Review: LEGO 10307 Eiffel Tower (2022)

November 19, 2022 | 12

It’s not every day that LEGO crosses the 10,000-piece mark, or gives us a model that’s almost 1.5 metres (4.8 feet) tall, but that day has arrived with 10307 Eiffel Tower, one of LEGO’s most ambitious and impressive models to date.

Releasing on Black Friday 2022 (that’s 25 November), LEGO revisits the Eiffel Tower at this grand scale, making it the tallest LEGO set ever, and one of the most visually impressive.

Like the French icon, this LEGO set is a marvel of engineering, and I think is one of the best LEGO sets this year, BUT.. it’s certainly not for everyone due to its high price, and most importantly, the sheer size of the model. Even if you can afford it when it launches on LEGO.com on Black Friday, you need to seriously plan out where you’re going to place this set (as well as build it), so this really isn’t in the impulse buy category.

That said, I really enjoyed the build, and the end results, so let’s jump straight into my review!

See below for regional pricing and product links:

• 10307 Eiffel Tower [US] – US$629.99 
• 10307 Eiffel Tower [AUS] – AU$999.99 
• 10307 Eiffel Tower [UK] – £554.99 
• 10307 Eiffel Tower [EU] – €629.99 
• 10307 Eiffel Tower [CA] – CAD$799.99 

If you order 10307 Eiffel Tower from 25-28 November, you’ll also qualify for the 40579 Eiffel’s Apartment set, which contains a Gustave Eiffel minifigure!

If you’re planning on ordering the LEGO Eiffel Tower, please consider using these affiliate links as I may receive a small commission with each purchase. It goes a long way in supporting the work I do on the blog!

Special thanks to LEGO for providing this set for review.

10307 Eiffel Tower Set Details

Name: Eiffel Tower
Set Number: 10307
Pieces: 10,001 pieces
Price: AU$999.99 | US$629.99 | £554.99 – Buy from LEGO.com [AUS] [USA] [UK]
Exclusive to: LEGO.com / LEGO Stores
Theme: LEGO Icons
LEGO Designers: Rok Žgalin Kobe
Release Date: 25 November 2022

The Unboxing Experience

As you can expect from a set this size, the box is huge and weigh almost 13 kgs, so your postman better have strong arms, or you’ll ideally want a trolley to cart it from the LEGO Store to your car.

The unboxing experience was quite nice, the outer box itself is pretty bland with the now ubiquitous big black boring LEGO for Adults box. Opening the box reveals 3 inner boxes, with a really classy and elegant graphic design signifying which stage of the box you’re about to tackle.

Stacked up, the art on the boxes connect to form a blueprint-like diagram of the Eiffel Tower on the side.

The Eiffel Tower is split up into 3 main sections, and each box is fully self-contained, so this is technically a “Build Together” set, and you can share the joy of building with up to 2 other friends, which I recommend as it drastically cut down the build time, and mount of repetition by sharing the load.

Here’s a look at the three instruction manual booklets, which has the shared black and gold motif.

On the inside are plenty of fun facts about the history of the Eiffel Tower, and Gustave Eiffel who was primarily responsible for bringing it to life (although he didn’t contribute the design!), and how this 324m wrought-iron marvel came about and ultimately became one of Europe’s most well-known landmarks.

Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Gustave Eiffel and the Eiffel Tower (France and Paris is on the to-visit list), but after building this set, I would absolutely love to see it with my own eyes sooner rather than later.

The Building Experience

So I was initially dreading the building experience because I feared how repetitive and boring it would be. I still have flashbacks of 10276 Colosseum, which wasn’t the most enjoyable builds due to slightly different tan wedge after another.

I did take the Rok Zgalin Kobe’s advice (I’ll share my interview with him soon!), and had a few Eiffel Tower documentaries, videos and podcasts prepared for the build.

At 10,001 pieces, this is a long build, and it’s not recommended to blitz through it, and I’m pleased to say that I actually had a really enjoyable time building it, going so far as to say that the build itself IS one of the main drawcards of the set.

There are 74 (!!) numbered bags in the LEGO Eiffel Tower, which is the most I’ve ever encountered in a set.

Yes, there are plenty of repetitive sections, and the lattices in particular get pretty dull after the 40th one, and you’re mostly building in dark grey BUT it didn’t drag on.

It took me about 15 hours to complete the build, and because you get the hang of the shapes after a while, and because the Eiffel Tower really is about engineering and precision, you get into a groove pretty quickly.

The build was also very easy to follow and systematic, although there are some tricky bits, but it wasn’t frustrating at all in the slightest, mostly because I was intrigued by the structure, and was really eager to see how LEGO pulled the design off.

