LEGO Ideas 21350 Jaws design team talks set challenges and details

The LEGO Ideas design team has revealed some of the unique challenges and fan-favourite details that went into creating 21350 Jaws.

The LEGO Group recently revealed 21350 Jaws, a 1,497-piece set based on both the iconic Steven Spielberg summer blockbuster and a successful LEGO Ideas submission by Jonny Campbell. Priced at £129.99 / $149.99 / €149.99, the upcoming 18+ model will be available exclusively for Insiders to add to their collections from August 3, while everyone else can pick up the build from August 6.

In a recent roundtable interview with fan media, Brick Fanatics had the opportunity to talk with the LEGO Ideas design team regarding 21350 Jaws and the challenges they encountered when creating the set. That included considering how to balance making the model both an impressive display piece in its own right and also one that could be played with.

“We took what Jonny had originally made, which was the shark and the boat separately,” said senior designer Ollie Gregory, “and paired those with the updates he was working on for the project, which included a version of the display stand. So it was a natural merging of those two ideas. It has a LEGO diorama-style base, but all the components come off if you want to either replicate the original fan submission or integrate those models into your own builds.

“Because we set it on a diorama base quite early on, it helped dictate the level of detail and what we could do with it. We could have put more play features into it, but we saw the set sitting alongside [76956 T. rex Breakout], which is a good benchmark. That has a high level of detail, but also all the pieces are removable, and there’s not necessarily any stud shooters or anything like that, so we steered towards a more detailed orientation.”

When it came to including Bruce the shark (as nicknamed by Spielberg himself), the LEGO Ideas team had to consider a few options. “We figured that a lot of people might be disappointed if they didn’t get the full shark,” explained design manager Jordan David Scott, “but how do you integrate an entire shark into the display? Because they don’t float on top of the water, they’re submerged, at least more than the model itself.

“Universal Studios also asked us to include the full shark and we were like, ‘How do we do this?’ And then Ollie came up with the smart idea of having a connector that just splits, so there’s no rebuilding or anything like that. It’s just a simple connection, which is really smart.”

Thanks to 21350 Jaws’ size and piece count, the LEGO Ideas team was able to incorporate many of their own fan-favourite details into the model and utilise existing pieces in new ways. “There’s a little newspaper that not only mentions Jonny as the victim of the shark,” said graphic designer Nathan Davis, “but it also features a wonderful rendition of Quint’s [chalkboard drawing of a] shark!”

“I really like Hooper’s hat,” Jordan elaborated, “because it was being made for LEGO DREAMZzz around the same time that we were looking at Hooper. We were looking at him [asking] does he have a hat, or does he just have the curly hair? [The DREAMZzz piece] fit perfectly and we just did a colour change to make it different.”

“For me,” Ollie said, “one of the funny things that I like are the black eyes of Bruce the shark. I had so much fun trying to get those to work in a way that was legal and gave the shark character. That was quite a late change – it went from being the microphone to being ball joints with a bar that have more reflection.”

21350 Jaws will be available for Insiders members to purchase from August 3, with a wider launch taking place from August 6. The LEGO Ideas set is priced at £129.99 in the UK, $149.99 in the US and €149.99 in Europe.

For more on 21350 Jaws, be sure to check out our full review of the LEGO Ideas model here.

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