with a new printed head that has smaller eyes, updated double-sided printed torso, a black cloth set of coat tails and printed legs.

Along with Jack Skellington, Sally was included in 71024 Disney Series 2 in 2019 too, although the version in 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas has also been updated. The character gains a dark red hair piece, revised double-sided printed head, torso and printed legs, although the printing is absent from her dual-moulded arms.

Santa Claus may lack the bulk of his onscreen counterpart though and the character should potentially have been more of a brick-built offering. The minifigure has a double-sided head piece, along with new double-sided printed torso and skirt elements, a white beard, dual-moulded hat and candy cane accessory.

Completing 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas’s minifigure selection are Lock, Shock and Barrel, the trio of childlike henchmen employed in the movie by Oogie Boogie. These are definitely the weakest characters of the set, with only Barrel receiving a torso print and no film accurate masks as one of their double-sided head prints. While Shock does gain a recoloured dual-moulded witch’s hat with hair element, The Nightmare Before Christmas included many more visually interesting characters that would have been worthy of their own minifigures.

The (hench-)kids also receive a white brick-built walking bathtub with skeleton legs, a handy accessory for displaying the trio in or for transporting a captured Santa Claus around the set. In addition to 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas’s minifigures, the model also comes with a fantastic all-new Zero figure, with the element being a spot-on recreation of Jack’s undead canine companion, complete with orange pumpkin nose, red collar and black eyes.

However, it’s the brick-built version of The Mayor that is easily the most polarising character in the LEGO Ideas set, one that in some ways almost feels like something of an afterthought. While The Mayor does receive his own unique double-sided head, with happy and sad expressions, and a printed body element, the height of the character clashes with the likes of the Jack Skellington minifigure.

Many fans may feel that Oogie Boogie would have made for a much more impressive brick-built character to include with 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas (and could have made for a potential companion gift-with-purchase), despite the villain’s absence from Simon Scott’s original design. That said, the LEGO Ideas set should still tick the majority of many Tim Burton fans’ boxes and we wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the model making its way into plenty of top 10 end-of-year lists in the months to come.

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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Our honest opinion: 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas delivers a perfect collision of frighteningly festive movie memories with a spirited (and long overdue) LEGO Ideas fan submission.

Author Profile

Matt Yeo

From video game journalism to kids’ publishing, I’ve been there, seen it, done it and worn the T-shirt. I was also the editor of the first-ever official LEGO magazine way back when, LEGO Adventures. I have a passion for movies, comic books, tech and video games, with a wallet that’s struggling to keep up with my LEGO set wish list.

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