The LEGO Krusty Burger set feels tailored to the "Adults Welcome" mantra that LEGO promotes. (It's available for purchase exclusively at the LEGO Store.) It pairs a straightforward construction process with a formidable end result – a fully furnished fast food restaurant, with numerous insider references to classic Simpsons episodes. It comes with seven minifigures: Homer Simpson, Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson, Farmer Krusty the Clown, Sideshow Bob, the Squeaky Voiced Teen, and Officer Lou.
Think back on the dozens of landmarks and locations around Springfield, and ask yourself, "Which one of these is the most instantly recognizable?" The first one, obviously, is the Simpsons house. After that, it's Moe's Tavern. And after that, it's probably the Kwik-E-Mart. The Simpsons house and the Kwik-E-Mart already have LEGO sets. That leaves Moe's, but instead, LEGO went with Krusty Burger.
Maybe the designers didn't want to reintroduce the LEGO Simpsons line via Moe's degeneracy. But whereas Moe's has an established, iconic layout – we can picture the pool table, the back room, and even the placement of the stools and the love tester in our heads) – the Krusty Burger is less defined. Numerous episodes (as well as the movie) use the restaurant as a setting, but not in a way establishes the location as unique; its mundane, corporate ubiquity is sort of the point.
So LEGO designer Ann Healy used numerous Simpsons episodes, across the entire series, to create the most official, canon version of the restaurant possible. She went over all of the episodes in our exclusive interview with her, but the two main ones were “Coming to Homerica” (Season 20, Episode 21), and “I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can (Season 14, Episode 12).
You begin the set by building Homer's car decked out with Krusty decorations, as seen in "Homie the Clown" (Season 6, Episode 15). This is the type of deep-cut reference this set is rife with. Elsewhere, there's a poster of the Krusty Burglar, whom Homer nearly kills in the same episode for "stealing all the burgers." There's one last reference to "Homie the Clown" on one of the cash registers, which reads $6.15 – a reference to the season and episode number.
The other cash register reads $847.63, which is what Maggie scanned as during the original opening show sequence. This amount was, at the time, the per month cost of raising a child in the United States. There's assorted posters for Krusty promotional items, including one for the Ribwich and another for the Mother Nature Burger. The order sign near the drive-thru window calls for 700 Krusty Burgers, which references "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" (Season 5, Episode 8), in which Krusty builds a Krusty Burger on an oil rig.
I love the Krusty Burger's layout. Of course, there is a well-rendered dining area – with a Krusty's Kidz Zone ball pit – where most of the show's scenes have taken place. But there's also a fully-realized employee area, with a cook and prep area (with a fryer station and a broken ice cream machine, an employee bathroom, and a drive-thru where the attendant can take orders and fill the soda cups. The prep station has Krusty Burgers stacked on it, and this is a wonderful example of LEGO's minimalist ethos – how they manage to convey an idea with the bare minimum of bricks.
Outside the restaurant, the drive-thru menu area, where you place your order, is around the corner from the drive-thru window area, where you pick up your food. It's a small detail. But it's nice that this set is more than a collection of references, and that it actually 'makes sense' from a practical, workflow standpoint.
The LEGO Krusty Burger is recommended for builders aged 18+, making it one of the many LEGO sets for adults. In the past, LEGO used age range to denote difficulty and complexity; i.e. "You should be at least this old to have the fine motor control, observational abilities, and fastidiousness to build such-and-such." And for many years, builder age and LEGO skill were commensurate, with no cognitive dissonance between the theming of a set and its underlying simplicity.
But then, LEGO began marketing to adults, many who hadn't played with LEGO since they were children. And now, there is a new audience to cater to, which requires something thematically mature but technically simple. I'm an 11th grade public school teacher, and educators deal with a similar scenario regarding ELL students. A 16-year-old English learner may require simple prose. But he also requires something age appropriate; we wouldn't send him to the kiddie section of the library.
That's why today, the 18+ designation is still used to denote difficulty, but it's also used to denote area of interest. The LEGO Krusty Burger is the perfect set for its intended Gen-X and Millennial audience – easy to assemble and detailed to the last brick.
The last time LEGO sold a full-fledged, minifigure scale Simpsons set was 10 years ago (the now-retired Simpsons house debuted in 2014, with the Kwik-E-Mart following in 2015). Perhaps the intervening decade has allowed LEGO to achieve the sort of mainstream, adult popularity to make LEGO Simpsons a regular, annual release, like how the LEGO Lord of the Rings sets have been in recent years. Certainly, we would love to see more. And please, do Moe's next!
LEGO The Simpsons: Krusty Burger, Set #10352, retails for $209.99, and it is composed of 1635 pieces. You can purchase it here.
Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.
