{"id":623335,"date":"2026-06-05T21:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623335\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:09:10","slug":"lego-shrek-donkey-and-puss-in-boots-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623335\/","title":{"rendered":"LEGO Shrek, Donkey, and Puss in Boots Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t really explain to you why I was so excited about LEGO announcing a Shrek-themed set<\/a>. It\u2019s certainly not the prettiest set in the world, but I grew up with the irreverent ogre. For better or worse, the DreamWorks movies defined my sense of humor and, for a little while, my music taste. I guess building a plastic brick version of these iconic characters appealed to me as an homage to this impact. To be honest, it was also entertaining to tell people I was \u201cbusy building Shrek.\u201d <\/p>\n

We Build LEGO Shrek\"\"<\/p>\n

LEGO Shrek, Donkey, & Puss in Boots retails for $129.99 and includes an impressive 1,403 pieces. It took me a couple of days to build, or, more specifically, the length of the first three Shrek movies<\/a> I did in fact watch in the background. Shrek-maxxing, if you will. It\u2019s marked as an 18+ set intended for adults<\/a>, and I\u2019ll admit it was one of the more challenging builds I\u2019ve done in terms of small and finicky details. <\/p>\n

The building process starts you off with the Puss in Boots minifigure. I\u2019ll get my somewhat complicated feelings about this one out of the way sooner rather than later. Puss in Boots is one of those iconic characters you may have forgotten wasn\u2019t even in the first Shrek. Despite the frame of all three characters from Shrek 2 on the front of the box, the rest of the set, as we\u2019ll get into, is clearly designed around that first movie. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’m glad he’s here, but I wish he was bigger.<\/p>\n

As such, the addition of Puss in Boots as a somewhat separate minifig feels a bit \u2018tacked on.\u2019 I\u2019m jumping ahead of myself a bit here, but this feeling is compounded by the fact that he is so much smaller than Shrek and Donkey. LEGO definitely knows he\u2019s a particularly popular character (let\u2019s be honest, The Last Wish was amazing<\/a>), and accurately assumed including him would attract his own level of interest in the set. Part of me just wishes he was a bigger part of it. <\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s still an awesome minifig. The only slight criticism I have is that the face doesn\u2019t feel entirely like Puss in Boots, but I acknowledge that\u2019s a hard thing to accomplish with any minifig. In this case, it\u2019s the accessories that make it work. Between his torso, leg, and head pieces, you\u2019ll place a plastic tail and a fabric cape. You also get separate pieces for his sword and hat.<\/p>\n

Once you have your minifig, find somewhere to keep him safe, because pretty much everything else in this set directly connects to each other. You build from the ground up, starting with a foundation made of grass and rocks with a little stream at the front. A small detail you place sooner rather than later is a frog in the swamp. Is this a reference to Fiona\u2019s dad? I don\u2019t see why not. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dad? Is that you?<\/p>\n

Once you have some semblance of a foundation to work from, you start building Donkey. Like most LEGO sets, the building process follows a general theme of \u2018colorful insides\u2019 that you layer the actual recognizable colors of the characters on top of. Most of Donkey is perfectly symmetrical, so you build each side of his legs and body in sequence. <\/p>\n

This next stage confused me until I realized part of what I was building wasn\u2019t just Donkey himself, but a rock foundation for his front legs to stand on. I had to fiddle with a bit with the surprisingly flexible black legs to get the positioning right, but there\u2019s plenty of space to make his pose look natural. Once you finish those front legs you can attach the body, and you have a slightly creepy headless Donkey. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The headless Donkey.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be too surprising then that the next stage of the build is Donkey\u2019s head. His lower jaw can open and close, revealing his massive teeth and a tongue, and his ears can also move from side to side. Most importantly, there\u2019s no stickers! There\u2019s actually not a single sticker across the entire build – all of the details are printed directly onto select pieces, saving you the hassle of painfully trying to line things up. <\/p>\n

Before you move on to the true ogre of the hour, you work on a couple of smaller details that directly reference the first film. <\/p>\n

You start with a duo of sunflowers. I appreciate that the flowers are angled upwards toward the \u2018sun,\u2019 and you place the stems into hinges you can mode from side to side. You also build an adorable little onion, which you can imagine has layers \u201cjust like an ogre.<\/a>\u201d The combination of these pieces reference a scene with Shrek and Donkey walking through a field after Lord Farquaad assigns them the quest to save Princess Fiona. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Onions are just like ogres.<\/p>\n

