Five things we learned from LEGO designer Niek’s captivating career journey

LEGO designer Niek van Slagmaat has broken down his most iconic sets for Brick Fanatics, and there are plenty of fascinating stories to come out of his career so far…

From 17101 BOOST Creative Toolbox to 71785 Jay’s Titan Mech, Niek van Slagmaat’s LEGO CV spans a disproportionate number of very cool sets (he’s overdue a dud at this point, surely). And while he’s got more than 20 products under his belt to date, we picked out the NINJAGO veteran’s most iconic models for our latest YouTube video – in which Slagmaat shares the inside scoop on how those sets went from concept to store shelves.

If you don’t have time to watch the entire thing (and you really should, because it’s genuinely very interesting), we’ve picked out five of the most fascinating takeaways from Slagmaat’s selection of LEGO stories. Hit play on the video corresponding to each entry to jump straight to those quotes.

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5 – Two of the LEGO Group’s designers normally aren’t allowed to work together

One of Slagmaat’s earliest sets was 80102 Dragon Dance, which was sold exclusively in the Asia-Pacific region. But he wasn’t solely responsible for its design: the 622-piece set came together with the help of his colleague Nico Vás, which represented a first for the pair.

“We are normally people who aren’t allowed to work together because we come up with stuff that’s sometimes a little too crazy,” Slagmaat says. “This was a project that was almost ad hoc put together, and Nico and I both signed up to work on this specifically because we had a lot of crazy ideas.

“This was the first time I worked on a product that actually came out with Nico; I’ve worked on thousands of things with Nico in our spare time and during creative boost sessions, but they’re always deemed too silly. But this one actually made it through, because it was actually a product brief.”

4 – You’ve definitely missed a hyper-specific technique

Did we mention 80102 Dragon Dance was a region-exclusive set? It’s relevant because there’s a very good chance you’ll have missed it – and in turn, you’ll also have missed a hyper-specific technique Slagmaat and Vás squirrelled into the set.

“One of my favourite things about the build is that the bricks that you put in for putting the dragon on, the cross axle goes through a 2×2 brick with cross hole going from the top to bottom,” Slagmaat explains. “The cool part about it is the fact that the 2×2 brick is upside down, because when two LEGO pieces slide across each other vertically, one of the problems is that there’s a microscopic difference in the width of the top and the bottom of the LEGO brick, which is called a draft angle.

“It’s something that we use for making sure the brick comes out of the mould properly. When they point the same way they have tendency to get clipped behind each other, but when you flip it upside down it creates a much smoother transition for the pieces to slide up and down. I thought that was very fun to figure out.”

Got that? Good.

3 – The timeline of LEGO pieces is sometimes a little fuzzy

While each new wave of LEGO sets typically debuts at least one or two new elements, the exact timeline of their development isn’t quite so clear cut – at least according to Slagmaat’s stories on the development of 71738 Zane’s Titan Mech Battle. The NINJAGO Legacy set debuted in 2021, but very nearly featured a piece that wouldn’t end up on shelves until 2022.

“It was actually for this one that I originally wanted to get the new hip piece that we introduced with [71765 Ninja Ultra Combo Mech],” Slagmaat says. “So you can see there’s some hints in the design where I was trying to figure out if we could afford that piece. We didn’t end up making it for that wave, but for a different one, but this is one of my favourites, because its aesthetic is totally me.”

2 – There’s a ‘clown colour’ Hydro Bounty somewhere

Summer 2021’s LEGO NINJAGO Seabound wave was headlined by a completely new take on the Destiny’s Bounty, which transformed the flying ship into a sort-of-submarine in 71756 Hydro Bounty. For Slagmaat, the design of that 1,159-piece set (and its many mechanisms) represented a novel moment in his career.

“This is the first one I designed during the pandemic, so it was quite an elaborate model to be designing from your kitchen table,” Slagmaat laughs. “It was weird. I have a copy of it in just weird clown colours from when I was building it with my own collection, before we were allowed to take bricks out of the office for home work.”

1 – It’s impossible to get bored of designing mechs

Slagmaat now has at least eight pure LEGO mechs to his name (more if you count the one hidden inside the Hydro Bounty), but he’s not planning to move away from that niche any time soon. To explain why, he pointed to his latest (the Dragons Rising wave notwithstanding) in 71785 Jay’s Titan Mech.

“This was very much a departure from what I normally do: chunky robots,” Slagmaat explains. “This one’s not at all, this one’s extremely lean and elegant. I think that was a really fun challenge to tackle. Whenever people ask me if I’m not bored of designing mechs, the answer’s always no, because every one of them is very different from the last one.

“As long as we can keep that up, I’ll continue to design mechs.”

Check out the full chat with Slagmaat over on our YouTube channel, and make sure to subscribe for more exclusive designer videos.

A brand new wave of LEGO NINJAGO sets is due out next week, with plenty more cool mechs (including one from Slagmaat). Click here for the entire roster.

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