Fabulous Fabufigs: A Brick-Built Tribute to LEGO Fabuland
/Today’s BrickNerd article comes from guest contributor Dale Harris (HarrisBricks), a builder from Australia who loves nothing more than exploring and reimagining the beloved themes of his childhood.
40506 LEGO Fabuland Tribute
As a self-professed “Fabufan,” I had the opportunity on behalf of BrickNerd to look at set 40506 LEGO Fabuland Tribute, the next exclusive LEGO House set developed by LEGO Senior Designer Markus Rollbühler from the original design of LEGO House Master Builder Stuart Harris. The set will be available exclusively from the LEGO House shop in Billund, Denmark from March 2025. But first, here’s a little story about my history with Fabuland.
I was born in 1980, which means that I was in the perfect age range for Fabuland for the early part of its run. I remember playing with the few Fabuland sets that myself and my brother had at an early age and, while as I got older and progressed onto LEGOLAND town, space and castle sets, I retained a fondness for Fabuland into adulthood. I particularly love the 1970s whimsical storybook style of the figures and elements of the Fabuland world, and the feeling of nostalgia it creates is also pretty strong.
When I came out of my dark ages, my first major MOC was a Neo-Classic Space base which lead me to think back on Fabuland, and how someone might undertake a ’Neo Fabuland’ build, the idea of employing Fabuland as a visual style, in much the same way that Neo-Classic Space looks to Classic Space as a set of design conventions. The resulting build was called Edward’s Island, a large Neo Fabuland island featuring 10 unique buildings including Edward’s Fishing Hut, Boris’ Post Office, Wilfred’s Lighthouse, Gertrude’s Studio, Hannah’s Greenhouse, Bonnie’s B&B, The Dock, and The Bandstand, Bernhard’s Tavern and Dr. Dog’s Office as well as various vehicles, trees, plants and landscaping.
Five years have now passed since I built Edward’s Island, and this year I have started to undertake a new group of Neo Fabuland builds for display at events in 2026. So all of that history combined is why I think BrickNerd reached out to me about the official return of Fabuland.
The purpose of this article is to take a quick look at the new set, paying special attention to all the great callbacks to those original Fabuland sets from 1979-89, but also to respond to the set by building something new! I hope you enjoy my review and extrapolation of 40506 LEGO Fabuland Tribute.
Looking Back
This Fabuland tribute pays homage to quite a few specific moments from Fabuland lore, and the first set that is called out is 3631 The Fabuland Big Band, Peter Pig and Gabriel Gorilla/Orchestra.
This set released in 1985 and features two “Fabufigs” not seen in the tribute themselves, but their musical instruments, the drum, drumsticks and tuba and the idea of a musical performance are definitely taken from this set. The tuba element has only ever been played by Peter Pig in Fabuland set history in 3631 and 3711, and the drum has only ever been played by Gabriel in the two sets that it appears in 3713 and 3631. There is one element that appears in this set that I believe is missing in the new LEGO House tribute set, but I will talk about that later.
In terms of the instruments seen in the tribute set, there is one more missing—the accordion which appears in two Fabuland sets, 3712 Robby Rabbit and 3678 Lionel Lion’s Lodge/The Noisy Neighbours. In 3712, it is played by Robby Rabbit and in 3678, Lionel Lion is making a racket for his neighbours with his accordion skills (or lack thereof).
The fabufigs chosen by the designers to be included in the new tribute set—Edward Elephant, Joe Crow, Dr. Lucy Lamb and Clive Crocodile—are some of the most beloved Fabuland characters and were no doubt chosen for this reason (and simplicity to be brick-built).
These are the bios for each character that appears in the set instructions:
Edward Elephant is a kind, positive and generous character. He thinks a lot about why things are the way they are, and he is often lost in detail. Edward may seem clumsy, but when he summons the courage to try new things, he often surprises himself when he realises how much he can do.
Joe Crow is admired by the inhabitants of Fabuland as a real hero. A naturally skilled pilot, he is brave and quick to rush to the rescue. He never loses his head when danger arises and can always find a creative solution to problems.
Dr. Lucy Lamb is a wonderful doctor – cheerful, sympathetic and full of ideas, she always has a friendly word to cheer up her patients. Being gentle and understanding is an important part of her job, but she can be firm with a quarrelsome patient, in her own gentle, considerate way, of course.
