Insects fan designer gave LEGO the green light for its biggest changes

The LEGO Group says fan designer José María gave the Ideas team the green light for 21342 The Insect Collection’s biggest changes.

Very few LEGO Ideas projects make it from concept to store shelves without undergoing one or two changes (or, in some cases, a radical overhaul). 21342 The Insect Collection sits somewhere in the middle: it retains the DNA of José’s original pitch, combining five different brick-built insects in one box. But it also toys with the size and scale of a couple of those bugs, while adding habitat-esque display stands for the rest.

None of that happened without José’s consent and approval, however. According to LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott, the Spanish fan designer was involved in the process right from the start, and played a key role in transforming his initial vision into something that would appeal to a wider market.

“We brought him on board from the beginning,” Jordan tells Brick Fanatics and other LEGO Fan Media. “I always ask fan designers: ‘How involved do you want to be?’ Because I’m not going to force them to take calls with me and go through the design process if they don’t want to. But José was very involved. Every two or three weeks, depending on how much progress was made in the development, we would have a call.

“We would go through design changes, or things like a roadblock we hit with structure or colours, and [ask] how could we build around that?”

Right from the off, Jordan – who also led the design of 21342 The Insect Collection, based on José’s first pitch – knew he wanted to make at least one substantial change, which he presented to the fan designer in their very first call.

“I had the butterfly roughly sketched out with the base, and it was just to show him, [and ask] ‘How do you feel about having a base? We don’t have to do this, but I think it would be really successful if we can build the biomes.’ And he thought it was a great idea. I only built one in the beginning just to convey the idea, and it was an awful sketch model that was not made from the right bricks and colours and stuff. But it showed the idea, and then we took it from there.”

Adding in the three different habitats for the Chinese Mantis, Hercules Beetle and Blue Morpho Butterfly wasn’t the only major change to José’s LEGO Insects project, however. The fan designer also included a honeybee and ladybird in his proposal, both of which were ultimately scaled way down for the final set – the bee to a smaller build, and the ladybird to a printed 1×1 tile. Both of those decisions received José’s blessing.

“He was on board with it,” Jordan explains. “He just wanted to make sure that we represented them all. But I was like, ‘Yep that’s also my goal. I don’t want to remove any insects, it’s all about representing the same ones in your submission, they’re just going to be a different size.’ And he actually provided me with some smaller bee builds. So he was still building at home, and we tried to compromise and work on something that worked.”

Ultimately, 21342 The Insect Collection still includes all five bugs – there’s just a bigger focus on three of them. The results are pretty spectacular (check out our review for more on why), as you’ll be able to find out for yourself from September 4, when the 1,111-piece set launches in early access for LEGO Insiders. It’s due to retail for £69.99 in the UK, $79.99 in the US and €79.99 in Europe.

• LEGO Ideas 21342 The Insect Collection review
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