The plastic brick version of this factory is part of the LEGO Ideas collection – sets that were originally designed by and then voted on by fans. Get enough votes, and your set may become LEGO official. The final set typically ends up with tweaks and changes from the original design, but keeps its heart and central features. This build actually went through quite a few changes before becoming an official set, but keeps the central feature of a chocolate waterfall feeding into a delicious-looking river.
As we’re seeing more and more often, the set is marked as 18+, with the number of pieces and level of detail geared toward adults. That said, I think anyone who’s old enough to avoid trying to eat the candy-like pieces would enjoy it. I'd just recommend a big table or solid organization system; some of these pieces are tiny.
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory comes in 16 bags that contain a whopping total of 2,025 pieces, including nine minifigures. You get one massive instruction booklet as well as a small sticker sheet. While larger LEGO sets occasionally go for a more “co-op friendly” building experience, this factory is about as chaotic to work through as it is to look at. You’re bouncing between layers, adding details and decorations on the fly as you build up three main areas: the candy gardens, the chocolate waterfall, and the “factory” itself.
Before working on any of those structures, however, the very first step of the build is putting together your Charlie minifigure and handing him a golden ticket. These golden tickets (you get five total) are printed onto small bricks, no stickers required. While it doesn’t make a lot of sense to start here in the build from a structural perspective – you have nowhere to put him yet – it does create a narrative. You begin the story as Charlie, who just got his ticket to go see an eccentric chocolatier's mysterious factory.
You then start building the base of the structure, which I found to be the most arduous part of the set. For several bags (and hours), you work on a base that just keeps getting wider and wider. Per LEGO tradition, there is a mix of colors underneath the green platforms, but the big trend of this build is, naturally, a ridiculous amount of brown.
Eventually you have a chocolate river separated by two green platforms, as well as a pillar to support eventual waterfall. Just when you start to realize what you’ve been working on this whole time, you’re promptly swept away to an entirely new section: the factory.
An element I did not expect in the build based on the original promotional images was the amount of detailing on the back side of the factory. Two small cutouts you can only see from this angle are hints at the “interior” of the factory. This is where most of the sticker sheet comes into play, creating details like the mysterious contract the children are forced to sign, the TV screen Mike gets shrunk into, and the fruit banners you can “taste” in the movie (I did not try the LEGO version).
While you work on these bigger structures, you’ll be placing smaller decorations across the build. This helps break up the monotony of placing big brown blocks on top of each other and also leaves a bit of mystery around what exactly you’re building at any particular time. You discover the factory as Charlie, of course, with little idea of what to expect.
On the factory’s tiered front side, you’re building essentially the setting of the original Oompa Loompa song, complete with a pack of cane sugar and a pipe system you can imagine feeds milk into the river. Interestingly enough, the two Oompa Loompa minifigures are the only ones without leg hinges. This does make them shorter than the rest of the minifigs, but I found myself feeling sad that they couldn’t dance.
Then you begin work on the primary feature of the original build – the chocolate waterfall. You use a sequence of technic pieces to create a railway of sorts, then layer the “chocolate” brown pieces on top. This technic waterfall then connects to itself on top of a small small cog system hidden inside the build, creating a conveyer belt. Spin the gumdrop wheel and the waterfall “turns,” giving the illusion of an endless supply of falling chocolate.
You promptly build a curved cover to hide the top of the mechanism. However, to give the “conveyer” enough room for movement, you unfortunately do have to deal with a slightly annoying amount of space between said cover and the waterfall. This creates an awkward section where you can see the technic pieces LEGO is usually so good at hiding in their builds. The gap doesn’t seem like something LEGO is trying to hide – its apparent on the box itself – but it does lend to “posing” the set at certain angles.
Once the waterfall is complete, you move to the other side of the build to whip up the bridge that connects the gardens to the factory, effectively completing the “background.” Then you can start on another centerpiece of the build entirely unique to LEGO’s final version: the Wonkatania.
This sizable row boat is the cornerstone of one of the trippiest movie scenes I’ve ever seen. The building experience isn’t quite as terrifying; LEGO forgoes its colorful traditions to instead give you the illusion that the boat itself is made of chocolate, building a shell of brown bricks you then cover in blue and white detailing. The rest of your stickers are used to create gold decals and the classic “W” on the ship’s front.
One of the final steps, unsurprisingly, is creating your Willy Wonka minifigure. This is one of the most detailed minifigs I’ve seen, with his patterned purple suit, his off-center top hat, and even a cane you can fit in his hand.
By the end of the set, you’ll have nine minifigures total: Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Mike Teevee, two Oompa Loompas, and Wonka himself. Each minifigure has two expressions, generally one smile and one serious look, but some have unique expressions to their character. Augustus Gloop has one expression where his face is covered in chocolate, alluding to his fate in your glorious waterfall.
From this point on, you essentially become an eccentric decorator, building mushroom flowers, gumdrop bushes, and candy cane trees to fill your gardens. Even the smallest of these decorations is a pointed reference to the original movie, including the teacups you delicately place inside some of your flowers.
Plenty of these decorations are also built on hinges, allowing you to rotate them on a single axis. While building, I couldn’t help but imagine a really cool LEGO stop-motion movie using this set to depict some of the musical sequences from the film.
A set this big also comes with a hefty amount of extra pieces. Each of the 16 bags came with well over a dozen extras, mostly the smaller pieces you might lose track of while building. However, these colorful pieces are also fun to try and find spaces for across the factory’s gardens. Nothing looks out of place in a set this whimsical.
And that is certainly the word I’d use to describe this build as a whole. The looming dangers of the factory are there for those with the knowledge to recognize them, like the image of Mike trapped in the TV screen. However, at a glance, this is a magical place, filled with colorful details and a million things it looks like you could eat.
LEGO’s takes on movie franchises typically try to capture a specific setting or scene, like our recent build of The Shire from The Lord of the Rings. But the original Roald Dahl story and Willy Wonka movie are all about the setting; it’s in the title! As such, the LEGO adaptation manages to pack what feels like an entire movie into both the building experience and end result.
While it may be a bit of a pain in the butt to build by yourself (I don’t know how you’d split up any of the work), figuring out what you’re building as you go becomes a process of mysteries and reveals that feels like you, yourself, are taking a tour through this wonky place.
LEGO Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Set #21360, retails for $219.99, and includes 2025 pieces. That’s a hefty price, but stacks up to a relatively standard 10 cents per brick. I spent about 10 hours total on the build, split over the course of several days, and am now very pleased with the burst of color sitting on my shelf.
You can get the set yourself at the LEGO Store. LEGO Insiders can also enter a "Golden Ticket" sweepstakes to win the Willy Wonka set and a $1,000 LEGO gift card.
Blythe (she/her) is an SEO Coordinator at IGN who spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.
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