LEGO Ideas 21370 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Review

Spielberg's little alien finally has a brick-built version, and it's a big one. LEGO Ideas 21370 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1,226-piece posable figure of the character, based on a 10,000-supporter Ideas submission from French architect and town planner Richard Lemeiter (better known as Lafabrick). It landed on August 1, 2026 at $139.99, and it's the 78th set to come out of the LEGO Ideas program.

The first thing that struck us was that piece count. 1,226 pieces seems like so many for one character standing on a shelf, and our first reaction opening the box was, "how did they use so many pieces?" The answer turns out to be most of the fun of this set — and we'll get to it.

What you get in the box

Before anything else: the box artwork is funny. Because the set has a light brick in it, there's a battery warning printed on the front — and the way the art is laid out, E.T. is pointing his famous forefinger directly at it. Whether or not that was deliberate on someone's part, it got a laugh out of us.

Here's what's inside at a glance:

• Set number: 21370
• Theme: LEGO Ideas (set #78)
• Pieces: 1,226
• Price: $139.99 / £119.99 / €129.99
• Age: 18+
• Minifigures: none
• Stickers: none — the only printed elements are E.T.'s eyes
• Dimensions: over 9.5 in (24 cm) high, 8.5 in (21 cm) wide, 6 in (15 cm) deep
• Release date: August 1, 2026
• Fan designer: Richard Lemeiter (Lafabrick)
• Features: light brick in the chest, 360° rotating head, opening mouth, posable arms, wrists, fingers, feet and toes, trans-red healing finger, brick-built flowerpot

The build

The build is split into ten numbered stages, and they're paced well — each one gives you a recognizable chunk of E.T. rather than an anonymous slab of structure.

You start with the flowerpot, which is a nice warm-up and a good sign of where the set's priorities are. Those are the sunflowers E.T. brings back to life in the movie, and they're the one accessory in the box.

From there it's straight into the body, and this is where that 1,226-piece question starts answering itself. E.T.'s torso is a dense internal skeleton long before a single visible panel goes on.

There are also far more colors in this build than you'd expect from a model that reads as one shade of brown on the shelf. The outside is almost all medium nougat, but the inside of E.T. is a grab bag — and since nobody will ever see most of it, LEGO clearly used whatever made structural sense. It's one of those builds where the hidden half is more interesting than the finished surface.

The techniques used to get E.T.'s wrinkled, sagging shape out of rectangular bricks are the best part of the experience. Exposed studs along the sides of the torso are used deliberately to read as skin folds, and there's a new 2×2 curved 90° brick that does a lot of the heavy lifting around the shoulders.

Step seven is where it gets tougher. By that point E.T. is standing upright, and you're attaching parts to a tall, top-heavy model instead of working flat on a table. You end up holding him steady with one hand while pressing pieces on with the other, and a few of the connections need more force than you'd like to apply to something that's already balanced on two feet.

The arms and hands come next, and they're a highlight. Each hand has three fingers and a thumb, the second finger has a working joint, and the right hand gets a translucent red dome for the healing fingertip.

The head closes things out. The eyes are the only printed elements in the entire set, and they're printed in the right blue — LEGO went to the trouble of two unique prints rather than handing you a sticker sheet.

The glowing heart

The headline feature is a light brick buried in E.T.'s chest. Press the switch on his back and a red glow comes through the front, standing in for the character's heart. It's a simple effect and it works — it's the thing everyone who walks past the shelf ends up pressing.

The healing finger doesn't light up, which is the one place you'd hope the light brick got a second job. LEGO handled it with a trans-red element instead, and it reads well enough in the right light, but it's not the same.

There's also a removable front section that opens up to show the internal structure, and LEGO hid a couple of Easter eggs in there: a red telephone element and a small recreation of E.T.'s spaceship. That's a nice payoff for all the internal building you did.

Posing and articulation

The head is the star here — it angles up and down and rotates a full 360 degrees, and the mouth opens, so you can get a surprising range of expressions out of a face made of bricks. The feet and toes move too, which lets you push one foot forward and get that shuffling walk.

The arms are the disappointment. Going in we assumed a figure with this many joints would let you pose the arms freely, but they're more limited than they look — enough to hold the flowerpot and enough to point, but not the full ragdoll range the joint count implies.

The other missing piece is the neck. Lafabrick's original fan design had E.T.'s telescoping neck, the one that extends when he's startled, and it didn't survive the transition to a retail set. It's understandable — a neck that extends on a model this top-heavy is a structural problem — but it's the one feature we kept reaching for and not finding.

There's also no minifigure. No Elliott, no Gertie, not even a small nod. For a $139.99 set built around a movie full of recognizable characters, one figure would have gone a long way.

Lighting options

The set ships with the built-in light brick and nothing else, so the only thing that glows is the heart. That's a good start, but it leaves the eyes and the healing finger dark — the two things you'd most want lit on a shelf. E.T. is a display piece by design, so this is one of the better candidates for an aftermarket kit.

Two clip-in LED kits made for 21370 are worth a look:

• BrickSoul LED lighting kit for LEGO 21370
• Nitemode LED lighting kit for LEGO 21370

Both install without modifying the model — the LEDs clip in and the wiring routes through the same stud holes and gaps you built into the body. Since so much of E.T.'s interior is hollow structure, there's plenty of room in there to hide the cabling, which is more than you can say for most figures this size.

Is the LEGO E.T. set worth it?

If you grew up with the movie, yes. The model looks like E.T. in a way that brick-built organic shapes usually don't manage, the building techniques that get you there are the most interesting part of the box, and the glowing heart is a small feature that earns its keep. That 1,226-piece count that seemed absurd at the start makes sense by the end.

The caveats are real, though. The arms don't move as much as the design suggests, the extending neck didn't make it, and there's no minifigure in a $139.99 box. The later steps are fiddly enough that we'd call the instructions merely fine rather than great. If you have no attachment to the film, this is a lot of money for a brown alien, and you'd get more set for the money elsewhere.

For another posable character display piece in this price neighborhood, see our LEGO 75438 Star Wars Yoda Bust review. If it's the Ideas line you're following, we also looked at the LEGO Ideas 40912 Sea Serpent, and for another sci-fi licensed build there's the LEGO 11389 Project Hail Mary review.

You can pick it up on Amazon, or straight from the official LEGO product page for 21370.