I was just a kid when I first saw Wicked live. The idea of going to a theater and watching a musical didn’t seem that appealing to me at first. I’d grown up watching animated Disney movies and I just didn’t think real live people would be able to capture the same sort of magic that I’d seen on the screen. I was obviously very wrong and was absolutely blown away by what I saw. The power and emotion behind each song and performance really stuck with me, and everything I thought I knew about The Wizard of Oz was shattered that day. Since that first musical experience, I’ve found myself going to the theater at least once a year to catch a Broadway show, and it’s largely thanks to Wicked.
Now as an adult, I was surprised once again how the film adaptation was able to rekindle that feeling of awe I first got from the musical. Wicked: Part 1 brought that show to life in a way stage props never could and left me wanting more. I was even pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed Arianna Grande’s performance as Glinda. With Wicked: For Good hitting theaters this November, I’m excited to get another dose of that same childhood magic once again. And thanks to the latest LEGO collaboration, I got a chance to dive into the franchise even earlier in a way I didn’t expect.
Wicked: Glinda & Elphaba Bookends
3
The Glinda & Elphaba Book Ends are full of little details that made the building experience fun the whole way through. LEGO provided IGN with a copy of the set for a test build and I signed up to take on this challenge right away. Although it doesn’t look like a very big set, these bookends are made up of 1,327 total pieces and took me the better part of an afternoon to put together. Similar to the book nook sets that LEGO released earlier this year, the end result is a work of art that brings a touch of the franchise to your shelf. It’s both functional and fun, but just difficult enough that the set is targeted specifically at adult builders.
While the end result of this build may not look like it’s made up of more than 1,300 pieces, you’ll understand why once you start building and see all of the tiny parts included. The box contains 12 bags of LEGO, a set of stickers, and two instruction manuals, one for each bookend. So you’ve basically got two separate LEGO sets you’re building here that will only come together at the end when you set it up on your bookshelf. You can choose to start with the Glinda set first or jump to Elphaba, but the numbering on the bags has you start with Glinda so that’s what I did.
Right away you start by building the main foundation of a book. It wasn’t immediately clear to me which side was supposed to be up, as it’s a lot of pink, beige, and gray blocks to start. Despite not getting into any serious details, other than the Glinda figure, I thought this part of the build was surprisingly fun for what it is. What could have been just a series of long pieces you stack, was actually a nice variation in piece sizes and placements that meant I had to be thoughtful about what I was doing as I put it together.
The second major step of each bookend is where all of the fun little details start to come into play. You’re essentially building a little diorama that will sit on the inside of the book. This is meant to represent the theme of each character and is made up of a ton of little pieces. The Glinda version is a lavish entryway with a clock affixed at the very top. Some really interesting bricks go into the making of these, and being able to slot it into the book frame you made in the first step is immensely satisfying.
Before moving on to the flower vase and butterfly part of the build (which was my favorite part), you actually need to finish building out the main book itself. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable this part was, as you complete the scene’s frame on the inside of the book and add the finishing touches. Building and placing the spine on the back of the book gives off the feeling of actually binding the book yourself. The one thing I struggled with during this part of the build was placing the sticker right where I wanted, but if you have steady hands it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Then the final step of adding the golden letters on the outside of the book is just the cherry on top before the most interesting part begins.
At this point in the build you may think that you’ve almost completed a full bookend – but you still have a long way to go. While it’s true that you now have something functional that can hold up some books, you still have a lot of build left and it’s, in my opinion, the best part of the whole experience. You start this portion of the set by putting together the foundation of the flower vase and the stacked books. This part isn’t overly complicated, but the way it perfectly fits into elements you built in in the very first steps is really cool. It snaps right in place and you can start to see how the final pieces are going to connect.
