The upcoming 21372 La Catrina was specifically designed by the LEGO Ideas team to respectfully honour the Mexican holiday and its cultural roots.
The LEGO Ideas theme officially revealed 21372 La Catrina this week, a 1,212-piece set launching next month and based on a winning fan design by yop1172 (aka José Miguel Medina Pérez). Creating the model not only required input from Mexican LEGO team members, but also careful consideration around how to appropriately honour Dia de los Muertos, otherwise known as the Day of the Dead.
Those topics and more were part of a recent roundtable interview with fan media and the LEGO Ideas design team, with Brick Fanatics in attendance too.
“We had a team internally of people from Mexico,” explained LEGO Ideas design manager Jordan David Scott, regarding 21372 La Catrina's conception, “asking them to almost kind of vote on which colour scheme would work. Everyone has their own opinion on colours, and there's so many variants, so it took a while.
“We even had some textiles from one of our Mexican colleagues, so we were looking at that and trying to match the colours. A lot of work went into the overall proportions and stuff, and colour can be very subjective for a lot of people, but we honestly wanted to honour the Mexican tradition of it.”
That approach was echoed by LEGO designer Jim Clayton, who talked about how much research went into creating 21372 La Catrina and why it was so important to focus on the model’s cultural roots.
“From the beginning, I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything I could to know as much about the holiday and La Catrina, and also respectfully honouring what La Catrina is,” said Jim. “Thankfully, we have a lot of colleagues here that I could bounce ideas off and make sure things were going well, and also with Miguel, who was able to inform a lot of our decisions.
“We definitely learned a whole lot. Just the history of La Catrina. She wasn't originally really associated with Dia de los Muertos, but then became synonymous with the holiday now, so it was really interesting to deep dive into the history of who she is.
“We incorporated a variety of things from the holiday, from the monarch butterfly and the marigold flowers and their significance, and on the altars, and then we even mentioned the croissant element, which can represent whatever it needs and can be eaten around this time, and the skull design.”
21372 La Catrina will be released on August 1, 2026 and can be pre-ordered right now, with the LEGO Ideas set priced at £109.99 in the UK, $139.99 in the US and €119.99 in Europe.
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