Every single 80s and 90s kid remembers this tin, or at least some variation of it. You either were a part of the lucky few to open it to find delectable butter cookies inside, or you (like everyone else) popped it open only to be disappointed by finding not baked goods, but sewing equipment. I’m not entirely sure how an entire generation of adults just saw this tin box as the most appropriate storage place for threads and needles, but my house definitely had this box!
Designer Zuzu11 had a similar experience too, but the memory of that tin and the butter cookies inside lingers within his mind even to this day. Inspired by this unlikely cultural icon, Zuzu11 decided to give it its own LEGO set, complete with a beautifully detailed exterior as well as an interior stacked with LEGO cookies! Pop the lid open and you’re greeted by 5 pretty iconic shapes, a plain circle, a crusted circle, a rounded rectangle, a piped swirl, and a pretzel-shaped cookie on the inside. I don’t know about you, but I can practically smell the butter from the screen!
Designer: Zuzu11
Long after I grew up, I decided I wanted to correct the childhood trauma by actually buying a tin for myself and tasting the cookies inside. I don’t remember who ate the cookies in my childhood, all I did was the tin with its eye-catching exterior, and the sewing equipment inside, and one very disappointed child. Even to this day, you could pop over at a grocery store and buy some variant of this cookie tin – nothing much has changed. The branding reads “Royal Dansk” Danish butter cookies, and the packaging is usually a vibrant blue with a farm landscape on the top and a graphic of the cookies on the bottom.
Zuzu11 stayed true to the original, with the exact same color scheme, but omitting the actual branding for 2 reasons – it’s difficult to replicate in LEGO on a small scale, and licensing can often be a complicated affair. Given this LEGO build’s fan-made unofficial nature, it seemed like the best option to just leave out the branding and focus on just the nostalgia.
To that end, this MOC (My Own Creation) is an absolute win. It features two removable lids (an outer and an inner), along with biscuits inside the tin box, wrapped in cups of baking paper. The second lid wasn’t a fixture in the original, but Zuzu11 added it just to recreate the sense of disappointment by having people open it to not find cookies inside! “This build is inspired by the classic butter cookie tin and its surprisingly rich cultural afterlife. What began as a simple container for biscuits slowly evolved into a universal household storage solution, most famously for sewing supplies,” they say. “The idea celebrates both sides of that story: the comfort of the cookies themselves, and the perfectly timed disappointment waiting inside once the lid is lifted.”
“This project transforms a shared childhood experience into a playful LEGO display model. It relies on recognition rather than explanation, humor rather than instruction, and memory rather than realism,” adds Zuzu11. “The result is a piece that feels instantly familiar, quietly funny, and surprisingly universal, a small reminder that sometimes the most memorable surprises were not cookies at all.”
For a massive portion of an entire generation, this box represented a journey from hope to disbelief and disappointment, but there was something always enchanting about the box itself. Nobody ever seemed to want to throw it away after the cookies were over, proving that the packaging was actually more valuable than the baked goods it held!
The drill with LEGO Ideas builds is that they usually rely on relatability and fan-appeal. While LEGO builds its own brick-sets, it has an entire platform dedicated to fan-made builds, where people share their own creations as well as vote for builds they love. MOCs that cross the 10,000 vote threshold then get reviewed by LEGO’s internal team and then get transformed into a retail box set that everyone can buy. If you’d like to capture a bit of childhood nostalgia with this kit, head down to the LEGO Ideas website and cast your vote!
The post The Infamous Butter Cookie Tin Finally Gets Its Own LEGO Set (Sewing Kit Not Included) first appeared on Yanko Design.