First Look: Nintendo's Animal Crossing Gets the Lego Treatment

By Kate Irwin

Nintendo’s Animal Crossing game franchise is getting the Lego treatment, with five sets scheduled to release in March next year.

Isabelle, Tom Nook, and Fauna are among the game’s bipedal animal characters who will be turned into Lego minifigures, according to tweets from Nintendo and Lego’s official website.

The quirky turtle Kapp’n will also be offered in Lego form, as will the unicorn Julian, the rabbit Bunnie, Rosie the purple cat, and the smug squirrel Marshal, according to the Lego site.

Each of the five sets ranges in size and price, with sets like “Julian’s Birthday Party” ($15) and “Bunnie’s Outdoor Activities” ($20) being on the lower end of the price spectrum, with one character each and a smaller number of pieces. 

“Kapp’s Island Boat Tour” ($30) and “Isabelle’s House Visit” ($40) have two characters each, with larger objects and more pieces. Lastly, “Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House” ($75) offers two characters, two buildings, and some garden space to play in.

The "Isabelle's House Visit" Lego Animal Crossing set. Image: Lego

Notably, none of the Lego Animal Crossing sets feature a human character, whom gamers must play in all of the series’ iterations. 

Animal Crossing is one of Nintendo’s top-selling game franchises, first releasing for the Nintendo 64 console back in 2001 in Japan, but first reaching the U.S. in 2002 on the GameCube. It’s since become a pop culture phenomenon, even inspiring rap songs from artists like T-Pain about the series’ cute yet infamous vendor, Tom Nook.

Five Animal Crossing games have been released in total, with the most recent being Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which launched in March of 2020 around the beginning of the pandemic. New Horizons alone has since sold over 42 million copies.

Nintendo and Lego previously teamed up for a line of Super Mario-themed sets that featured digitally-enhanced Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach characters that could react to certain Lego pieces via built-in screens and speakers. Lego also released a hyper-detailed recreation of the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and a Super Mario 64-themed set.

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