And because it’s so large, it’s also really satisfying seeing this incredible structure take shape in front of your very eyes.

The real Eiffel Tower took just over 2 years to build, and was slightly delayed for the opening of the 10th Exposition Universelle (World Fair) in 1889 of which it had been commissioned for, so 15 hours+ of solo building isn’t too bad.

I recorded myself building the set, so do check out this LEGO Eiffel Tower Speed Build to see how it comes together on my Youtube channel.

The Completed Model

It simply cannot be overstated just how huge and tall this model is, and (like the real Eiffel Tower) you’ll want to see it in person to fully appreciate the awe-inspiring scale, design and engineering that went into this set to make it happen.

At 1.49m, this is LEGO’s tallest set yet, but what’s utterly bewildering is how its constructed, and despite its size, the force is distributed equally to all 4 legs at the bottom, and it manages to keep the entire structure up with just these clips on each leg.

Because of its huge footprint and height, this is really a statement piece, much like the LEGO Titanic and something you’ll need to get creative about to display.

It’s likely going to end up on your floor as it looks quite silly on a table, and when it’s placed on ground level, you really get a proper sense of its height, as you use your own body as a frame of reference.

The Eiffel Tower combines different looks from different eras that amalgamate in what designer Rok Zgalin Kobe feels is the “ideal” image and vision of the Eiffel Tower.

In the current day, the base of the Eiffel Tower has plenty of fencing and structures (and crowds!), but this version has sprawling open spaces, with mini trees, bushes, benches and lamp posts on the esplanade at the base.

The trees are quite nice, and are helpful to establish a sense of scale!

On each “leg”, you can also find these mini stalls, or ticket booths where you can hop on the lifts to ascend to the top.

These red and yellow lifts, which you may remember from the original 10181 Eiffel Tower also make a welcome return!

I cannot express just how impressive the engineering and design behind the LEGO Eiffel Tower’s legs are, to hold up the entire structure without using interlocking bricks, but these clips.

The downward force is distributed evenly between all four legs (which fun fact, points to the four cardinal directions), is just so cool to behold, and a great lesson on LEGO engineering.

My least favourite part of the build are these arches, which like the real Eiffel Tower, have no load bearing capabilities and are just there for decorative purposes.

They make use of newly recoloured dark grey roller coaster track to form the curves, which are really aesthetically pleasing, and this is a great new colour for the track.

Unfortunately, I felt like the arches weren’t secured as well as they could, and if you accidentally bump into them (which happens a lot), or shake the legs, the arches tend to dislodge themselves quite easily as they aren’t fastened by enough bricks, and are suspended upside down as well.

That said, on the fist platform, you’ll notice plenty of these repetitive patterns, which aren’t necessarily fun to build, but are really aesthetically pleasing.

On the sides of the Eiffel Tower, 72 names of French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are engraved in recognition of their contributions, and they’re represented here by the dark grey “gold bar element”, with 18 on each side!

And here’s a look at the first platform, before we continue upwards.

Here’s a look at the second platform, where you’ll notice the use of new dark grey sausages for the arcs.

The sausage is a most excellent and useful LEGO element I must say.

Here’s the view as we head up.

Of course, each section has more of these red and yellow elevators, slowly making the climb up on the inner collumn.

Repetition and these intricate iron-wrought lattice that make the Eiffel Tower’s aesthetics so iconic draw the eye in, and the techniques employed to create this effect is simple, yet effective.

Here’s the middle section.

The Eiffel Tower narrows as it approaches the pinnacle, and here is the Top Platform, which among other things contains Gustave Eiffel’s apartment, offering commanding views of Paris.

And at the top, amongst a clump of radio antenna, is a brick-built tricolore Flag, which is a direct throwback to the simple French flag on top of the set’s predecessor, 10181 Eiffel Tower.

Fun fact, the Eiffel Tower was meant to be disassembled after 20 years following the Exposition Universelle in 1889, but Gustave was a savvy and cunning operator, and managed to keep the tower intact by making it host scientific experiments, as well as radio antenna, which the French military found useful, and they decided to extend the life of the Eiffel Tower, and it ultimately stands to this day.

To make it easy to transport (it’s not recommended to carry the entire Tower in one piece… although you can), and to clean or move around, the LEGO Eiffel Tower can split into these 3 parts, allowing you to reposition it with ease if you must.

There are no Technic pins holding these sections together, only good ole gravity, and they lock into each other with ease.

Just how tall is the set? I’ll do a few more comparisons soon, possibly in its own separate post, but here’s the LEGO Eiffel Tower next to the 75313 UCS AT-AT, which was 2021’s Black Friday launch.

