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Introduction
Is there any subject that catches the attention and fires the imagination quite like animals?
Humanity has had a very close relationship with animals from our earliest moments. Belief systems worldwide have venerated them from time immemorial.
Even today, we often look to animals for strength, comfort, and guidance. We festoon ourselves with their likeness to take part in their power. You don’t have to look far online to find someone talking about their “spirit animal” (although PLEASE don’t do that if you’re not a part of that belief system).
We fear animals. We domesticate animals. We love animals.
This is a list dedicated to when LEGO lavished a little love on our friends and neighbors in the animal kingdom.
Most LEGO animals I had growing up were minifig animals, with rare exceptions. Then LEGO played a really mean trick where it released the REALLY COOL animal sets after I had stopped playing with them. Fortunately, I had my own children, and I started buying sets for them and helping THEM build them.
Bottom Line Up Front: The Wild Animal Rescue Mission is my choice for the top slot of the Best LEGO Animal Sets. It has a couple of animal minifigs, and it honors animal control, which might just help inspire children to learn a little more about it. It’s also currently available in stores!
Criteria
LEGO has made a TON of sets that involve animals. So how am I gonna pick from them all? I’m gonna use about three rules to determine things this time around.
Biodiversity
The animal kingdom is wide and varied. It has a TON of room for creativity. If a set is more creative, I will give it its due! This also means that there will be NO mythological or made-up animals here. There are enough of those to get their own list! I really want to focus on real-world animals this time around. I’m also not gonna be listing any DUPLO sets this time around. I just never played with them, and neither did my children.
Respecting their Habitat
LEGO has made a TON of sets that USE animals. However, I want to give the sets focusing on the animals their due. If a LEGO set focuses more directly on the animals, it will get a better place.
Power
Animals are incredibly strong and resilient. Do you know what else is strong and resilient? Capitalism. If a LEGO set offers more value for your money, I will give it a better spot!
20.) All Kinds of Animals
- Year Released: 2001
- Pieces: 171
- Theme: Creator
- Minifigs: “2”
- Approximate Skill Level: Beginner
Although LEGO is appealing to people across all age groups, the company has often marketed differently to different groups. One of their most targeted demographics is tiny children.
While DUPLO is LEGO’s primary method to appeal to small children, they’ve also created several lines meant to serve as a bridge between DUPLO and LEGO. One of those was the first “Creator” line.
This set features enough bricks and instructions to build several varieties of dinosaurs and other animals. It also included the unusual varieties of minifigs that the Creator line used.
They were a little larger than the standard variety, with a little more detail, including legs that were more separated and slightly more articulated.
It’s not bad, but it’s useful as a baseline.
19.) Animals
- Year Released: 2004
- Pieces: 202
- Theme: Creator
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Beginner
This is another in the first Creator line. It’s another one that includes instructions to make many different animals from a big pile of ordinary bricks.
Animals are definitely the focus in this set, but it included enough pieces that could be used to make an entire zoo worth of them! As I recall, it had instructions to build small buildings in addition to the animals themselves. It did not, however, include instructions for enclosures for the animals (which is probably why it wasn’t branded as a zoo set).
A few of the many animals that could be made from this set included a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a monkey, an elephant, and many more. An interesting tidbit is that it had several of the two-by-one bricks inscribed with eyes. I loved these! It was such a simple idea that could be used for anything significant that needed close-set eyes.
18.) Mini-Animals
- Year Released: 2007
- Pieces: 77
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: None
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
Of course, things couldn’t just be simple. After the first Creator line was discontinued, they would reuse the name to refer to several new lines of LEGO releases.
Whereas the first was aimed at younger children, the second was meant to have a ton of “normal” bricks that could be used for any number of builds. This is the one that would eventually evolve and become aimed at much older children and teenagers.
By the time of this set, the line was intended to contain bricks and instructions that could be used to create larger or more complex builds. A common theme at the time was that they would also have instructions to build at least three different builds out of the available bricks.
This one contains many standard bricks that can be used cleverly to build a monkey, a turkey, and a fish.
17.) Park Animals
- Year Released: 2016
- Pieces: 202
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
This is another of the later Creator Line. By this point, most of the sets in the Creator line would include the 3-in-1 label, making it an excellent choice for children who prefer to take their designs apart.
There were only ever enough pieces to make one of the builds at a time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It ensures that builders have more to do with their bricks!
This one features a majority of very simple brown bricks that can be used to build a dog, a squirrel, a duck, and even some ducklings!
