LEGO DREAMZzz dips its toes into gaming in January – but only one set nails it

The LEGO DREAMZzz January 2025 wave has an overarching gaming theme that connects the various sets, but the attempt feels half-hearted.

With six LEGO DREAMZzz sets and a polybag on the way in January, the LEGO Group has included gaming references in most of the builds. This overarching theme appears in the typically varied assortment of builds in the wave, ranging from a rollerblading rabbit with 71490 Izzie and Bunchurro the Gaming Bunny to a jet with 71489 Cooper’s Gaming Controller Jet.

However, in most cases, the attempt feels half-hearted at best. The two smallest sets, 71487 Z-Blob’s Robot and Vehicle Adventures and 71488 Bunchu’s Creative Animal Adventures, don't include any gaming references at all, sticking to the tried-and-tested DREAMZzz formula of colourful creatures and interactive mechs. Both are perfectly fine and make for engaging builds for their price tag of £8.99 / $9.99 / €9.99 – but they're nothing to write home about.

Unfortunately, what we do have to write home about for the larger sets is not quite as positive. 71489 Cooper’s Gaming Controller Jet, 71490 Izzie and Bunchurro the Gaming Bunny, and 71491 Mateo and the Z-Blob Action Race Car feature a number of very similar stickers, all designed for circular plates, that depict slight variations on gaming controls.

The differences largely come down to colour schemes, with each sticker geared towards the palette of the individual sets. Different versions of joysticks and D-pads don't smack of the same creativity we've come to know and love from LEGO DREAMZzz – and we can't help feeling that a gaming-themed DREAMZzz wave could have been so much more.

A few unique prints could have turned the tide

It's easy to criticise stickers – no builder loves them – but in the case of the LEGO DREAMZzz gaming-themed sets, just a couple of unique printed elements could have made all the difference. If we're dreaming big, a new mould in the shape of a D-pad would have been a quirky but endlessly reusable part that would have suited all of the DREAMZzz sets.

A ball-jointed joystick would have gone a lot further than the two-dimensional sticker. Most of the January sets include stud shooters and other interactive play features, but few of them have anything to do with gaming, despite that being the interconnecting theme of the wave. A movable joystick would have encouraged engaging with the controller-shaped sets like you would a real one, which is surely the goal of a brick-built controller.

As it stands, there's little motivation or reason to pick up or handle 71489 Cooper’s Gaming Controller Jet or 71491 Mateo and the Z-Blob Action Race Car like the controllers they're shaped like – so why bother in the first place?

Dare we say... an app?

There's one option that it's hard to look past, although you can definitely see why the LEGO Group might not have gone for it. An app would have been a straightforward way to connect the sets directly to gaming, but the LEGO Group's turbulent history with apps – hello, VIDIYO – has probably scared off both designers and builders in equal measure.

Still, if the physical sets delivered on the colour and detail LEGO DREAMZzz is known for, having ways for them to interact with an app would have been a more impressive connection than simple stickers. Each one has different builds and poses available, so perhaps those could be experimented with further on an app. It's much easier to offer more variety and options digitally because there's virtually no limit to the number of parts.

For example, the main appeal of 71497 Cooper’s Tiger Mech and Zero’s Hot Rod Car, the largest set in the upcoming wave, is how you can rebuild the different modular elements into different vehicles, robots, and animals. However, it falls down slightly in being tricky to see how the different sections fit together. An app could have been the perfect avenue to work in tandem with the main build, allowing you to plan out the different options and easily see what's possible with the sections you have.

The obvious answer lies in an unexpected place

The third and most logical improvement to the LEGO DREAMZzz wave lies in an unexpected place. Despite being a lowly polybag, 30698 Cooper’s Flying Controller Mini Build includes some of the most creative building styles. There might not be any new prints or moulds but it sidesteps the boring gaming stickers and instead creates a controller using actual bricks.

The D-pad feels so much more tactile when made from 1x1 plates and, although you can't actually move the joystick, the 3D nature of stacking plates and studs makes it far more tangible than a 2D sticker.

If more of these creative techniques were present throughout the rest of the sets, the gaming connections would have been far more impressive. Instead, the stickers end up feeling like an afterthought. Arguably, you could add them to any LEGO DREAMZzz sets and have the same effect, with the inter-set gaming theme having little real impact on the set's shape or design.

All in all, the LEGO DREAMZzz January wave is just as good as any that came before when it comes to play possibilities and creativity – but its focus on gaming is so lacking that it would have been better to leave it out altogether.

These sets were provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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