LEGO Tintin’s tricky Easter egg: ‘The IP partner was pretty particular’

The tradition of fan designer Easter eggs continues in the LEGO Ideas Tintin set, but doing so was a challenge thanks to the IP partner's influence.

LEGO Ideas sets are a joint partnership between the LEGO Ideas design team and the fan who submitted the project on the platform in the first place. It's become a tradition to include a small reference to the fan designer somewhere in the final set. 21345 Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Camera includes one of the most prominent examples.

While the tradition continues in 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket, it was more of a challenge to include such an Easter egg. The team was working with a new IP partner, with whom they had yet to build a relationship. During a roundtable interview with fan media, LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott and LEGO Design Master Ellen Bowley shared more details, starting with a tour of the interior of the rocket.

"There's literally no space in the core to do anything because of how it needs to be built," Jordan said. "I think it's more iconic to have the control room at the top."

"It's because of that scene in the comic where they look for the first time, and they see that they've left us," added Ellen. "I think that's such a nice story that we wanted to add in, rather than the sleeping quarters, where they are in a little bit, but it's not a really impactful moment. We really wanted to include that little story."

"The IP partner was very particular about the control panels looking like they do in the comic," continued Jordan. "Ellen had some of her comic books in the office, and we gave them to [Senior Graphic Designer] Anthony Palmaro, and he took them and translated them into a LEGO form. We have a little reference to [fan designer] Alexis dos Santos, as well."

We're about to reveal the exact location of this reference, in case you want to try finding it for yourself first.

"On the constellations, one of the stars makes up the constellation of his star sign," Jordan explained. "So that was something we could put in. It was quite challenging to put in some Easter eggs, because the IP partner was pretty particular about not changing much from the original. So adding stuff in was challenging. This was a subtle way of getting a reference into the set that we could do."

That constellation is for Pisces, the star sign for people who are born between February 20 and March 20. It's good to see some kind of reference to the fan designer in this upcoming LEGO Ideas set, despite how challenging the IP partner made this task. That challenge was only introduced due to the level of thought and care the partner had for the property, shaping much of the model to be more accurate and authentic.

LEGO Ideas 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket will launch on April 1 for £139.99 / $159.99 / €159.99, and pre-orders are open now. Take a closer look at the model and minifigures before then in our thorough review.

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