Let me first start off with a confession, my main reason for getting the Over the Moon with Pharrell Williams set (set #10391) was the Black Lego minifigures heads. The chance to get over 25 of them, there are 49 characters heads who make up Williams’ “My Phriends” in total, was too enticing to pass up.

As any Lego fan of colour can tell you, finding non-yellow Lego minifigures is nearly impossible outside of specialty sets. While the company took a lot of heat for this during the 2020 racial reckoning after the death of George Floyd, the issue goes back long before that. Lego has always presented their trademark figurines as something separate from society’s binary view of racial diversity. They are simply yellow, a neutral colour that embodies the imaginations of everyone across the globe.

A heartwarming idea in theory, the logic breaks down when you realize that, up until recently, there were no hairstyles that matches Black hair texture. All the hair options, whether wavy, spiky, etc. excluded the one major group in society whose natural hair does not fall into any of those categories.

The lack of melanin in the Lego universe was clearly something on Williams’ mind when making Piece by Piece, the Lego documentary about his life and music career.

At the premiere screening of the film at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival, Williams made a point to talk about how Lego did not have many figures like him, but they were actively working with him to change that. While only time will tell if the superstar producer and singer’s influence on the company bears plenty of fruit, Over the Moon with Pharrell Williams is a good start.

Consisting of 2 mini figures (Williams and his wife), 8 building bags with the 49 custom heads scattered within them, the 996-piece set does an excellent job capturing the “reach for the stars” mentality Williams conveys in the film.

The bulk of the first four bags of the build revolve around building the rocket ship that transports Williams into the cosmos. While the black spacecraft looks like it was ripped out of a child’s imagination, rather than a NASA approved ship, it was a very satisfying build. There was enough creativity in how the pieces went together that felt innovative while still being accessible for kids as well.

The biggest surprise, from a Lego build perspective, was the rainbow exhaust that supports the rocket ship in the air. Initially I was skeptical of the sturdiness of the structure as I wasn’t sure if it would effectively hold the ships weight, especially on an angle. However, it quickly became apparent that the colourful beam had a solid foundation beneath its vibrant exterior. What made the base especially exciting was constructing the cloud of smoke at the base.

Building the base was intriguing as it wasn’t initially clear how it would all come together. However, once I got to the individual cloud orbs, the beauty of the overall design revealed itself.

A nice mixture of creativity and fun, it is easy to feel over the moon with this Pharrell Williams inspired set.