Lego's next Ideas project is Tintin's Moon Rocket
Releasing April 1st
Right on the heels of releasing a set of the spaceship from the upcoming film Project Hail Mary, Lego has announced the release of another iconic spacecraft: the Moon Rocket from the Tintin comics Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon! I don't think I've ever preordered something so quickly.
This set comes from Lego's Ideas lineup: a program that began in 2008 in which members of the Lego fan community can submit ideas for a potential set. If enough people (at least 10,000 of them) vote for an idea, it'll then go to Lego for review, and if they like it, the company will make a set based on it. Some of the sets that have made it through this process include The DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future, Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, NASA's Apollo Saturn V rocket, a Tuxedo and Orange cat, and a ton of others that have gone on to become viral hits.
The idea behind this kit was submitted back in 2022 and was approved last summer. The final kit (21367) features the iconic Red-and-White rocketship, and comes with minifigures of Tintin, his loyal dog Snowy, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and the hapless detectives Thomson and Thompson. It isn't quite mini-figure scaled, but it does include a cool, breakaway panel that shows the ship's bridge.
Andrew Liptak
I have a lot of nostalgia for the The Adventures of Tintin. I first encountered them while in high school, and I've read through the series many, many times in the years since.
Originally released in the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle in 1929, it's illustrated by cartoonist Hergé, who continued the strip and eventually began collecting them into books starting in the 1940s. They follow a young Belgian reporter named Tintin, who's often accompanied by his Wire Fox Terrier Snowy as he travels around the world as he reports on various reporting adventures, often with a geopolitical or crime focus. He's encountered fallen meteors, smugglers, strange afflictions, aggressive nations, Yeti, and quite a bit more, and is often accompanied by a fun cast of characters, including Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, detectives Thomson and Thompson and an opera singer named Bianca Castafiore. (I'll note that some of the earlier comics are rough – there's a bit of colonial racism to contend with.)
I loved the comics because of the sense of globetrotting adventure that they brought with them: Tintin visited all corners of the Earth (and beyond!) and ran into all sorts of challenges, and they were always exciting. I think a reread is in order.
Images: © Hergé / Tintinimaginatio
Out of the entire series, my favorite two books are Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. In the first installment, Professor Calculus summons Tintin to Syldavia to help weed out potential saboteurs on a top-secret scientific facility that's working to build a rocket to reach the moon. In the latter, Tintin and company are assigned to crew of the mission, and have to contend with a stowaway and other complications.
This particular arc is notable because it was first released in 1950, nearly two decades before the first actual lunar landing, and years before the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space in 1957. The rockets that eventually delivered men to the Moon in 1969 are quite different from the one that Hergé imagined, but he did conduct a good amount of research into what the experience of travelling to space might be like, down to the lighter lunar gravity and the general feel of the lunar surface when they do eventually arrive.
The rocket that brings Tintin and his friends to the Moon was loosely based off of the V2 bombs used by the Nazis during the Second World War, and painted in a red-and-white pattern. Unlike the real-world Saturn V rockets, this one doesn't launch in stages, which had been an early consideration in the space race, but instead flips and lands on its fins before taking off again. It's not the most practical, but it is a beautiful ship.
I sort of wonder if this could open the door to other Tintin sets. There are a bunch of kits that I can see them making, from some of the vehicles that are used in the comics to larger sets like Captain Haddock's home of Marlinspike Hall.
This new kit from Lego was an instant preorder for me: I bought the Saturn V rocket and Lunar Lander kits a couple of years ago, and I've really appreciated the attention to detail that they both have. This looks like it'll be a great addition to sit alongside them. It retails for $159 and is now available for preorder ahead of an April 1st release date. I can't wait to build it.