Birds are dinosaurs. This is no longer a weird statement but well established; birds are the only dinosaur species still alive today. It’s no accident that Jurassic Park III starts with an opening shot of a raptor-like claw that turns out to belong to a bird, but I digress.
If you look carefully at birds you can see the connection to dinosaurs, but you also see that these are beautiful animals that see almost alien compared to ourselves with a range and variety that make my heart sing. The pattern of feathers with intricate colour patterns, the ability to puff up and move these feather jackets and then the ability to fly (for most of them)! If dinosaurs have manage to stay around this long and develop such beautiful variation, then there is hope yet.
A few years ago I built the beautiful rainbow lorikeet from Gabriel Thomson at which time I came to appreciate my love for our feathered neighbours. I also discovered that rainbow lorikeets are not entirely comfortable around a brick-built rendition of one of their brethren.
Out of all the brick-built LEGO animals I seem to fairly consistently be attracted to birds, and this 31173 Tropical Toucan is no different. With 225 parts it is quite a small set but it captures the shape of this striking bird very nicely and (spoiler) it is very nicely priced.
LEGO generously provided this set for review, but I present my own opinions. Please read on if you want to read a bit more about the other two models that are offered in the box, and what on earth a Toucan has to do with hotels/restaurants in the Netherlands (no Toucans are a tropical species, NOT native to the Netherlands).
The Parts
This set 31173 Tropical Toucan is retailing for AU$19.99/£12.99/$17.99/€14.99 with 225 parts, which is a bargain in Australia, almost disregarding exchange rates! It comes in a neat small box, perfect gift-sized with three models. The toucan is dominant on the front and the rear so you have to pay a bit of attention to see what else you are getting.
The review set came with 3 bags and 3 booklets, which is a coincidence; you can only build one of the models with all the parts at a time. A significant portion of black pieces are present, with some nice bricks and light colours available as well as a set of comical eyes.
The aqua curved slopes are unique to this set and I would not be surprised there are a few other rare colours as well. Asking perplexity (in Comet) to verify with this response:
Based on the Brickset “rare parts” data for LEGO set 31173 Tropical Toucan, the following parts have not appeared in more than 3 sets (i.e., they appear in 3 or fewer sets):
- 1/4 Sphere 3x3x1 in Aqua [Part 76797, Element 6526062]
- Appears in: 1 set
- Introduced in: 2025
- Brick w/ Bow 1/3 in Aqua [Part 50950, Element 6540137]
- Appears in: 3 sets
- Introduced in: 2025
- Plate 1×2 w/ Stub Vertical End in Bright Orange [Part 49715, Element 6390385]
- Appears in: 3 sets
- Introduced in: 2022
- Brick 1×2 w/ 1 Knob in Vibrant Coral [Part 86876, Element 6523861]
- Appears in: 3 sets
- Introduced in: 2025
Asking an AI agent to pull this data can be considered controversial but that is a discussion for another day (that should probably include Huw from Brickset).
When I explicitly offered Perplexity images of the parts list in the manual and told it to provide generate a list of part numbers that were missing from the list on Brickset (currently 218 out of 225 are listed on the LEGO parts inventory), it responded with “All part numbers from your booklet images are currently listed in the Brickset inventory for LEGO 21173-1“. Given that 218 is not equal to 225, not even for very large numbers of 218, this is plainly incorrect. For your convenience, the new parts included in this set are (by ‘human eyeball confirmation’) 6536123, part6544482, part6544483, part6580403
These parts are all new recolours of existing parts, but not new moulds.
Toucan
What does a Toucan have to do with restaurants/hotels? In the Netherlands there is a famous hotel chain called ‘Van de Valk’ or ‘Of the Falcon’, and their logo is, you’ve guessed it, a toucan. I am not kidding. This is a bit of a joke in the Netherlands but most people seem to understand by now that that bird is NOT a falcon, but a toucan.
The construction of this bird is quite straightforward, a simple studs-up body and head, with click joints for the legs on the side and ball joints to hold the wings. Once the main body is complete the expression of the bird is a bit surprised, probably because it is very rear-heavy. When you set it down it falls backwards. Good thing evolution has this sorted out, and provided a large heavy beak at the front of the bird to offset the weight, and if that is not enough you even get a slice of watermelon for a bit extra weight.
The display wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of greenery to mount the bird; which can be done nicely by connecting the Technic holes in its feet onto the pins sticking out of the branch. A flower is included for some additional colour.
The finished toucan looks the part. The birds looks lively with the wings and tail feathers and beak all poseable. This model punches above its weight for the price and number of pieces in the set, well worth it to pick up as a present (for yourself) for the toucan alone.
Fish
But wait, there is more! (Really? Yes, really!). A troupical fish is next in the line-up. I wish I could be more specific but even Perplexity cannot do better than telling me it resembles a clown fish (and some clown fish do have a lot of black).
I think ‘generic tropical fish’ will have to do as the fish captures various details seen with different animals. The shape reminds me of Dory, the stripes of Marlin and Nemo, and the black and white stripes remind me of Deb or Gill and the fins and tale remind me a bit of both Dory and Marlin. I guess it goes to show that my references for fish come from Finding Nemo.
The construction is, again, simple and effective. It shows some nice shaping and SNOT use and the end result looks pretty good in it’s own right. You can see it’s a secondary build in a 3-in-1 set, but the fish will not look out of place in a LEGO aquarium. (Apologies my LEGO aquarium has been retired otherwise I could show you).
Butterfly
The last build of the day is a butterfly. I won’t even attempt to identify the type of butterfly other than, a pretty big butterfly. The model is quite neat to put together and the results is surprisingly satisfying. It really looks the part and the colour combination works well. It comes with a flower and stand, just like the other two builds, and makes for a nice display in it’s own right. It’s almost unfortunate that the toucan is such a good build; I suspect this butterfly will be relatively under-represented when people need to decide which model to build.
Dinosaur, fish or insect take your pick
This is a great set. All three builds were satisfying, the box provides good value for money and the relatively small size prevents from breaking the bank. Go for it! The only thing limiting my arbitrary rating to 4 out of 5 praise units, is the entry level of nature of the set. It is great for what it is, but it is also probably not very memorable between the huge eye popping sets that have been released in recent times. Still, don’t skip this one.
Set 31173 Tropical Toucan was released in September 2025, and retails for for AU$19.99/£12.99/$17.99/€14.99 . The set has 225 parts. It was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes, but all opinions are our own. What do you think of this set? Leave your comments below.
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Until Next Time,
Play Well!