After four gruelling rounds, we’ve come to the conclusion of the Best LEGO Set of 2022 Reader Vote tournament, and I’m proud to crown 10305 Lion Knight’s Castle as the overall winner.
10305 Lion Knight’s Castle handily beat 10300 Back to the Future Time Machine in the final, by 1325 to 566 votes, taking over 70% of the votes in final!
Here’s a look at the Final Bracket! 10300 Back to the Future Time Machine did remarkably well, making it all the way to the final, taking out some heavy hitters like the UCS Razor Crest, Vincent Van Gogh: The Starry Night, and even the mighty 10497 Galaxy Explorer in the semi-finals, spoiling hopes for an all-90th Anniversary showdown!
Here’s a look at the complete voting sheet, to see how the votes fell. This year, I noticed quite a bit of variance between Facebook and Instagram votes.
In total, over 24,000 votes were cast during this tournament (not counting the first round that I messed up!), making this the biggest year yet, almost doubling the number of votes we got in last year’s tournament!
In many ways, it wasn’t a surprise that 10305 Lion Knights’ Castle emerged as the eventual winner, capping off an amazing celebration of LEGO’s 90th Anniversary this year. It’s arguably the greatest LEGO Castle set of all time, and very well deserved.
Check out my review of 10305 Lion Knights’ Castle to see what I thought of it, and why it’s such a deserved winner.
10305 Lion Knights’ Castle was the clear favourite coming into the tournament with the First Seed position, and looking at the sheer number of votes cast for it during the Seeding Phase, it’s no surprise that it cruised to the final.
Favourite Minifigure Reader Vote
I also tallied up the votes for Favourite LEGO Minifigure of 2022, and in more Castle-related goodness, we saw Knight of the Yellow Castle from LEGO Minifigures Series 23 emerge as the overall winner, barely edging it out over Vincent Van Gogh and Aloy!
It’s well deserved, and below are the Top 15 Minifigures as voted by you! Really interesting that Queen Lionne almost made the Top 5, just falling short by 1 vote, and I was also very pleased to see the Classic Space Red Astronaut from 10497 Galaxy Explorer make the Top 5!
- Knight of the Yellow Castle (17 votes)
- Vincent Van Gogh (16 votes)
- Aloy (15 votes)
- Classic Red Astronaut (13 votes)
- Kermit (11 votes)
- Queen Lionne (10 votes)
- Ferry Captain (8 votes)
- Forest Elf (8 votes)
- Swedish Chef (8 votes)
- Nutcracker (7 votes)
- Animal (6 votes)
- Doc Brown (5 votes)
- Gonzo (5 votes)
- Snow Guardian (5 votes)
- Snowman (5 votes)
Favourite Theme of 2022 Vote Results
Last but not least, the Favourite Theme of 2022. No surprises here, but LEGO Icons was far and ahead the favourite, with 136 votes in total.
Interestingly, there were about 36 votes for LEGO 90th Anniversary, and variations of Castle/Space, putting it 3rd on the list, which I think is a really strong indicator that people want more Classic/Vintage theme revivals, specifically more Castle and Space!
Giveaway Winners
And last but not least, here are the winners of the giveway, for voting and participating in the 2022 Reader Vote!
- 40501 Wooden Duck – Matthew Lutrell (drawn from Facebook)
- $100 gift card – @paige_the_red (drawn from Instagram)
- $100 gift card – Clairie Ormiston (drawn from Facebook)
- 21333 Van Gogh – @slacker_bricks (drawn from Instagram)
- 10311 Orchid – Amanda Gray (drawn from Facebook)
I’ll be in contact with the winners soon, so congratulations to the winners and thanks so much to everyone for participating and voting this year!
I wonder what 2023’s Reader Vote will look like!
What did you think of this year’s bracket, and the matchups? Were there any rounds that surprised you?
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Vincent Van Gogh outsells the Castle everywhere ! so the castle might have more hardcore fans / votes here but outside in the real world sales numbers dont lie. the castle was never been sold out at any time. the Van Gogh is out of stock multiple times this year and even sold at Amazon and other Stores.
Clearly an unpopular opinion, but I really thought the tallneck should have gone farther. It’s an absolutely fantastic set. Maybe it’s because I never watched transformers as a kid… (Was too much into beast wars and zoids)
I wonder if Beast Wars and Zoids had any impact on the Space sub-theme Roboforce. The design aestethics look fairly similar.
Roboforce was into my Dark Age, and they never really came to my native Sweden, so I kinda missed them growing up. They are still so different to any space-related theme that had come before, and fit so badly with any themes that have come before (and maybe even after…) that I personally don’t really feel that I have missed out on much, however. (Except maybe the neon helmets.)
I thought set 20335 Motorised Lighthouse won in round two because it had more votes, but according to the spreadsheet it had fewer total votes 810 to 954 votes for set number 10297 whatever that is. Is that a typo or the wrong set went on to the next round? Your blog is really great though and I do wonder where you find the time, so tiny errors are understandable when there’s so much great useful output for us lego nerds.