Then, you build a smaller blue flower with red thorns. Now, this one\u2019s a bit of a funky reference. In the movie, Fiona sends Donkey to get this blue and red flower as an excuse for some alone time with Shrek. Little does she know Donkey is color blind, so he never actually finds the flower. Nonetheless, the brick version of Donkey appears to have succeeded in his quest. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s small slots for each of these smaller details to sit attached toward the back of the build, but you can also pose them with any of the characters. <\/p>\n

Then we begin on the ogre of the hour. I was surprised to find it was actually a bit of a mystery what you\u2019re building at any given moment with Shrek. I only recognized this sequence after I completed it, but you start with the bottom of his tunic and a \u2018foundation\u2019 for his torso before you start working directly on the \u2018body.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The tedious tunic.<\/p>\n

One thing I noticed between both Shrek and Donkey is that the \u2018inside\u2019 of their bodies use predominantly red and pink bricks. This offers variety (and clarity) in usual LEGO tradition, but at times it makes the build feel slightly\u2026 graphic. I cannot say whether that\u2019s a good or bad thing, but I do think it was intentional. <\/p>\n

One of the most tedious tasks in the entire build is placing 22 one-slot round pieces in a perfectly symmetrical pattern, but I admit it does give Shrek\u2019s tunic a good-looking texture. Shrek\u2019s legs are actually on hinges that can spin in a circle, but ultimately lock into place on the set\u2019s foundation. <\/p>\n

Inside Shrek\u2019s gut, you\u2019ll place another onion, as well as an eyeball and waffle. The eyeball is likely a direct reference to one of Shrek\u2019s meals during the iconic \u2018All Star\u2019 montage<\/a>. I can only remember waffles being referenced as one of Donkey\u2019s favorite foods, but I\u2019ll admit it\u2019s not entirely unlike Shrek to have eaten it for himself. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A look inside an ogre’s stomach.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have too much to report about the process of building Shrek\u2019s face, but much like Donkey, his eyes and mouth are printed directly onto their respective pieces. His ears (is that the correct term?) can wiggle back and forth, and I\u2019ll give credit to how the set uses a variety of curved pieces to create accurate proportions for his nose and chin. <\/p>\n

The final step was actually building his arms and hands, and I’ll admit I never noticed until building this set that Shrek only has four fingers. On one of those hands, you attach a small grey piece that ends up connecting directly to an open spot on Donkey. <\/p>\n

Now, this might not matter too much, but the instructions tell you to put an armless Shrek into the foundation and then attach his arms. I repeatedly broke things when I tried to do this, so I ended up attaching the arms first. Tiny detail, I know, but the consequences for me were disastrous. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>No stickers!<\/p>\n

I finished things up with the \u2018Beware Ogre\u2019 sign (still no stickers!) and some smaller details around the foundation, which, despite referencing a couple of different scenes, delineates the vibe that you\u2019re in Shrek\u2019s swamp. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small clear piece used to have Puss sit on Shrek\u2019s shoulder like in the scene referenced on the front of the box. I couldn\u2019t figure out a way to make this look cute (and kept breaking other pieces in the meantime), so I believe my point about \u2018tacking on\u2019 Puss still stands. Still a great minifig! <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’m sorry I couldn’t pose you better Puss in Boots.<\/p>\n

What I do love about this set is that it feels like a real statue. Some recent LEGO sets, like the Animal Crossing sets<\/a> or The Nightmare Before Christmas build<\/a>, are more like a collection of separate small sets you have to manually piece together to display. While you can detach Shrek and Donkey, both of which have a decent amount of mobility in their head and limbs, they\u2019re fundamentally baked into the foundation in such a way that makes the set an easy display piece.<\/p>\n

Now, how will people react to me having a rather large version of Shrek and Donkey sitting in my living room as a decoration? I have to imagine it\u2019ll be a conversation starter at the very least. The reality is, unlike sets like the Botanical collection<\/a>, there\u2019s not much that\u2019s aesthetically appealing about the set outside of its connection to what I consider one of the best movie franchises. However, because I do love Shrek, I\u2019m very happy showing him off. Let\u2019s just hope Shrek 5<\/a> doesn\u2019t affect that sense of pride. <\/p>\n

\"LEGO<\/a><\/p>\n

LEGO Shrek, Donkey & Puss in Boots<\/p>\n

0<\/p>\n

Blythe (she\/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can\u2019t really explain to you why I was so excited about LEGO announcing a Shrek-themed set. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-623335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}