Clive Crocodile has a big mouth – he likes to brag and often runs into a bit of bad luck. When he ends up causing trouble, it’s not because he is a bad guy, he just tends to overdo things a bit. He does his best to find the right balance, but when he drives a car, it always seems to drive too fast!
Besides the Fabufigs featured in the set, the other iconic feature is the brick-built Fabuland tree. The Fabuland tree is such an iconic Fabuland piece. It appeared in ten Fabuland sets between 1979-1989 and never appeared in any other theme outside of Fabuland. As an element, it remains a unique and beloved touchstone of the Fabuland theme among Fabufans all over the world.
It does appear to me that the designers of the set have taken the inspiration of The Fabuland Big Band/Orchestra set but made the decision to eschew the figures of Peter Pig, Gabiel Gorilla and Robby Rabbit in favour of some more iconic beloved Fabufigs in Edward, Joe, Lucy and Clive.
Building Fabuland Again
The first parts of the build are the construction of the base incorporating the connection points for each character and the tree.
I was particularly impressed by the use of curved slopes in the base which mimics and refers to the stylised rolling hills, bushes and cloud shapes from the original Fabuland set packaging. I notice that the choice of bright green has been made for the base, I believe this is a concession to the modern LEGO colour palette, as green would actually have traditionally been used in the original sets. The designers have used some great techniques which take advantage of newer curved slope pieces in creating the bubbly curved forms.
By far the best part of this set is the creation of a building standard for mid-sized brick-built Fabufigs.
As you work through the steps of the build and build each of the four Fabufigs, you begin to appreciate the care and attention that has been taken to establish a standard for them. The legs, arms and bodies of the brick-built characterss all faithfully reproduce the forms, connection points and joints of the original Fabufigs scaled up to roughly double the size.
The main variation in the build process comes in with the building of the heads of each Fabufig, being that each anthropomorphic animal figure has a different shaped head.
I particularly loved the use of rounded tiles and slopes of various types in the faithful recreation of each bump and form in the heads of Dr. Lucy Lamb and Clive Crocodile.
Another feature that should be mentioned is the little dais that each Fabufig is placed on. These take the form of the Plate, Modified 6 x 6 with Rounded Corners and 4 Feet originally created for the Mario sets, These plates are connected to the base with Plate, Modified 2 x 2 with Pin on Bottom. This allows for limited posing on the Fabufigs when they are placed on the dais.
The colours of each figure are as faithful as possible to the original sets working within the current LEGO colour palette. As I am sure you are aware the LEGO colour palette has changed over time, but what is not widely known is that the Fabuland colour palette in 1979-89 contained several colours not seen in the LEGO colour palette at the time, some of which eventually made their way into the LEGO colour palette (eg: Brick Yellow/Tan) however some others never appeared in the LEGO colour palette and this is the case with Pastel Green (also known as Fabuland Lime).
In the original sets Pastel Green was used for the head and legs of Clive Crocodile, and in the new tribute set this is substituted by the closest current LEGO colour, Lime.
The other notable colour substitution is to be expected as Grey (also known as Light Grey) which was used for Edward Elephant’s head and legs was retired from the LEGO colour palette in 2006. In the new tribute set this is substituted with Light Stone Grey (also known as Light Bluish Grey).
I absolutely love how faithful this set is to the colour palette, forms and style of the original Fabuland sets. Well done team!
One thing that was also a key part of Fabuland sets was beautifully illustrated stickers and it is great to see that this new set includes its own illustrated sticker featuring the four Fabufigs and their musical instruments performing against the background of a suitable fabu-fied LEGO House featuring illustrated versions of several iconic elements, the lamppost, the yellow aerial and a window frame.
I found the building experience very enjoyable, as it took me right back to childhood with a healthy dose of nostalgia and I also learned some new building techniques and got to use some elements that I have not worked with before. This set makes for a great display piece and I suspect that it will be very popular among Fabufans as well as fans of classic LEGO in general.
Building On the Story
One of the best things about Fabuland as a theme is not only the storybook style employed in the design of the sets, elements and figures, but also that the whole theme was built around storytelling. Fabuland instructions included a story to guide the building of the set as well as suggesting how you could play with the set once it was built.
The new tribute set is no different, and in the instruction book, we find a story telling us how and why Edward and his friends made their way to undertake a musical performance at LEGO House in Billund.