Although, the more I looked at this set, the more I couldn’t help but think I’d seen them somewhere. It wasn’t until a year later that I realized that, with how the dog and the duck are put together, this is basically a stealth Duck Hunt set!
16.) Amy’s Island Rescue
- Year Released: 2023
- Pieces: 388
- Theme: Sonic: The Hedgehog
- Minifigs: 2
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
I’m not a big fan of licensed sets.
Don’t get me wrong. They’re fantastic! It’s great to pick up a minifig that looks like your favorite character and just have them have adventures in your LEGO World!
The problem is with me. I’m old enough to remember when LEGO didn’t HAVE licensed sets. You had to build your own sets and do your best to make the minifigs resemble the characters. You even potentially had to break out markers or pens!
While I’m glad they exist, I think they feel a little “cheap.” LEGO is all about imagination; licensed sets just don’t tap into that like setting-agnostic ones do.
Still, this is a great little set. It’s not been released at the time of this writing. However, it looks like it’s going to be a fantastic set. There’s an Amy and a Tails minifig, as well as several animal “microfigs” and even a giant crab. I also love the idea of an animal rescue LEGO set. If there’d been one that wasn’t so fictionalized, it could have taken the top spot.
15.) Animal Play Pack
- Year Released: 2023
- Pieces: 486
- Theme: Product Collections
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
What could be better than enough LEGO to make at least three builds?
How about three times that?!
This set includes three previously released sets! It’s got a ton of standardized bricks that could be used in any number of builds and instructions for AT LEAST nine animals. I can hear you asking yourself why it’s so low on the list.
It’s because I’m not a big fan of the sets they chose for the collection. It can make a large number of very pastel and pastoral animals, including bunnies, dolphins, and ducks. It’s basically a stealth Easter set, and I honestly just find it really dull. That doesn’t make it BAD. It just means I think that there are better sets ahead.
14.) Barn Farm Animals
- Year Released: 2022
- Pieces: 230
- Theme: City (Farm)
- Minifigs: 4
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
This set doesn’t focus quite as heavily on the animals as some others, but it’s essential to cast a spotlight on farmers.
I grew up in rural Kansas. The thing about growing up there is that your first three field trips are basically to different farms in the area. Second, it’s constantly drilled into your head how important farmers are to the world’s people. Without farms, grocery stores wouldn’t have food. Or, it would have fewer options for food, driving up the price.
This set is pretty accurate for what it tries to represent. It’s got a barn, and a tractor, with a trailer. There are minifigs of both genders, and all the farmers are dressed in the right clothes. It also has the molded animal “minifigs” that I’m more used to. There are some chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, and even dogs!
13.) Forest Animals
- Year Released: 2014
- Pieces: 272
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
Words are funny sometimes. This is labeled as a set of “Forest animals.”
The animals included in this are a monkey, a bear, a large rodent, and a bonus animal, a toucan! I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen many toucans in the forest I’ve been in. That’s because most of the animals have tropical habitats.
All of that to say that I suppose a Rain Forest is still a type of forest, so it’s not technically “wrong.”
The animals included are made of ubiquitous bricks, mostly in shades of brown and beige. In fact, the “weirdest” pieces had this are the ones that make up the banana! I’m not sure why, but I find that profoundly amusing.
12.) Rainforest Animals
- Year Released: 2015
- Pieces: 215
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
This set broke my sense of trust!
I didn’t buy this one. I bought the one above because my children were really into monkeys and bears at the time. When I saw this set, I thought, “Oh, THAT’S why they called it “Forest Animals,” because there was already a Rainforest Animals set!”
Except there wasn’t. This came out AFTER the Forest Animals set. I am both deeply confused and unreasonably annoyed by this.
However, that doesn’t stop this from being a fantastic LEGO product. It’s better than the one above because it has just as many standard bricks but in many more colors. This set’s green, brown, red, and black bricks will help you make at least four animals, meaning that even the 3-in-1 label is a lie! Builders can put together a chameleon, a parrot, a fish, a frog, and even a fly!
It may lie about a lot, but at the very least, it gets the food chain right.
11.) Motion Madness
- Year Released: 2003
- Pieces: 243
- Theme: Creator (Inventor)
- Minifigs: 0
Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
With this one, we enter the phase where LEGO is transitioning between the different iterations of the Creator line.
This was the phase where they were still experimenting with different builds and figuring out how complex they wanted to make them. This one includes more functionality than other designs, though it’s not the most complex or functional they have ever released.
