LEGO DreamZzz Mrs. Castillo’s Turtle Van Review

We’ve been looking forward to reviewing a LEGO DreamZzz set ever since its debut earlier this year. DreamZzz sets are so far known for their sheer creativity and completely wackadoodle ideas. Half vehicle, half animals, trees that grow icy leaves, man-eating plants, skeleton shark pirate ships, you name it! Mrs. Castillo’s Turtle Van is a smaller set, with 434 pieces, so it will take you about an hour and change to build. The other neat thing about LEGO DreamZzz is that the instructions split off into two sections, sort of like a choose your own adventure book. This set give you the option to make a modest magical van, a turtle van hybrid on foot, or a flying turtle. We opted for the quadrupedal mode, but converting between modes is quite easy and free of headaches.

Once done, you’ll have the titular Turtle Van and 5 minifigs: Z-Blob, Mrs. Castillo, Mateo, Zoey and Grimspawn. The visual design of the characters align with the overall surreal and borderline haphazard style of the DreamZzz line, which is only appropriate. They’re super unique and quirky, especially the diminutive Z-Blob and Grimspawn. Despite the relatively small construction, the van packs a decent level of detail, with two seats in front, a steering wheel, a work counter in the back with various arcane supplies, and an opening door for taking magical orders. Accessing the interior is quite simple due to the easily removable roof, which is also adorned with all manner of strange and delightful artifacts, like a carrot on a stick, treasure chest, tree and our favorite, a friendly cat-ctus. The set is covered with studs, so there are plenty of opportunities to pose your minifigs. You can pose the turtle’s head a bit, but the legs are pretty fixed in place, which is understandable based on how the multiple forms work. Although the bricks and printed detail do a lot, there are a fair amount of stickers to apply to really flesh out the set, so be prepared to have steady hands.