LEGO Ideas celebrates 30 years of Sonic by approving a fan project!
Designed by 24-year-old English Viv Grannell, passionate about bricks as much as the video game Sonic, she thought up her project drawing inspiration from Sonic Mania, SEGA's acclaimed 2017 cross-platform experience and including one-level iconic characters and environments in particular of the latter: the Green Hill Zone. The project was presented on the LEGO Ideas platform at the beginning of 2019 and after just under a year Viv Grannell joined the 10K Club, that is the group of AFOL Designers who reach 10,000 votes for their project. The milestone reached allowed it to enter the next phase, that of the review process. It is during this phase that the review board (made up of Designers, marketing staff, part designers, production managers, etc.) decides whether or not a project will become an official set that will be put into production by the LEGO Group. The review phase assigned to the project was that reserved for projects that had reached the milestone of 10,000 votes between January and May 2020, the results of which were communicated during the last month of September 2020: the project presented on LEGO Ideas "Earth Globe" by Guillaume Roussel (Disneybrick55 on LEGO Ideas) and the "Legendary Stratocaster" project by Tomáš Letenay (TOMOELL on LEGO Ideas) who participated in the "Music to our Ears" competition have been approved, while that of Sonic Mania - Green Hill Zone is was held on hold because it required further investigation and verification (reasonably in terms of licensing agreements with SEGA) by the review board.
Viv Grannell commented on her "victory":
“I've been passionate about the world of Sonic for most of my life and it suited me so well to become a LEGO set that I spent about a year trying to make this dream come true. I'm used to having the support of friends and family, but having the support of 10,000 people was really exciting. The fact that my project was selected to become a real LEGO set was the most exciting secret I've ever had to keep! "
The Sonic Mania Green Hill Zone project will now move to the product development phase in collaboration with SEGA and once finalized, it will be available worldwide. Regarding the partnership with the LEGO Group, Jason Rice, Director of Brand Licensing at SEGA Europe Ltd, said:
“At SEGA we have always encouraged fans to take part in the history of the Sonic franchise through their creations. and it's wonderful to see this tradition carry on through the LEGO Ideas program. We are thrilled to partner with Viv and the LEGO Group and hope to inspire fans to continue creating their own unique Sonic The Hedgehog ™ experiences for generations to come. ”
In his Sonic Mania Green Hill Zone project, AFOL Designer Viv Grannell has made sure to encapsulate Sonic the Hedgehog's past and future, as the franchise will celebrate its 30th anniversary right in June 2021. Featuring a wide variety of (also) Classic Sonic inspired elements, the set will offer LEGO collectors and Sonic fans a truly supersonic LEGO experience.
Fun fact: friend and super expert AFOL Jody Padulano points out that Knuckles, Sonic's enemy / friend, has what have always appeared to be 2 × 3 plates on his shoes. Look at the picture below: how to blame him?
(Photo credits: socialcompare.com)
It is not the first time that Sonic The Hedgehog gets made into bricks . Many of you will remember that the icon of the SEGA characters was the protagonist of a set: we saw him as a character in the LEGO Dimensions video game and as a real minifigure to be used in the video game itself.
(Photo credits: amazon.it)
»Click here to buy the set on Amazon.it
The most interesting thing is that with the approval (and the consequent production) of this new LEGO Ideas set, the LEGO Group will soon have sets dedicated to both Super Mario, the icon of Nintendo characters, and Sonic, the icon of SEGA characters. Two eternal rivals, both paladins of their respective and opposing factions in the console war between the two companies, a clash that is told very well in the book "Console Wars: The battle that marked a generation" by Blake J. Harris (»Click here to buy the book on Amazon.it), a business-thriller that tells the behind the scenes of when SEGA, a small, fragmentary video game company headed by a team of visionaries and revolutionaries, fought against the giant Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry . Released in American bookstores in August 2014, upon its arrival on the shelves Sony Pictures and the producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network) had already acquired the rights, hiring Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to direct it and who sign the preface of the second edition of the book published in 2015. The docu-film is already available on Amazon Prime Video, but at the moment only for access from the United States.
(Photo credits: MegaNerd editorial staff)
(Photo credits: Amazon | CBS | Paramount +)
