LEGO Ideas The Nightmare Before Christmas team talks minifigure challenges
A number of minifigure hurdles had to be overcome when it came to the LEGO Ideas design team assembling 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Fans of Tim Burton’s creepy classic animated movie will soon be able to get their hands on 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas for £169.99 / $199.99 / €199.99 . The 2,193-piece LEGO Ideas set will be available for Insiders members first from September 3, with a wider launch planned for all from September 6.
One of the many highlights of 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas is its character selection. Both Jack Skellington and Sally have been updated from their 2019 71024 Disney Series 2 appearance, with Santa Claus, Lock, Shock and Barrel completing the minifigure line-up, plus a Zero the dog figure and a brick-built version of The Mayor.
In a recent roundtable interview with the LEGO Ideas design team, Brick Fanatics discovered some of the challenges that had to be tackled when it came to creating (and recreating) the characters included with 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas.
“Some of the monsters that appear in Halloween Town are weird and don’t really translate very well to LEGO because they’re super-spindly,” explained LEGO Ideas creative lead, Jordan David Scott. “So that’s something to keep in mind when we’re looking at which minifigures work, is how do we translate them into a LEGO style? We’ve seen Jack and Sally before in the [CMF] series, but how do we make them different this time? How do we try and improve them – if we can improve them?”
When it came to Jack Skellington and Sally, Jordan went on to say that there were some specific production hurdles that had to be overcome before they could add the characters to 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas.
“For themes like LEGO Icons and LEGO Ideas, we typically cannot rely on existing minifigures because we’re bringing in new IPs. So yes, Jack and Sally had been done before in the CMF and that is typically a theme that is an in and out in a few months. They are exclusive figures, and then they’re gone.”
“We had to make Jack’s bowtie [piece] again because it doesn’t exist anymore. So the design has changed very subtly, where you probably can’t even notice, and that’s just for manufacturing reasons. We really wanted to try and improve on Jack’s silhouette, which is why now he has the [long] legs and arms from Avatar, just to emphasize how tall and lanky he is.”
The LEGO Ideas team faced similar issues when it came to including Sally, another CMF minifigure that required some additional work.
“With Sally,” said Jordan, “her [hair piece] in the collectible minifigure series also doesn’t exist anymore, so we had to find one that looked as close to that as possible, which I think is Malfoy’s or Gandalf’s, and change the colour to dark red. So even though elements have existed in the past, there’s no guarantee that they still exist, and sometimes we just have to make things again.
So that’s the case for these particular IPs. Hocus Pocus was the same and Jaws. Everything had to be pretty much new. So that puts a lot of constraints on us, because then we can’t do everything.”
“I’ve also seen people online asking if we just reused Santa Claus from other LEGO sets, but it’s actually a unique torso because it has black gloves and it’s got a candy cane stuck to him under his beard [and on his back].”
You’ll be able to check out the full selection of minifigures included with 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas for yourself when the LEGO Ideas set arrives from September 3, priced at £169.99 / $199.99 / €199.99.
To find out much more about 21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas, be sure to check out our in-depth review right here.
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Author Profile
- From video game journalism to kids’ publishing, I’ve been there, seen it, done it and worn the T-shirt. I was also the editor of the first-ever official LEGO magazine way back when, LEGO Adventures. I have a passion for movies, comic books, tech and video games, with a wallet that’s struggling to keep up with my LEGO set wish list.
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