LEGO
The LEGO Group (often simplified as LEGO) is a Danish toy company, famous worldwide for their wildly successful line of plastic construction bricks fittingly called "LEGO", which… ahem… "inspired" Hasbro's Built to Rule! and Kre-O toy brick lines, as well as those of Kawada Co. Ltd's Diablock and some of the releases under the Nezha: Transformers brand in China.
Despite being most famous for their trademark interlocking bricks, LEGO actually started off producing wooden toys in 1932, before their now-famous brick system in 1949 and its subsequent overhauled "stud and tube" design in 1958. Despite some financial woes in the late 90s and early 2000s, LEGO has ultimately rebounded and established itself as a major juggernaut in the toy industry, surpassing both Hasbro and Mattel as the most successful toy company in the world since roughly 2012.
Beginning in 2022, they started collaborating with Hasbro and TakaraTomy on producing Transformers sets under the adult collector-oriented Icons theme. Their offerings later expanded into the super deformed BrickHeadz theme in 2025.
Overview
LEGO produces building sets themed around both their own original brandings—either of "evergreen" themes like City / Town, TECHNIC, and Creator or more fantasy-oriented ones like Ninjago, Castle, BIONICLE, Monkie Kid, the fan-nicknamed "Classic Space" (and the many other Space-derived toylines like Blacktron, M-Tron, Life on Mars, etc.) —and, of course, they've also produced sets for nearly every major intellectual property in existence, like Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Harry Potter (regrettably), Jurassic Park, Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Minecraft, Mickey Mouse & Friends, and, as of 2025; with even Pokémon sets being on the pipeline. Many of their licensed properties would later get video games developed by Traveller's Tales, through publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. In 2014, LEGO ventured onto the big screen with The LEGO Movie (also released through Warner Bros.), and expanded it out into a small film franchise that featured some of the aforementioned licensed properties they have access to, until the 5-year deal between LEGO and Warner Bros. was up in 2019.
Before Lego's official foray into Transformers, the Danish brand had already produced more than a few sets with transforming robots in the past: for instance, a lot of mechas in space themes like Life on Mars can convert from their robotic modes into simple spaceships through the disassembly and reassembly of individual modules, other mechas in later themes like Bladvic's Rumble Bear in Legends of Chima and Lance's Mecha Horse in Nexo Knights can convert into wheeled vehicle modes without requiring any disassembly, and perhaps most famously, the Bohrok from the BIONICLE theme can fold up into spheres. Similarly, a lot of Creator sets with multiple builds have also featured robots as primary builds that can be disassembled and reassembled into vehicles as secondary and tertiary builds, perhaps the most classically Transformers-looking one being 31007 Power Mech, a lime green robot that can be transformed into either a pick-up truck or a helicopter — a little bit like someone else.
In 2022, LEGO released their first officially licensed LEGO/Transformers collaboration project, LEGO Icons 10302 Optimus Prime, designed by former Hasbro employee Joe Kyde. This was followed up in 2024 with 10338 Bumblebee, also designed in the initial stages by Joe Kyde and later expanded upon with the help of other LEGO designers like Samuel Liltorp Johnson, Nathan Davis, Ashwin Visser, and Yoel Mazur. A pair of BrickHeadz sets also based on Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were released in 2025, and a Soundwave set - the first Decepticon made by LEGO - is meant to release later in the same year.
Toys
Icons
| 2022 | 2024 | 2025
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BrickHeadz
| 2025 |  |
Notes
- If you were wondering how Hasbro and many, many other companies such as Mega Brands Inc. (now owned by Mattel) have been able to get away with making their own similar brick-building toylines for so many years (notably Mega Brands' ongoing, ever-evolving Mega Bloks/Mega Construx/MEGA brand) that utilizes The LEGO Group's brick-building system, it's because the technical patents expired in 1978. That said, this apparently hasn't stopped The LEGO Group from filing at least fourteen different lawsuits against Mega Brands in the past (spanning from the late-90s to the early 2010s), on the grounds that it violates LEGO's trademark; Mega Brands being their chosen target due to the company being LEGO's biggest competitor in the brick-building space since the late '90s. All of these lawsuits have resulted in basically the same court ruling; the system performs a technical function, and is therefore considered more of a violation of patent, not trademark, and as all of LEGO's relevant patents have long since expired, there's nothing they can do to stop other companies from using the brick-building system.
- While most LEGO-like toylines like Built to Rule! and Kre-O usually alter or create entirely new variants of more specialized existing pieces beyond the more basic bricks and plates, the buildable figures of Nezha: Transformers are almost exclusively made out of parts directly copied from LEGO's System and TECHNIC sets (with the only exceptions seemingly being the character's pre-made heads), and these were released up until 2021, just a year before LEGO's own official Optimus Prime!
- Due to The LEGO Group's strict prohibition of realistic military toys, any future LEGO sets based on most major Decepticons might pose a considerable challenge for designers:
- Generation 1 Megatron as a role-play-scaled gun mode is definitely a massive no-no for LEGO, and with his go-to replacement alternate mode option generally being some kind of realistic tank, that also puts a rather large restriction on what they could do with the character. There is, however, a narrow exception to this: LEGO has traditionally allowed science fiction tank designs in their product range such as those on the Star Wars theme (multiple sets have been made based on the Republic Fighter Tank and the Armored Assault Tank) and every now and then fictionalized sci-fi tanks also show up on their own in-house themes, like the 7706 Mobile Defense Tank in Exo-Force and the 70616 Ice Tank in Ninjago. Most interpretations of Megatron generally stick to more comparatively realistic tank designs, however, there have been more than a few that also veer into futurism, so it might ultimately not be infeasible for LEGO to take this direction. Alternatively, although less orthodox, a spaceship mode would also be a possibility.
- As Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, and all the other Generation 1 Seekers transform into fighter jets, this also falls into the category of "military toys". Again, there might be an alternative: LEGO has done numerous sets featuring unarmed jet aircraft that bear some resemblance to real-life fighter jets, such as with the 31039 Blue Power Jet and its design being very clearly reminiscent of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (and even featuring a color scheme very similar to that of Thundercracker[1]) — thus, perhaps a Seeker set could be doable as a somewhat fictionalized, "non-fighter" jet. One potential issue with this approach would be the Seeker null-rays, which are traditionally attached to the wings of the jets: wouldn't the inclusion of weaponry, in a sense, make them into combat aircraft again? Ultimately, this seems to yet again pose a challenge for LEGO's rule against military vehicles.
- Shockwave also transforms into a weapon, and yet again, this would definitely not be acceptable for LEGO. As with Megatron, going for a futuristic tank or a spaceship design might be the more feasible alternative.
- For some unknown reason, while 2022's Icons Optimus Prime features both the Hasbro and Takara logos on the packaging, 2024's Icons Bumblebee only features the Hasbro logo. The later-released 2025 BrickHeadz would again feature both the Hasbro and Takara logos.
- Unsurprisingly, given it is also a huge toy brand, LEGO and Transformers have often crossed over with the same properties. As well as certain Disney franchises, these include Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Fortnite, Overwatch, Sonic the Hedgehog, Angry Birds, Ghostbusters, Stranger Things, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
