LEGO 10334 Retro Radio’s designers are playing tricks

LEGO Icons 10334 Retro Radio’s design team are trying to play tricks on enthusiasts and they’re using previous audio design experience to help.

10334 Retro Radio launches on June 1 for LEGO Insiders or June 4 widely for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 with 906 pieces.

Ahead of its release, Brick Fanatics attended a fan media roundtable with some of the design team behind the upcoming LEGO Icons set, learning about how the model plays tricks on you and one designer’s past experience with audio device design as well as how it assisted in creating the functional LEGO radio, here’

“We always want to have the models to say to have some sort of LEGO DNA,” shared 10334 Retro Radio’s designer. “But the goal for this project is that we wanted to create something on a one-to-one scale.

“So it’s nice to see it from far away, you would look at it and question a little bit – is it a LEGO product? Is it a real radio? But then when you look closer, you would start to find clues, for example, some studs on the front, there are some open studs here and of course the LEGO Group’s logo, but once you flip the handle up, you can clearly see that this is a brick built product.

“We like that to kind of play tricks a little bit. But yeah, we wanted to have something that realistic to begin with.”

10334 Retro Radio’s realistic design is discussed in our in-depth review of the upcoming LEGO Ideas set and the realistic features even extend to the integration of a sound brick that plays a variety of effects and music.

The set can’t tune into real radio stations, though it technically still functions to some degree. Notably, this isn’t the designer’s first time developing an audio-playing device.

“I come from an industry design background and have done products for audio companies before. Along with that, we looked in terms of creative but also functional parts, it’s looking at elements and the colour choices.

“I think it would be very different from when you do some sort of storytelling at minifigure scale or other play features. I think the set works really well for me in that sense, because I had, you know, previous experience designing other products.”

10334 Retro Radio will be available from June 1 for LEGO Insiders or June 4 widely for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 with 906 pieces and the new sound brick can be found in the similarly-priced 76429 Talking Sorting Hat too.

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