It’s got the standard LEGO bricks for most of the design of this (somewhat awkward) bird. It also includes the rods, tubes, and gears that are more common in other LEGO lines. The really cool thing is that after you built the bird, you would string up the included line and then attach it to the gear-slider system.
Then you’d give the bird a little shove, and if you’d built it right, the wheel would rotate the gears, and then the bird would flap its wings!
It was pretty simple, and if you weren’t careful, it was a mess waiting to happen, but it was still magical watching it flap for all it was worth.
10.) Spider
- Year Released: 2005
- Pieces: 32
- Theme: Creator (Designer Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Beginner
Full disclosure: I LOVE Spiders!
Mind you, I’m not the biggest fan of finding random ones crawling around. I just think they’re utterly fascinating! I have for long enough that my parents randomly got this for me, even though I had mostly stopped playing with LEGO.
(I was well into my teen years and the “age of not believing.”) I still put it together when no one was looking. I was impressed with the surprising amount of articulation it included.
Then I got annoyed.
You can likely see why if you’re familiar with arachnid biology. Spiders are arachnids. Arachnids have eight legs. This has six. It is, therefore, an insect!
Honestly, it worked out better because it meant I broke out my old LEGO collection and figured out how to make it have eight legs.
9.) Deep Sea Predators
- Year Released: 2004
- Pieces: 352
- Theme: Creator (Designer Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
This set is when they were still underwater with the transition between the two Creator lines. There was a tiny window of time when LEGO had a line called the “Designer” sets. They focused on more specific source materials using standardized bricks. LEGO eventually decided to merge the lines. That’s where the “Designer” subtheme comes from if you’re curious.
This set is incredibly cool!
Some other sets are content to include instructions for three or four animals. This one has no less than seven designs included!
Builders can assemble a Great White Shark, a pufferfish, an eel, a squid, a fish I can’t identify, a (small) whale, and even an anglerfish! If you ever wanted to experience the creepy wonder of the midnight zone without getting wet, this was a great alternative!
8.) Record and Play
- Year Released: 2003
- Pieces: 345
- Theme: Creator (Inventor Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
This is probably LEGO’s most advanced product in their Creator line. The inventor subtheme was dedicated to having additional functionalities, like sensors and motors.
This one included two specialized sensors. After you have built one of the three models (a chameleon, a praying mantis, or another insect), you could set it up in front of you.
The sensors would pay attention to anything that happened in front of the build. Then, the motors would play back that motion, causing the build to mimic you! It was amazingly cool to see, even if it was a little creepy. Whether or not you were the one that built it, a praying mantis imitating your movements is pretty distressing to see if you forget to turn it off.
7.) Wild Hunters
- Year Released: 2005
- Pieces: 630
- Theme: Creator (Designer Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
Did you think seven builds was a lot? Ha!
This one has EIGHT different build instructions in a vast range of colors.
Among the instructions included were a lion, an elephant, a wolf, a snake, a vulture, a warthog, something I could never identify, and even a crocodile! The animals in this set aren’t all perfect. (Seriously, I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a Tasmanian Devil, a baboon, or something else entirely).
Even if they’re flawed, the animals in this set are still incredibly high quality. They’ve all got an insane amount of articulation when everything is done. Special mention goes to the snake, which has pieces that allow almost any part of it to move independently!
6.) Wild Lion
- Year Released: 2021
- Pieces: 224
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
Entry number seven included many animals. However, they were sort of hit-and-miss. Some were amazing. Some were not.
This set “only” includes three builds that can be made from it; however, they ALL Look picture-perfect!
The first is the titular Lion, which stands proudly in yellow and brown, roaring for all the world to see. It protects what’s left of its dinner, represented by a little LEGO rack of ribs. It doesn’t seem to mind the tiny vulture you can build poking around nearby.
If you’re not a fan of the lion, don’t worry! You can also build a warthog! The Warthog is probably my favorite build in this set because it ends up with the sturdiest design and the most articulation.
If you disagree, you can go ahead and bury your head in the sand, just like the third build in the set. The Ostrich is probably my least favorite because it never seemed exceptionally sturdy when the kids were playing with it.
5.) Mighty Dinosaurs
- Year Released: 2017
- Pieces: 174
- Theme: Creator (3-in-1)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
If there IS one thing that can compete with animals for attention, it’s dinosaurs!
This build lets you make three of them!
The bricks in this set are almost all a uniform shade of bright green, except for a few beige and grey pieces.
