Lego has made amateur architects out of millions of kids, not to mention their parents. Their sets do have a problem with longevity, though, and it’s not so much that those tiny bricks aren’t durable (as anyone who has ever stepped on one knows). You can lose a brick here or there and still get some enjoyment out of a set, but lose the instructions? Good luck building that wizard castle, superhero battle scene or whatever else those parts were specifically designed for.
Luckily, there’s help online for Lego fanatics who might have misplaced that crucial booklet. If you’re missing instructions from a set that’s currently on store shelves, you can go straight to the source at Lego.com.
Search for your set on the site, and you’ll find an option to download building instructions for it as a PDF. If you’re looking for an easier path to those PDFs, the Internet Archive has a collection solely devoted to Lego instructions that it created in late May. They currently have a copy of every instruction booklet that Lego provides as of March 2023, and you can search for them by title, box ID number or even popularity.
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If you’re looking for instructions for an older set, don’t despair. The Lego faithful maintain helpful sites like Brickset, which is a treasure trove for hardcore fans looking for vintage sets or building tips. Their archive has instructions for both current playsets and out-of-production ones dating back to 2010. (If you’re missing a single Lego brick of almost any kind, you can also search and order from a database of over 50,000 pieces).
If you really want to get the most out of your Legos, though, you owe yourself a visit to Rebrickable. Not only can you search their database for nearly 8,000 instruction books to existing sets, but you can also see custom builds by Lego experts and download instructions to build them yourself. You can even enter in the pieces or sets you currently own and see what else you can create.
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