LEGO Ideas team looked to feline friends when creating 21349 Tuxedo Cat

When creating the upcoming 21349 Tuxedo Cat, members of the LEGO Ideas team reveal they were inspired by their very own feline friends.

The LEGO Group recently revealed 21349 Tuxedo Cat, a 1,710 piece set that will be released on June 1, 2024 for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99. Based on a successful 10K submission by Damian Andres, the LEGO Ideas model stands over 32cm tall, can be placed in a variety of poses and even comes with two pairs of interchangeable eyes.

In a recent roundtable interview with fan media, Brick Fanatics spoke to members of the LEGO Ideas design team at length about the creation of 21349 Tuxedo Cat and the challenges they faced when it came to translating the fan build into a mass market set.

For starters, the team discussed what made Damian's original proposal such a good fit for LEGO Ideas. “I'm sure some of you may have already seen my own cat, Guinness (a Norwegian Forest cat), because she actually appeared in the building instructions for 21341 Disney Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage!,” said LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan David Scott. 

“Cats are an internet phenomenon. They're the most viewed animal on YouTube and are beloved by many people. We thought Damian’s design was a unique kind of model. We'd created animals before, such as 21342 The Insect Collection and LEGO Icons 10331 Kingfisher Bird, but we'd never worked on a domesticated creature or pet on this scale that’s so lifelike.”

Jordan went on to say, “That's what we really appreciated about Damian’s submission and we wanted to see if this would be a big success too. 21349 Tuxedo Cat has already gone viral from most of the announcement videos, which is really fun to see!”

Although not quite the same size as Damian’s design (which stood at 30.4 cm high), the scale of 21349 Tuxedo Cat still makes the finished set surprisingly realistic. “We always planned to honour the size of Damian's model.” said Jordan. “The completed build is only about two bricks taller than the original proposal, so the scale was essentially set by the fan designer build and we just went with that.”

“I actually sent Chris (McVeigh – LEGO Ideas’ senior designer) measurements for my own cat. I got her to sit down and pose, although she's a little bit wider than the completed model, but that still makes 21349 Tuxedo Cat the size of a decent house cat!”

21349 Tuxedo Cat is available to pre-order now and will launch online and in stores from June 1, 2024, priced at £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99. For more on the upcoming LEGO Ideas set, be sure to check out our full review right here.

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