When the Lego Optimus Prime was announced, everyone was talking. It’s a Lego building set which actually transforms, much like the vast majority of Transformers. But when this set releases on June 1, a lot of people are probably wondering “How long does this take to put together?” Luckily, we have that answer for you.
Hasbro sent us an Optimus Prime to put together and check out, and while I’m not the traditional Lego-Maniac, I’ve had plenty of years of experience putting together Lego sets. So all-in-all, Optimus Prime took 3 hours, 31 minutes, and 27 seconds from start to finish. That answers the question poised by the headline here, but there’s more to it than that.
Inside the Optimus Prime box, there are 10 bags filled with Lego pieces. Each bag puts together a portion of the Transformer–torso, legs, arms, etc–and on average, each bag took about 21 minutes to complete. There were occasional setbacks, like my eyesight getting worse as I get older and not being able to spot pieces right away or the fact that I couldn’t follow instructions and put a piece in the wrong spot and had to backtrack. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of how long it took me to put together each bag, along with some photos of the process along the way.
Lego Optimus Prime bag completion time:
Bag 1: 21:09Bag 2: 20:08Bag 3: 15:43Bag 4: 25:04Bag 5: 26:32Bag 6: 21:36Bag 7: 19:43Bag 8: 23:49Bag 9: 17:22Bag 10: 20:21
Again, this took a little over three and a half hours to complete, and I went through relatively quickly, for my skill level. And transforming Optimus from robot to semi-truck was relatively easy. However, I did have some issues with one of the pivot-points sticking, and the torso of Optimus popped right off. It wasn’t a huge deal, as the figure clicked right back into place. And this was a heavy piece. I was very surprised with how much heft this had when it was fully built. It’s an extremely cool-looking Lego set that any Transformer fan would love to have,
The Lego Optimus Prime is available to purchase on June 1, with a price tag of $170, and you can order it here. It’s a 1,508 piece set, and aside from the Transformer, it comes with a few accessories like the ion blaster, Autobot Matrix of Leadership, an Energon ax, Energon cube, and jetpack.