I decided that if I was going to respond to the set, I should really find some way to continue or add to the story.
I mentioned it above, but when I was reviewing the original sets that inspired the development of this tribute (and specifically The Fabuland Big Band/Orchestra) that there was one important element from missing—sheet music! Edward is holding the photo of him and his friends in his hand, but has no sheet music to play from! Oh no, how are Edward and his friends going to perform at LEGO House without their sheet music?! I knew exactly how I could add to the story.
Edward, Joe, Lucy and Clive touched down in Joe’s aeroplane at the Billund Airport began to unload their instrument cases when Edward suddenly realised something was amiss!
“Oh no” he cried, quickly realising his mistake.
“What’s up” asked Lucy
“We remembered to bring all our instruments, but I have forgotten our sheet music!” he exclaimed.
“Whatever are we going to do?” said Joe “We are due to perform in under an hour, and there is no time to go back and get it!”
“Leave it with me” said Clive, “I know exactly who to call - the G.O.A.T. you might say.”
IMage via BrickLink
Billy To the Rescue
To make the tribute set my own, I chose Billy Goat to build. I believe this is the best way to extrapolate this set—and what I see most people doing once they build the set themselves—by testing out the new midscale brick-built Fabufig standard. I specifically chose Billy as he is LEGO’s original and first goat. Despite the popularity of some other LEGO goats, Billy (released in 1979) and Gertrude (released in 1982) are the originals, and I would suggest, the best.
In my building of Billy, I did not have all the parts in my personal collection in the required colours, so I did make some substitutions in my build of his legs and body, but I did try to build them as faithfully as possible to the instructions from the tribute set. His head is my own extrapolation based on the internal structure of Lucy’s head.
Clive quickly called his friend Billy who was working away in his garage, in the process of repairing Patrick Parrot’s red scooter. “Well, I do need to test this out before I give it back to Patrick,” he thought to himself. “I am sure Patrick won’t mind me borrowing his scooter to help out our friends!”
Billy jumped on the scooter and sped over to Edward’s house, collected the sheet music, and set out on the open road for Billund.
Once I built the figure I knew that I wanted to build another unique iconic Fabuland element, and I quickly decided on the scooter with its characteristic pannier/saddlebags.
I started the scooter and pannier build by getting one of the original scooters from my vintage Fabuland collection. I then basically built the scooter around the brick-built Billy, referring to the original scooter and the Billy Fabufig for scale reference.
The first part of the process was going through all the red curved slopes in my collection to try and find curves that would be as close as possible to the delicious 1970s forms of the original scooter element. I love how the forms of the scooter worked, particularly with elements like the wheels, the headlight and the handlebars, though I really think the thing that truly sells the scooter is the pannier.
I know we talked about the Fabuland colour palette before, One of the colours from the Fabuland colour palette which later became adopted into the broader LEGO colour palette was Light Orange Brown, though it only lasted until 2005. So for my own recreated pannier build, I decided to use the closest colour to that in the current LEGO colour palette, Medium Nougat.
The final part of my build is by far the most important element for my story—the sheet music itself! So I decided to make my own sticker. Taking inspiration from the sheet music tile that appears in 3631 and 3711, I began by redrawing the musical notes from the original tile in Adobe Illustrator.
I can now imagine in the story that Billy arrives just in the nick of time, with a screech of tyres from his scooter, handing the sheet music to Edward so that the musicians’ performance at LEGO House can begin.
Final Fabuland Thoughts
As I mentioned before, LEGO Fabuland Tribute is a great display set. It is well thought out with some brilliant callbacks to the Fabuland sets of the past, it is well constructed and gives us an amazing standard for building our own brick built Fabufigs, and it provides a healthy dose of nostalgia that will no doubt appeal to collectors.
I can see builders building a whole range of Fabufigs based on the standard established in this build, and I can’t wait to see what they create! To help everyone along, BrickNerd has created some instructions for Billy Goat that you can scroll through below or download as a PDF.
This has been a fun experience for me as I have looked at exploring Neo Fabuland in my own builds in the past, and have actually recently begun some new Neo Fabuland builds which I hope to display at events in 2026. Thank you to the BrickNerd team (and LEGO) for the opportunity to receive and build this set and think about how I would extrapolate it into further builds.
DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by The LEGO Group. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
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