Both the flower vase and butterfly felt like little builds on their own, which I found to be very enjoyable. LEGO has really mastered the art of turning plastic bricks into flowers and it’s not hard to see why an entire set of just flora would be a delight to put together. I was equally impressed at how the pieces of the butterfly came together. While some of the wing pieces were unique, the base of the actual butterfly is really just common bricks i’ve used in some previous builds. As final touches, I thought these elements were a great addition and help to justify some of the overall cost of the whole set.
At this point in the building process I took a break. Once you complete your first bookend, you’re about halfway through and I think it’s a natural stopping point. It took me a few hours to put this set together and if I hadn’t been determined to finish the whole thing in one day, I would have likely come back the next day to work on the Elphaba side of the set. If you have the time, I’d definitely suggest treating this like two completely separate sets and breaking it up into two different sessions. You’ll feel like you’re getting twice the fun and some of the monotony of going trough the same steps again will have washed away with time.
The basic framework for Elphaba’s book starts out exactly the same as Glinda’s but with green bricks instead of pink. It was still enjoyable, but I found myself just getting through the first couple of steps as fast as I could so I could start doing something different. It isn’t until the framework of the bookend is completely built that you start getting a bit of variety again.
I won’t go into too much detail about the Elphaba portion of this build other than to say I liked the aesthetics better. The dark greens and see-through bricks you place in the diorama portion of the build are more my style and just seem inherently magical. I couldn’t help but feel like there needed to be some sort of lighting incorporated here to fully show off the glass-like look, but even without that it still looks awesome.
The back platform of the Elphaba bookend may not have a flower and a butterfly, but there are a couple of really nice surprises waiting there for you. The first is that you aren’t building multiple stacked books – you’re building one really big one. It’s larger version of the Grimmerie that the minifigure of Elphaba is holding and it actually includes a neat little nook within where you can hide something. There’s a hinge on the back of the book that allows you to open and close it, so I had a bit of fun and tossed the Wizard of Oz minigifure in here. I have a feeling Jeff Goldblum would approve of his character’s placement there.
The tall green bottle that’s incorporated here is also really neat to put together. A lot of pieces go into building it that take full advantage of its see-through nature. Though there were also quite a few tiny bricks I had to deal with at this stage that my shaky fingers struggled with a little bit. The finishing touch here in place of a butterfly is a dark blue flower that has petals you can adjust to your liking.
The end result of this build is two really cool bookends that can actually stop books from succumbing to the inevitable pull of gravity. With the diorama portion of each tucked away on the inside I really appreciated how well this could fit on a shelf without completely overshadowing the very books its holding up. At a glance it just looks like a cool set of bookends and you can’t even see the minifigures until you move some books out of the way. You can also choose to have the diorama side of each bookend face forward so it functions like a traditional book nook.
This set is fairly expensive if you’re looking at it as just a pair of bookends. Though at $129.99 it is perfectly aligned with LEGO pricing on similar book nook sets that actually include fewer pieces. If you’re looking at this as a cool LEGO set instead, I think the price starts to seem more reasonable. It has almost as many pieces the recent Medieval Castle set I built and actually costs a bit less. Considering this is a LEGO set based on an existing franchise, I’m actually surprised it isn’t more expensive than it is.
As a fan of Wicked and LEGO, this is an easy set for me to recommend. Unlike the previous round of Wicked sets, this is clearly meant as an adult build and it certainly felt that way all the way through. And being able to use the end result as a functional set of bookends is a major bonus. You can listen to the entire Wicked soundtrack as you piece this thing together and then add it to your shelf to appreciate for years to come. While I don’t own a copy of the book Wicked is based off of, I am currently using these bookends to hold my copies of the Lord of the Rings books because it just felt right. If you’re looking for a good gift for readers who also happen to be fans of Wicked, I think this set is absolutely worth considering.
Jacob Kienlen is a Senior SEO Strategist and Writer for IGN. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he has considered the Northwest his home for his entire life. With a bachelor’s degree in communication and over 8 years of professional writing experience, his expertise is spread across a variety of different topics — from TV series to indie games and popular book series.
