Lego Review · Purchased June 5, 2026 · $189.99 CAD via The Lego Store
The Setup
This is easily the strangest concept LEGO has put out for the Toy Story license: a brick-built Slinky Dog paired with two functioning bookends, released as part of the May 2026 Disney/Pixar wave. I don’t actually keep enough physical books around to need bookends in any practical sense, but the idea of a hidden Woody minifigure tucked inside one of the books, revealed by turning a little knob, was more than enough to get me to order it the moment it went live.
Living With It
At 1,311 pieces, this is a genuinely substantial build, and easily the most mechanically interesting set in my collection. Slinky Dog himself has an articulated head and paws along with fabric ears, and actually looks and poses like the character rather than a static brick sculpture. The two book pieces that function as the actual bookends are where LEGO’s design team really showed off: one has a brick-built spine worked into a Slinky Dog motif, and the other hides a small rotating mechanism behind its cover that reveals a Woody minifigure tucked inside when you turn the knob on the spine.
It’s pitched at the 18+ adult collector audience, and it shows in the build quality: nothing about the bookend mechanism feels flimsy, and the whole thing sits solidly enough on a shelf that I’ve actually started using it to hold up a small stack of art books, which was never really the point but is a nice bonus. The build itself took me the better part of a weekend, split fairly evenly between the two bookend structures and Slinky Dog’s own more fiddly articulated body. It’s not a difficult build technically, just a long one, and the payoff of finally turning that knob and seeing Woody appear made every hour of it worth it.
What I Liked
- Genuinely novel concept with a real, working mechanism rather than just a static display
- Slinky Dog’s articulated body actually captures the character’s look and poses
- Solid enough construction to double as functional bookends
What I Didn’t
- Expensive for a set most people will still just display rather than use as bookends
- The build, while satisfying, is long without ever being particularly challenging
The Verdict
Rating: 4.5/5
One of the most genuinely inventive LEGO sets I own, and worth the price for the hidden Woody reveal alone.
