There’s no arguing at all that Billund in Denmark is LEGO’s very own corporate city-state of sorts, being the site of their HQ and all that. The first LEGOLAND Park was built here. Its own airport, now the second-largest in Denmark after Copenhagen, was built and initially operated by them.
Since 2014, the LEGO Store in Billund Airport’s departure hall offered for outgoing passengers a sweet souvenir: a LEGO Architecture set of their main building, numbered 4000016. It was a basic-build model structure with plant-pieces and rudimentary brick aircraft, but it was a rare exclusive worth picking up by collectors.
Some four years later however, there’s been a slight change. LEGO news resource Brickset has noted that the souvenir selection at Billund Airport has a new special-edition Architecture set. Or rather, it’s a new old set: Billund Airport, slightly altered and with a new number – 40199 – available only there.
Thanks to photos from Brickset, we’ve got an idea of the amount of alterations that have been done on the LEGO Architecture Billund Airport set from version 4000016 to 40199. The sloping yellow structure on one side in the old one is gone. A “smokestack” is missing too on one end.
Website chatter on the new LEGO Architecture 40199 is that the flower build elements have slightly changed too, though we can’t seem to tell the difference from the photos. In conclusion, this souvenir set on Billund Airport’s departure hall LEGO Store is only cosmetically changed at best.
Dedicated collectors may go for it, and the original 4000016 will become a rarity (with jacked-up resale prices online possibly). Anybody who’s gone to Billund and are on their way back out might consider dropping by the store to have a look at the 40199 set, to see if it catches their fancy.
