When the LEGO Ideas Voltron (21311) was first announced that would become an official set, my inner adult child was filled with joy. Some of you may know that I’m a huge fan of the show but I have pretty much collected a number of Voltron toys and to have this set in my hands is something I’ve never dreamed would have happened. For the background of the Voltron project on LEGO Ideas, Leandro Tayag was the fan designer and it only took him just three weeks to hit 10,000 supporters. As for the details of the set itself, it has 2,321 pieces and retails for $179.99 and will be available starting on July 23 for VIP members or August 1 for the general public.

Box

The box is pretty decent size and the colors of it is very distinct to the original 1984 series down to the Voltron logo. The front of the box shows a product detail of Voltron while the back shows the five lions combining into robot mode.

Bags

There are a total of 16 numbered bags and they are separated into a few bags per Lion, three for the Yellow and Blue Lions, two each for the Red and Green Lions, while the Black Lion gets five, and the last bag for the Blazing Sword and the Spinning Laser Blade.

Instructions

There are six instruction booklets that are neatly packaged together along with the small sticker sheet for the Lions’ numbers. Each Lion gets their own booklet and the sword and shield are together in one. Also in the last booklet, it shows you how to transform the Lions and combine them into Voltron.

In addition to the last part of the Voltron build, there’s also some background details of Voltron itself. In the beginning of the book, it shows you the story of Voltron – Defender of the Universe as well as the biographies for each of the pilots and supporting characters. There’s also a biography for the fan designer, Leandro “Lendy” Tayag, and how the project became an official set. I do like how LEGO showed off the different iterations of Voltron before settling for the one that we have now.

Build

We start off with the Yellow Lion and it’s pretty straight-forward. It uses a combination of your usual bricks alongside Technic pins for the frame of the body. Scattered out in certain points on the body are some clips that are strategically placed for future use when combining the lions. On top of the back, there is a #5 sticker on top of plasma cannon that uses a barrel piece.

After building the body, there’s also another section for the head and neck itself. I will say that the head is very nicely constructed with an articulated mouth. At the bottom of the neck/body area, it uses a rubber wheel which is used for stability when in robot mode.

The head and body sections are connected with a long Technic axle which is neatly covered up with the front legs. The legs themseleves are freely moveable but not ratcheted. The front section can fold at the neck area to form the foot.

The Blue Lion is next and the build for it is similar to the Yellow Lion with some slight differences. The head has some changes to the area above the eyes and on the side of the face. There is no mouth cannon that the original Blue Lion had. The back is simple and right in the middle is the #4 sticker.

The Black Lion is next and it contains the most pieces out of all the five Lions. The build starts off at the waist area and it has some 1×2 bricks with pins to connect the legs to. The body uses some 1×2 bricks with vertical shaft to attach the arm sections to. This allows the arm sections to attach to it and the end of the two sections have a gear mechanism that will be part of the transformation into Voltron later on. The back of the has some axles for the foldable wings to attach to it.

The legs are probably the my least favorite part of the Black Lion. They’re basically some blocky sections that are angled ever so slightly so Voltron won’t be so rigid when standing upright. It uses some 1×4 bricks with holes so it attaches to the body.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Black Lion head is my favorite part. The top of the head uses a printed shield and a metallic 1×2 tile at the nose for detailing. The face portion of the is a separate section and it simply clips on to the bar. I’ll show this off more during the transformation.

Next up is the Red Lion which is a bit smaller than the Yellow and Blue Lions. The front part of the body is simply constructed with some smaller ball joints for the front legs and larger ball joints to connect to the head and rear body. On the back, there’s a #2 sticker that goes near the neck.

The head has a similar look to the other Lions but this one has a couple of 1×2 plates with pin holes to hold the sword after the Voltron transformation.

Finally, we have the Green Lion which has a more rounded body to the Red Lion’s rectangular body however the frame of it is pretty much the same as before with the ball joints to connect the two sections of the body and the head. There is also a #3 sticker that goes on the back.

The sixth instruction booklet is used to build the Spinning Laser Blade and Blazing Sword. It also shows you how to combine all the Lions to form Voltron.

The Spinning Laser Blade starts off with a couple 4×8 1/2 circle plates with clips surrounding it. To keep them in place, there are some metallic silver 1/4 circle tiles that really pops. I really like the use of the metallic 4x5x1 cockpit pieces along with some metallic triangle sign pieces.

As for the Blazing Sword, it’s straight-forward with various plates and decorated with more metallic tiles. The handle is a bit more intricate as it uses some fender pieces and another cockpit piece attached to some clips.

Transformation

Now the moment that we’ve been waiting for, the transformation to Voltron. For the Yellow and Blue Lions, you unhinge the neck areas and turn it until you have a 90 degree angle and hear a click. The front legs fold in to give it more stability while the hind legs are tucked away.

For the Black Lion, the wings fold outwards into a “V” shape. The hind legs are taken off and turned straight. I left it like that for a while because I liked the look of a standing midget Black Lion. The front leg sections also detach and reattached 180 degrees so the red lines up with the chest armor. With that, you attach the Black Lion to the Yellow and Blue Lions using the clips.

For the Red and Green Lions the front and hind legs are tucked in and simply attach to the arms using the pins. Lastly, as Commander Keith says, you form the head by flipping down both the Voltron face and the Black Lion head as well.

For the Blazing Sword and the Spinning Laser Blade, you just attach the pins to the Red and Green Lions.

Results

As a long-time Voltron fan, I was actually shocked and excited at the same time when LEGO announced that the project was chosen as a winner. Simply put, the LEGO Ideas Voltron (21311) is the best and funnest LEGO Ideas set I’ve built. It took me about 6 hours total to complete it and I could’ve done it faster if I wasn’t gushing over the little details. The look of Voltron as a whole is spot-on and the transformation is unique and satisfying but the Lions themselves separate are also great looking.

As much as I liked the set, there’s also some little things that kind of bugged me about it. The exposed pins at the rear of the Red and Green Lions are unsightly but I guess there wasn’t any other way to hide them without making it bigger which in turn make everything else unproportional.

Poseability is somewhat negligible because of the weight of the sword. Even with the gears holding the upper part of the arm up, the forearm is loose due to the ball joints so it plops down.

I also didn’t like the stickers ever though there were only five for the Lions however the printed 2×2 round tiles on the sides of the legs made up for it. Another thing that I wish LEGO would have done was give the legs and knees some articulation but I understand why they decided to make them static.

Lastly, I wish the Lions had their unique weapons. Minifigures of the Lion pilots would also be nice to have but all of that would probably have pushed the set close to or past the $200 price point.

Below are some comparison pictures of the LEGO Ideas Voltron to my other Voltron collectibles like the various Playmates Voltron toys, my 20th Anniversary Voltron Lion Force Collectors Set, some Funko Voltron, as well as a custom minifigure.. Comparing the size of this set to my larger ones, it looks to be about the same size as the Playmates ones.

All in all, I will definitely recommend picking it up when it becomes available starting on July 23 for VIPs as I feel it will sell out very quickly. For the general public it will be available on August 1 and it’ll most likely sell out and go on backorder status. I’ll probably be picking up two more sets, one to display just the Lions and one to keep sealed.

Thank you to LEGO for sending in this set for me to review. The content above represents my own opinion and not the company. Review sets sent in does not guarantee a positive review.