LEGO’s London tourist trap just got a pretty cynical upgrade

A new LEGO London bus has just rolled on to shelves, and it represents a pretty cynical upgrade for this particular tourist trap.

40953 London Bus comes in at £17.99 / $19.99 / €19.99 for 245 pieces, and while it’s available worldwide it’s fair to assume the LEGO Group will shift the most copies at the Leicester Square LEGO Store in London. It’s also a direct replacement for the recently-retired 40220 London Bus, which remained in service for eight and a half years before finally departing at the end of 2025.

That version retailed for only £8.49 / $9.99 / €9.99 for 118 pieces, so this replacement bus service is effectively double the LEGO for double the price. To maintain that price-per-piece ratio a full decade on (while prices elsewhere rise almost year-on-year) is pretty respectable, but at the same time you can’t help but wonder why we needed this upgrade at all.

The original bus was four studs wide while the new one is six studs wide, and for that increased size and piece count you’re not necessarily getting twice the LEGO model. There’s room to pack in a couple more details, such as the pronounced wheel arches, open rear corner for embarking and disembarking, and fully-rounded front and rear ends on the roof. But they’re not game-changers by any stretch of the imagination.

So what we’ve really got here is the ability for the LEGO Group to charge twice the price of admission for what’s really just a neat souvenir from your trip to London. At less than a tenner it’s an easy impulse buy at the Leicester Square store whether you’re making a larger purchase or just want a small keepsake to take home. But at £17.99 it’s a slightly tougher proposition – you’re suddenly in the realm of much more interesting LEGO sets for the same price.

This way, though, the LEGO Group gets a little bit more of your money. It’s hard to put a finger on another reason for 40953 London Bus to exist, because 40220 London Bus was just fine, and this one doesn’t really add much beyond size. What it really needed to do was go all the way up to minifigure scale – it might have been even pricier, but at least then it would have been something creatively different and had even wider appeal and utility.

As it stands, it just feels like another excessive tourist trap in a city that’s already full of them.

This copy of 40953 London Bus was provided by the LEGO Group for review.

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