The LEGO Ideas design team had to carefully rethink the scale of 21372 La Catrina in order to achieve the final look of the upcoming model.
LEGO Ideas dropped the first details of 21372 La Catrina yesterday, a 1,212-piece set based on a winning fan design by yop1172, also known as José Miguel Medina Pérez. Of note is the reduced size of the final build compared to the original design, which stemmed from specific considerations during the model’s development process.
Brick Fanatics recently spoke to the LEGO Ideas design team about the creation of 21372 La Catrina at a recent roundtable with fan media and discovered which key challenges had to be overcome in order to arrive at the completed look for the upcoming build.
“The first thing I looked at was mainly some of our other buildable figures we have,” explained LEGO designer Jim Clayton. “so that gave me a rough starting point to look at how large La Catrina should be.
“Once I had a rough idea, I knew that the skull was going to be the main part that I had to get really right in terms of detail and character for La Catrina. So, then I started experimenting with how I could build the skull, and then that sort of determined the rest of the size.
“The skull ended up being quite a challenge to fully get right. I did maybe over 100 skulls – there were weeks where I was just looking at skulls. It's built partially right side up and partially upside down, and you sandwich it together, so it took a lot of experimenting to get in all those details and make sure it was buildable and strong. It was a lot of fun, and it ended up being really, really cool.”
The other aspect of 21372 La Catrina that affected the scale of the finished LEGO Ideas set were the figure’s arms, which resulted in the model deviating away from the approach that was used for the original fan design.
“I think in Miguel's one, he needed some stability for posing like this, so you needed a support structure,” said LEGO Ideas design manager Jordan David Scott, “whereas we wanted to try and make it like a real skeleton, where you can pose it without those supports.
"So that also lends itself to scaling it down and just making it more appealing to everyone, because not everyone has a space to display a meter-tall skeleton in their homes. Hopefully this fits on a shelf a lot better.”
21372 La Catrina is due to arrive online and in stores on August 1, 2026, with the LEGO Ideas set priced at £109.99 in the UK, $139.99 in the US and €119.99 in Europe and available for pre-order right now.
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