And for a better frame of reference that hopefully more people can relate with, here it is next to the LEGO 92176 NASA Apollo Saturn which is just over 100cm tall.

And here it is on ground level next to me – I’m about 172cm for reference!

Oh, and don’t forget to stick your phone, or camera underneath for this view.

What I liked:

• A marvel of LEGO engineering
• Is the ultimate LEGO display centerpiece with stunning display presence thanks to its height
• Incredibly fun and relaxing building experience in spite of repetition
• Great value for its price

What I didn’t like: 

• Will be hard to display and not everyone has the space for it
• Arches could’ve been secured better
• Some repetitive sections in the build

FINAL THOUGHTS:

10307 Eiffel Tower was such a pleasant surprise, and I liked it a lot more than I initially thought I would. After seeing it in person in Billund, I was of course impressed by the height and scale, but came away fearing that the build would be bland, torturous and repetitive.

This clearly isn’t the case, and a lot of effort has been put into the building experience to make it quite intuitive, seamless and as pain-free as possible.

From the first bag, I was captured and hooked, and the anticipation in seeing this massive model come together was very enjoyable, and a testament to Rok Zgalin Kobe’s immense talent and efforts.

The end result is stunning, one of the most awe-inspiring retail models that LEGO has ever produced. Seriously, if you were to see 10307 Eiffel Tower at a LEGO Fan Convention, you’d walk away impressed and awed, so being able to translate that into a set you can walk into a store to buy, AND make it accessible, even for new adult builders cannot be overstated.

That said, this isn’t for everyone. I think the set is great value (especially since it’s US$629 instead of US$679.99), and you’re left with a huge LEGO showpiece. It’s still a LOT of money, and this ultimately puts it out of reach for many LEGO fans, especially those that have been hit hardest by inflation, or have other more important priorities.

But this isn’t an impulse buy, and not something that you’d be expected to buy every month. Like any other large expensive models that precede it like the 9,090-piece LEGO Titanic, it’s a large purchase that you really have to want, and likely budget and plan for.

Speaking of planning, you definitely want to plan ahead as it has a footprint of 57 x 57cm, and is of course awkwardly tall, so placing it on a desk or shelf doesn’t really work.

While LEGO is targeting a very specific type of customer with 10307 Eiffel Tower (affluent, has enough space and wants a 1.5m Eiffel Tower to build and display), ultimately, I’m glad the set exists.

If you need space, you can also use the set as a very expensive garden ornament. Only half-joking, I think it might look pretty good outdoors.

At its core, this really is a triumph of engineering, and I’m still blown away by the techniques used in the set, and that this is even possible with LEGO bricks.

The aesthetics, size and how accurate it looks are really secondary to me, and that it stands so well constructed pleases me to no end.

If this is the type of LEGO set that appeals to you, and you have the means, I definitely recommend getting 10307 Eiffel Tower, even at launch (25 November), as you’ll get a really neat 40579 Eiffel’s Apartment gift with purchase (GWP) for your trouble, as well as a bunch of other bonuses as part of LEGO’s Black Friday offering.

I’m glad that we now live in an age where LEGO can and is taking huge risks like this. While the second half of 2022 has seen many disappointing big and expensive releases, 10307 Eiffel Tower bucks the trend by delivering a satisfying and exceptional LEGO experience that’s unlike anything that has come before it.

Like the Titanic, I can see this set doing really well with fans, and those wanting a LEGO experience like no other that befits the LEGO Icons branding.

Rating and score: 4/5 ★★★★✰

Build [4] – Really enjoyed the flow of the build, despite the repetition. It was quite relaxing, much like puzzle building.
Real Value [4] – It’s expensive but good value, especially if you factor in the Eiffel Apartment GWP
Innovation [5] – Incredible LEGO engineering at work here, without the need for new or fancy elements. Just good ole math and design ingenuity.
Coolness [5] – One of the world’s best known landmarks, at this scale, made out of LEGO. Doesn’t get any cooler than that
Keepability [4] – You will likely not disassemble it as it’s a big investment, unless you really need the space back

Thanks so much for reading this review of the 10307 Eiffel Tower!

What do you think of the LEGO Eiffel Tower now that you’ve read the review? Will you consider picking it up?

10307 Eiffel Tower will be released on Black Friday, 25 November 2022 exclusively from LEGO.com or your local LEGO Store.

If you order 10307 Eiffel Tower from 25-28 November, you’ll also qualify for the 40579 Eiffel’s Apartment set, which contains a Gustave Eiffel minifigure!

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