Sailing in to cap off the year for the LEGO Group is a fine addition to the LEGO for Adults collection, LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance.
Recreating an icon of adventure from over 100 years ago, LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance embraces every detail and facet to the ship that famously sailed explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men for the Antarctic before becoming trapped in ice and ultimately sinking. All the crew survived and were eventually rescued whilst the ship itself lay undiscovered on the sea bed for almost 107 years before being found in 2022 ‘in a brilliant state of preservation’.
The story behind the real-life ship is fascinating and goes a long way to explaining why we are ending 2024 with a sizeable recreation of it as a LEGO Icons set in the form of 10335 The Endurance.
Release: November 29, 2024 Price: £229.99 / $269.99 / €269.99 Pieces: 3,011 Minifigures: 0 LEGO:
You won’t need a bigger boat
Indeed, size is most apparent with LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance once you open the box and count out the 28 sets of numbered bags and get a look at the incredibly thick 424-page instruction book. For what the box art may convey, expect a bigger boat and a longer build experience than initial indications may suggest. And this is no bad thing. 10335 The Endurance comes in at a hefty 80cm long and 47cm tall for a model that fully explores its subject material to a level of detail anyone interested in this ship will certainly enjoy.
The build experience is a little slow in places and may frustrate in the moments you have to repeat large mirrored sections of the hull in particular, but these are also the moments in which you can begin to fully understand the engineering that goes into such a vessel and also see the makings of what has been cleverly worked into the LEGO version here.
Importantly, whilst 10335 The Endurance is a larger-than-expected LEGO set, it is nowhere near as cumbersome or impractical to display as the most obvious comparison to be made – 10294 Titanic. Indeed, 10335 The Endurance feels like a perfectly-sized model that conveys the scale of the real-life ship without demanding you redesign your living room to find space for it. The result is a set with lots to appreciate and enjoy can also be appreciated and enjoyed once complete (don’t worry, 10294 Titanic, we still love you, but you are now second place in our list of LEGO sets based on British shipwrecks of the 1910s).
Hands-on, hands off
We began the review focusing on size because from a practical standpoint, LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance is a display model. It ticks the main box in striking that balance between being impressively sized and not overly so that it can’t competently sit on an average shelf (or larger desk). Beyond being an impressive model for show, there are some hands-on aspects built into it, including functions such as working helm and rudder and… that’s it. This is a LEGO set that sails very close to the hands-off approach of a typical model ship – the sails are set just so, the lifeboats are held in place with some clever techniques, and some easier-than-expected mooring across the masts and everything across the decking is placed deliberately and locked in.
Don’t worry, though – there is a little more hands-on interactivity to this set thanks to removable portions of the decking at the back that reveal a look inside a couple of rooms of the living quarters and then into a deeper section with the engine room. Beyond being able to build the whole thing from a collection of bricks, it is this cross-sectional exploration of 10335 The Endurance that helps set it aside from the plethora of model ships out there and honestly it’s a shame the set only has these two areas to explore, because of how nicely they are done and for some expert details that are worked in at this smaller scale.
The option to remove a panel from, say, the hull to reveal the structure of the ship’s underside and perhaps working into the cross section more of the rooms and make-up that are housed within such a large ship could have been a fascinating feature to add real depth to the model and further cement the LEGO experience around this set, versus steering too heavily into the locked-in display piece.
As it is, what we have is still very nice, particularly for how it is skilfully achieved in a way that the removable portions of the decking are not obvious and otherwise blend in with the rest of the set. This aspect is one of the set’s strongest features both in build and final model.
Icely done
If there’s one thing missing from LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance, it’s some ice. The Endurance was purpose built for polar conditions and met its end in the ice sheets of the Antarctic, but that was only the halfway point in the story for its crew, who for the next year or so under Shackleton’s leadership survived in freezing conditions before taking to the lifeboats to row across vast ocean in search of rescue. The ice didn’t take the lives of any of the men on the expedition, played a significant part in a remarkable story and would have served as a nice and wholly valid story detail for the set had it been built into the display stand around the bottom of 10335 The Endurance.
Otherwise, as mentioned, LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance is primarily a LEGO set designed for display, created to pay homage to one of the most iconic ships from the past century, and more so to mark over 100 years since one of the most remarkable stories of adventure and survival. Beyond the small point about ice, what is delivered here is an authentic, deep study across 3,011 pieces – a display piece has to live up to higher scrutiny in the details and accuracy and 10335 The Endurance absolutely does, capturing a lot of the essence of the real-life ship in a way that can give history buffs and novices alike much appreciation and understanding of what went into the creation of this ship.
As is to be expected with a LEGO Icons set, there is excellent LEGO piece knowledge on the part of the design team, utilised to create everything you would expect to build here and sometimes in unexpected ways, and ultimately in a way that all comes together so that your eyes immediately and effortlessly accept it for what it intends to be.
And as simplistic as it may sound, the sails are where the set really shines and goes furthest in achieving that. Made from the harder fabric that will last longer, there are 10 in total across the model (plus the Red Ensign with British flag), either connected to Technic joints along the masts, or threaded through the mooring that is made up of two lines of string (pleasingly, no knots required). The sails really do impress and add a lot of extra size and life to the ship.
Knowing the story is knowing the significance of The Endurance and truly appreciating what it means to be able to build it out of LEGO. For those coming to this unaware of everything remarkable that happened then there’s still a satisfying and in-depth LEGO ship to put together. For those who can understand the story behind the ship, the LEGO set is a fitting and even more enjoyable tribute.
Our honest opinion: The Endurance is a worthy addition to this niche collection of display-based big builds, matching an incredible story with a detailed and wholly authentic model.
This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
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