As plucky reporter Tintin blasts off to land on the Moon with his friends and canine companion, Snowy, the Ideas design team discusses adding LEGO characters to 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket.
The first ever LEGO Tintin set, is available to preorder now and will launch on April 4. The uses 1,283 elements and is priced at £139.99 / €159.99 / $159.99.
Neil Armstrong claims to have taken the first steps on the Moon in 1969, but brave adventurer and reporter Tintin did it before him in Destination Moon, which released in 1954 – when space travel was still a sci-fi dream. He was joined by his faithful companion, Snowy, a white fox-terrier, and best friend Captain Haddock. Although none of the beloved characters were included in the original LEGO Ideas submission by Alexis Dos Santos, the LEGO Ideas design team knew they were absolutely essential to the storytelling for 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket.
One of the memorable moments in Explorers On The Moon is when the rocket has landed safely and Tintin takes his first steps onto the moon. Hergé was inspired in this scene by the lunar maps that were available at the time and chose the Hipparchus Crater for Tintin to boldly go. It is relatively close to the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 13 touched down 15 years after the story was published.
“We knew for a fact that we needed Tintin and Captain Haddock and Snowy,” says LEGO Ideas Creative Lead Jordan Scott. “Then because of the characters going on the rocket, we needed Thomson and Thompson and the professor as well. So these were always going to be the five characters that we wanted to include. We looked at doing Professor Calculus in his boiler suit but the people at Hergé Studios wanted him in his spacesuit.”
Not far into the story as Tintin, as the crew land on the Moon, they discover that Thomson and Thompson have accidentally snuck on board. “I think Thompson and Thompson just add that bit of humour,” says Ellen, who is extremely fond of the dynamic detective duo. “The fact that they stow away in the rocket accidentally and then they wake up on the Moon [is funny]. Then there’s this lovely scene where they’re skipping on the Moon, smiling and laughing with each other in their funny green hair.”
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The green hair is a very deliberate reference to Explorers On The Moon (the sequel to Destination Moon). The follical change is a reaction to Formula 14, which they took during an earlier adventure, incorrectly thinking that it was a painkiller. “[The studio] stated that they had to have green hair because when they’re wearing their spacesuits they’re having a side effect from some medication they took and it’s what you see in the comics,” says Ellen. “We wondered whether it was iconic for these characters to have green hair. And they sais, ‘yes, when they’re in the spacesuits, definitely.’”
The spacesuits are a very different to the usual costumes that the characters wear, very much contrasting with Tintin’s famous blue sweater. But they help to tell the adventure of embarking into the unknown. “We had some internal debate about whether we should do them in their classic outfits or whether they should they be in their spacesuits,” says Jordan. “But after the studio wanted the spacesuits, that worked great for both comic stories, although it came with some challenges – we have the dome bubble helmets, as well as Snowy in a spacesuit, which is a different type of mould than if we were just doing him as a dog.”
While Snowy’s adorable new mould captures his fluffy fur, the expressions for Tintin and the crew needed to carefully balance being minifigures yet still reflecting the style of Hergé which made his characters so recognisable. “There was a lot of challenge around the expressions,” adds Jordan. “They wanted to stay as true as possible to Hergé’s work, which is very stylised, and we have a style guide for minifigures as well. So it was trying to mash the two together without it feeling too different. Then we made a new wig for Tintin because we didn’t have anything that would work for him.”
The minifigures are of course just a small part of the LEGO design journey – learn more about how the team crafted the new set.
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