LIDL
Large Sized LIDL Sets
Medium Sized LIDL Sets
Small Sized LIDL Sets
LIDL History
ALDI
WALMART
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LIDL is a supermarket that had it's beginnings in Germany in 1973 (see below). I had thought it was a British chain, because the first I had seen it was on a British TV show, probably the science fiction show HUMANS.
Anyways, the supermarket chain is slowly taking on a major presence in the U.S., with stores being all over (at least) the Baltimore/DC/Richmond VA areas.
Besides their excellent filet mignon, I like cruising their "tchotchke" (that's Yiddish for -misc things-, the "T" is silent) aisles for just about anything else besides food :-). I pick up some of their tools every now and then, and have not been too disappointed by their quality - no, the stuff isn't as good as even Ryobi stuff at Home Depot, but it's cheap enough to have around as a second or third of something. They also carry household items, clothing, and seasonal items.
Every Wednesday, they come out with a new flyer. For many of the items, you have to get there ON Wednesday if you want one or two, cause they usually don't get many of certain items, and rarely get items re-ordered. Example: At the beginning of November 2024, they got two styles of parts cabinets in. They got about 4 or 5 of each. If you didn't grab one on Wednesday or Thursday, you were out of luck, they disappeared quickly.
Another item they introduced in the middle of November 24, were hot melt glue sticks. They had packages of: white/clear, muli-colored, black, and brown. I grabbed all I could find of the black and brown ones, they will come in handy at Halloween time building my Halloween mazes - you just don't normally see those colors!
LIDL also came out with several other items of interest to help Building Block fans, especially if you are a die-hard builder and like to have spares around:
Parts Cabinets
The first item to cover is a pair of parts cabinets: one has 32 small drawers and one large full-width drawer on the bottom, the other is a cabinet that has 8 small drawers in the middle, and 8 larger ones - 4 on each side, and again, a full width drawer on the bottom.
-- Both cabinets come with dividers, altho not enough to put two in each drawer.
-- There were two runs offered, about a month apart, with the two runs coming from different suppliers.
-- The drawers between the two runs are interchangeable because they are the same size.
-- The cabinets from the two runs won't easily stack, since the alignment "nubs" are different.
-- Whomever they got to make the first batch had quality control issues, as many of the small drawers are warped.
Parts Storage Tubs
Towards the end of 2024, they came out with a series of parts storage tubs that one could immediately tell they were for building block fans, for the tops of the have a 22 x 22 grid of studs on them - however, they are not particularly well sized because elements are hard to put on them.
-- Inside there is a tray with 4 compartments, and underneath is ample storage.
-- They were sold for $7.99 USD.
-- They had two versions with red and yellow lids.
Storage Tubs
In early 2025, LIDL came out with another series of plastic storage tubs in L, M, and S sizes - I only bought the L (on the right in the pix below) and M (on the left) sizes, the smalls were too small for my needs.
On To The Kits
So in 2024, the day before Thanksgiving, I noticed they had available a whole series of Lego compatible building block sets. The store I shop at in Timonium MD, had three or four of each of the sets pictured below. I'm one of the reasons stuff like this disappears quickly, because I bought an entire set - one of each. I DID NOT find these sets listed on the LIDL website or in their Wednesday Flyer.
Some of the sets contain custom parts, not seen anywhere else in the Lego/Mould King/Jiestar/Dollar Tree building block world.
Parts count for the sets are noted on the boxes pictured below.
Notice, that in the sets containing minifigs, the minifigs do not follow Lego standards!
Large sets were $29.99 USD, medium sized sets were $4.99 USD, and the small sets were $3.99 USD.
Being a LIDL "member" got me $5.00 off on each of the three large sets.
Don't be thrown off by the SET numbers on the receipt, they do have different SKU's.
There are three major sets:
- A Police Station
- A Fire Station
- A Pet Vet Clinic
To complement the three sets above, they offered:
- A police ATV set
- A police boat set
- A police car set
- A police motorcycle
- A fire truck set
In addition, they had these sets available:
- An excavator
- An airplane
- A convertible car set
- A taxi cab set
- A race car set
- A mech robot set
Acknowledgements:
Product from LIDL
Websites and other additional information sources of interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidl
LIDL's Christmas 2024 Building Block Offerings
--- The Large Sized Sets
The Police Station
The Fire Station
The Pet Vet Clinic
--- The Medium Sized Sets
The small boxes that don't have Spanish on the same side as the English side, has the cover in Spanish on the other side.
--- The Small Sized Sets
Short history adapted from Wikipedia:
ALDI is another supermarket chain that had it's beginnings overseas like LIDL. In February of 2025, the 12th to be exact, Aldi's came out with two block sets. One is a model of an Aldi's grocery store, very simplified and no roof, and an Aldi's 18 wheeler truck which does a creditable job of copying the real thing. I visited two stores: Timonium and Cockeysville MD, and both stores carried eight of each. I guess this was kinda like "testing the waters" to see how they would do, and it appears that by the 14th - 2 days - they were both sold out. Neither Aldi's or LIDL plan on restocking the kits as of this writing (FEB 24, 2025).
The models assemble well - you "feel" like you're assembling real Lego kits. Both kits include decals. You need nerves of steel to put the four large decals on the sides of the truck so they get aligned well enough not to see the seems. If you have an unskilled kid putting them together, you may wanna help out here.
So far, as of February 2026, Aldi's has not introduced any more "Lego" kits.
For the Christmas 2024 sale season, Walmart decided to offer a number of simple flowers and two styles of vases (red and white) to put them in. They are manufactured by BRICKCRAFT and use the name BRICKTANICALS. Walmart carried five varieties -- each costing $5:
- Dahlia - 100 pieces
- Mistletoe - 90 pieces
- Amaryllis - 102 pieces
- Hydrangia (blue) - 121 pieces
- BlueBonnet - 96 pieces
I didn't notice any non-Lego stuff during the 2025 Christmas season.
In addition, and I didn't notice these until after Christmas (2024), that Walmart was also carrying two MTV sponsored items: A tape cassette, and Boom Box with a removable tape cassette and an opening door.
https://brickcraftofficial.com/
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