The terrible lizard is our first build. A Tyrannosaurus that can stride across your LEGO kingdom. Or, if you don’t want a set that walks, you could make a pterodactyl! Its wings even have the ability to move up and down, flapping rather than soaring. However, my favorite from this set is definitely the triceratops!
I was a big fan of Power Rangers. It’s because of that show that the Triceratops is my favorite dinosaur. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but this set can make three of the five dinosaurs the original rangers used.
4.) Wild Collection
- Year Released: 2007
- Pieces: 492
- Theme: Creator (Designer Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
Okay. Eight builds seem like a lot, right?
Buckle up because this collection has the pieces to make sixty-three separate builds! This is one of the most extensive animal sets that LEGO ever released, and it’s incredibly versatile. I might have been able to write an entire list of my favorite designs from this set alone!
It lets you build crocodiles, dragonflies, stag beetles, chameleons, and so many more.
Except, I could care less about most of those. The design I most loved within this thing was the spider! It was life-size to a tarantula made of red and black bricks. The legs moved individually. It even had eight of them! In short, it was perfect, and it’s a large part of why this got so far on the list.
3.) Prehistoric Creatures
- Year Released: 2004
- Pieces: 726
- Theme: Creator (Designer Set)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
This “only” lets you make seven different dinosaurs. However, the amount of bricks means you can make some of them simultaneously!
The designs are also in line with the design ethos of having much more flexibility in the designs. Many dinosaurs have tails that can move up and down or side-to-side.
Among the primeval creatures you can make are the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Stegosaurus, the Triceratops, the Pterodactyl, a prehistoric scorpion, an aquatic beast, and a brachiosaurus! The brachiosaur is really where my attention was with this one. The way the neck is put together means that you can even have it turn to look at its own tail if you want!
2.) Animals Bundle
- Year Released: 2022
- Pieces: 852
- Theme: Creator (Product Collection)
- Minifigs: 0
- Approximate Skill Level: Advanced
If you’ve been paying attention, this set might have a few builds that look familiar.
That’s right! This one includes both entries number five and six! As such, I’m not going to focus too much on those parts. Instead, I will talk about the one I haven’t discussed.
The main animal in that set is the crocodile. This isn’t even the first crocodile on this list, but it is the most appealing. The way it’s built when finished gives it a bulky look common to them and makes it look like the surviving dinosaur that it is.
It also has the option to be taken apart and reassembled as a snake. This one can even open its mouth and close it if you want it to strike someone. The final build is pretty underwhelming. It’s a frog. It’s a very well-made frog, but it’s still just a frog.
If I had one complaint about this collection, it would be that its bricks are primarily green.
1.) Wild Animal Rescue Mission
- Year Released: 2022
- Pieces: 241
- Theme: City (Missions)
- Minifigs: 3
- Approximate Skill Level: Moderate
Oh, look! An animal rescue set that’s much more grounded in reality!
I’m not even the biggest animal lover in the world, but I will happily tell everyone around me how important the people who work in animal control and rescue are. They’re courageous people who get between hapless citizens and animals they weren’t expecting to see.
I spent some time living in New Orleans. Alligators kinda just… happened there. To the point that you would only really call someone if they were in your way or trapping you inside. If you’ve ever had that happen, you know exactly why this one is number one.
Animals stuck in the middle of human territory are usually confused, terrified, and ready to strike at anything that gets too close. Animal control does its best to get in there, get the animal out of the way, and hopefully ensure no one gets hurt.
That’s why this is my choice for number one. The animals aren’t the biggest, and in fact, they’re mostly just molded minifig animals, but this brings attention to people who help animals in real life. That means it easily clinches the top spot.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: What was the first Animal-themed LEGO set released?
Answer: This is a great question! Unfortunately, it’s REALLY difficult to answer. Early LEGO sets included animals in different capacities. The first one that lets you build an animal from the set is also difficult to find with any clarity.
Question: What’s your favorite Animal-themed LEGO set?
Answer: I would say the Wild Collection at number four! That Spider ended up being one of my favorite toys, and I still have it somewhere!
Question: Are there any currently available in retail stores?
Answer: Soooo Many! I know you can still find the Wild Lion, the Animals Bundle, the Animal Play Pack, the Barn Farm Animals, and the Wild Animal Rescue Mission, which are all currently available for purchase! Late this year, the Amy’s Island Rescue set is also scheduled for a release, so be on the lookout for that too!
Conclusion
As long as there are animals, there will be a massive interest in them. That means LEGO will continue making LEGO sets for as long as there are animals. These are twenty of my favorite sets that LEGO has ever created, and many are still available in stores!
So get out there, and go wild!