It’s no longer the case that you’re expected to grow out of your childhood toys with brands like LEGO happy to create sets for adults themed around top pop culture characters. Here’s some recent favourites along with mini Nanoblocks and other block puzzles.

Let’s start with LEGO (global) and their incredible Super Mario collection, which is all currently on promotion for MAR10 aka Mario Day. The sets are all amazing with everything from mini characters to giant Bowsers, plus lots of interactive sets. This detailed SNES is my personal favourite.

There’s plenty more at LEGO too including a new BTS Dynamite set! The smaller Brickheadz series is a lot of fun too with characters from Star Wars, Disney & Pixar to build, plus animals like cats, dogs and pandas.

I’m a huge fan of Japan’s Nanoblock brand, though the larger sets can be very fiddly to build. It’s best to start small and they have a cute range of blind boxes themed around kawaii & anime characters that includes Pokemon, Miffy, Kirby, Sanrio, Rilakkuma, Snoopy and so much more. You can find them at online stockists worldwide including Nanoblock Australia (AU), Bandai (US), Plaza Japan (JP) and Amazon (UK).

If you can’t afford the top brands, but still want a challenge, there’s other smaller brands that have some cool city skyline sets on Amazon (UK/US). I’d have to go for Tokyo of course but there’s also London, New York and more.

I’m so happy to see Momiji (global) have expanded their mini brick sets as they’re all so adorable! There’s 3 new dolls available now, plus more dolls and food animals up for preorder. They’re all really affordable too so I need to pick one up soon.

And if they all look a bit too complicated, you might like the 3D crystal puzzles from brands like Beverly, available from Plaza Japan (JP). None have more than 100 pieces and there’s lots of cute characters from San-X, Studio Ghibli, Pokemon and more.
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