Review: 4000016 Billund Airport
Posted by Huw,
Last week when in Billund, I had the opportunity to purchase 4000016 Billund Airport which is available only in the LEGO shop in the departure lounge of the airport. Just 10,000 have been made. I've no idea how many have been sold already but there was a healthy size stack of them in the shop when I was there.
To help make them last longer and to prevent scalpers from profiting too much a tiered pricing structure has been put in place. You can buy three at 400DKK (about £40 / $56) after which subsequent ones will set you back 900DKK (£90 / $130). Apparently it's enforced on a per boarding card basis so you can't visit the shop more than once to get more. Despite this, there are plenty of them on eBay with prices starting at about £100 / $160.
Let's take a look at the set and see what all the fuss is about...
The set is packaged in an Architecture-style box and comes with an Architecture-style instruction manual although there isn't a lot of additional information in it, just a paragraph or two about the airport.
By my reckoning, by tallying up the quantities on the inventory at the back of the instructions, it consists of 281-pieces of which I estimate at least 150 of them are 1x1 pieces of one type or another. There are 15 bricks, the rest are plates, tiles, cheese slopes and curved slopes.
Construction begins on four 10 x 6 plates which are covered in tiles and plates. The Billund Airport tile is printed.
The building doesn't take very long at all to construct, in fact it was so quick, and enjoyable, that I forgot to take pictures while doing so. It's very straightforward with hardly any SNOT work to contend with although it does take patience to line up the 1x1 pieces so they are square.
The finished model looks like this:
Without the aircraft in place the back looks great, with five departure lounges and their stairways down to the tarmac replicated perfectly in microscale.
The curved slopes are metallic silver, as are a handful of cheese slopes and a couple of 1x1 round bricks and plates.
Here's a view of the top:
It compares favourably with this aerial view from Bing Maps:
Five aircraft and what I presume is a ground vehicle -- the yellow thing on the right -- are provided. The aircraft let the overall look of the set down a bit in my view but I appreciate that at this scale there is not a better solution. They are in different liveries representing the airlines that operate at the airport, including SAS (blue tail) and Ryanair (blue and yellow).
So, there you have it. It has zero play value, it contains 280 tiny pieces which works out at an incredible 15p / 20c each so it's terrible value for money. But of course these are not measures that are relevant when considering whether to buy it. It's a limited edition set that can be purchased in one place only and therefore, for serious collectors, it is a must have.
If you have an opportunity to buy it, do so.
Here's a thought: given the price of air travel these days, it's actually cheaper to fly Ryanair to Billund from Stansted in the UK for £60 and buy the set at £40 than it is to get it from eBay. If you buy your full quota of three and sell two, you'd make more than the cost of the flight in profit. You'd get a free day out in Denmark too! Don't hang about though, I don't suppose they'll be there for much longer.
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18 comments on this article
Thanks alot for the review Huw. I`m going to Billund with my wife and three of our kids in june, looking forward to the whole visit and cross my fingers there`s stock left!
Most of those slope pieces look like they have cracked. Is that just the lighting? Or stickers? Or are they actually cracked and you didn't mention it?
>If you buy your full quota of three and sell two on you'd make more than the cost of the flight in profit.
Awesome review, but can we not encourage this kind of thing?
^^ the lines are the flow marks on the metallic silver parts.
^ reselling is a fact of life I'm afraid. I don't agree with it or bother much myself but there's no point denying it goes on or mentioning the possibilities.
Did you meet young Lennart? Great guy!!
Airport rip off. Sorry buy I'm not convinced by it's collectible value. It can be built from kid's parts in 15 min...
The same is true of most Architecture and most limited edition sets, that in itself doesn't make them any less collectable.
I was definitely disappointed when I saw the breakdown of how to most efficiently scalp this set.
Reselling is a thing, of course, but this reads as a resounding endorsement. If Brickset is on a highground above other sites by waiting for the proper time to post news and leaks, where does this place BS?
"Don't hang about though, I don't suppose they'll be there for much longer."
You might say, they're flying off the shelves. :-)
Nice review Huw.
I have it sitting on the shelve, still unpacked. Have been a bit on edge about this set. Not the best looking set, however I felt it was a must have item.
Might pick up few more for the kids for later use. :)
Great review Huw. The pricing structure info will be handy for bricksetters picking these up to share with the community so that others might have the opportunity to own this set and may well benefit Fairy Bricks as Lego House sets have done.
Who's the designer of the set?
Mel Caddick, I believe, from an initial design by a worker in the shop, so the story goes.
Great review as usual.great idea for a weekend in Denmark.
Interesting little set. I may have to borrow some ideas from this for a micropolis scaled airport. I think I'd want to expand this a bit and maybe scale it up slightly.
It looks like a neat set, but I don't particularly care for owning one since I'm not a collector in that respect.
Thanks for the review, Huw.
An interesting detail is that the history of the airport is closely connected to LEGO. The airport was founded by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen as a small airstrip in 1961. Already three years later public investments were done in the airport and a regular runway and small terminal and tarmac was made. Nowadays it is the second biggest airport in Denmark after Copenhagen Airport.
Great Set!
Problem is, I really don't see why this set is worth around $60. And it's all tiny parts, which don't cost more than a nickel a piece. I'm sure most people already have most of the parts, except for the fact they're different colors.
The plane with white and light blue is KLM, isn´t it?
Will we see a parts list and a PDF of the instructions for this set?