The designer of 21325 Medieval Blacksmith once designed a blacksmith for LEGO CUUSOO

The designer of LEGO Ideas 21325 Medieval Blacksmith has revealed that he once designed a blacksmith for LEGO CUUSOO, which means his career has now effectively come full circle.

LEGO Ideas first launched as a partnership with Japanese website CUUSOO in 2008, and was therefore originally known as LEGO CUUSOO. The platform remained in beta until 2014, when it relaunched as the newly-branded LEGO Ideas site we know today (even if it looks a little different now).

During a recent roundtable interview with select LEGO Fan Media, 21325 Medieval Blacksmith’s designer Wes Talbott told Brick Fanatics that he once submitted a blacksmith model to the Ideas platform back when it was still called CUUSOO – and the design of that project influenced how he turned Clemens Fiedler’s successful Ideas submission into an official set.

“A long time ago, I did a blacksmith that I put on CUUSOO at the time, and it had a light brick,” Wes explained. “So that was kind of something that I thought would be really cool to add.”

If you haven’t yet put together the latest LEGO Ideas set, you might not know that there is indeed a light brick squirrelled away in its medieval architecture. And it’s among the best integrations of the piece we’ve ever seen: pushing the tiny bellows on the side of the forge causes the coals to glow bright orange, ready for the smith to get to work.

“Adding the bellows is one thing that I was pretty happy with because I felt like it kind of helped to make the light brick feel more adult in a way,” Wes said. “A light brick could be a play feature that’s mostly in there to make kids go, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ But I think making it more purposeful and triggered by the actual thing that you would use in the forge helped me feel like that was something that adults would appreciate as well. And it makes cool photos!”

For more on 21325 Medieval Blacksmith, find out how the Ideas team brought Clemens’ design from concept to reality, why they resurrected the Black Falcons, why bringing back the LEGO goat is beyond them, and why the roof uses NEXO KNIGHTS shields. Plus, make sure to check out our review of the set, and order your own copy of this storied tribute to Classic Castle.

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