Peter Reid Exo-Suit Teaser Series

[vynsane]

Starting earlier this morning, Peter "Legoloverman" Reid, creator of the LEGO Ideas #007 "Exo-Suit" project (and co-author of the book "LEGO Space: Building the Future") has posted two images to Flickr and one video to YouTube chronicling what appears to be the advent of the official Exo-Suit product.

First with this image, titled "Before the mission..."

Before the mission... by Legoloverman, on Flickr

Then with the image "Salvage Team"

Salvage team by Legoloverman, on Flickr

accompanied by a link to this video on YouTube, entitled "An Urgent Message":



Excited yet???

[ncbarrett]

Pretty cool.
I wonder if this build up is because there will be more than just the exo suit!

[vynsane]

Closer...

Alpha Zero Nine by Legoloverman, on Flickr

[vynsane]

Flickr user and blogger Allen "tormentalous" Tran has uploaded a teaser image that's reportedly from the German LEGO Store calendar:

LEGO Ideas Exo Suit (21109) German Calendar Teaser by tormentalous, on Flickr

[Mantisking]

I can't wait to see what the final version looks like.

[vynsane]

From the teaser above, it looks to be quite different, while having the general over-all same shape.

[vynsane]

There's rumblings over at Eurobricks regarding a secret message in the 'color bars' at the start of the video hinting at the color of the minifigures. Peter Reid is known for having an affinity for his custom-made green-colored spacesuits. There may be something to it, as the order of the colors goes (L-R) white, red, yellow, black, blue and green - which is, save for green, ostensibly the order in which the original spacesuit colors were released - white and red were both introduced in 1978, yellow in 1979 and black and blue in 1984. If the secret message is correct, the green bar at the end means that is the next color to be released. Or it could all be baloney. That said, the 'color bars' pattern used in the video is NOT the same order or color as 'SMPTE' color bars.

[vynsane]

Final teaser, with the description "More information in twelve hours"

Final tease by Legoloverman, on Flickr

[Brick & Blue]

I think it's interesting they are using the wood barrel in grey for the arm instead of the wheel part that the Cuusoo model had.

[ncbarrett]

There's rumblings over at Eurobricks regarding a secret message in the 'color bars' at the start of the video hinting at the color of the minifigures. Peter Reid is known for having an affinity for his custom-made green-colored spacesuits. There may be something to it, as the order of the colors goes (L-R) white, red, yellow, black, blue and green - which is, save for green, ostensibly the order in which the original spacesuit colors were released - white and red were both introduced in 1978, yellow in 1979 and black and blue in 1984. If the secret message is correct, the green bar at the end means that is the next color to be released. Or it could all be baloney. That said, the 'color bars' pattern used in the video is NOT the same order or color as 'SMPTE' color bars.

New pic up, they are indeed green!

[vynsane]

The wait is over and the official set has been revealed, via YouTube. The spacesuits are, in fact, green. The set seems to include two minifigures, one male and one female, the Exo-Suit itself and even one of Pete's signature M364 Turtles!



Huw at Brickset apparently got an advance sneak-peek of the set via a revision of the instruction booklet for 21108 "Ghostbusters" that included this picture in the back but quickly alerted the Ideas team so that it could be taken down.

The set will be available "in early August" according to the accompanying blog post.

[wyldjedi]

Not just one but two green classic space guys. I will be buying many of these sets.

[vynsane]

Brickset has posted a new picture with a side-by-side comparison of the original model vs. the official product.

21109 Exo-Suit by Brickset, on Flickr

[lego the hutt]

Were these designs based on something? Mechwarrior, battletech or some other theme? Or are they simply a mechanical suit created by the designer?

[vynsane]

^ Naturally, I'm sure various aspects were influenced by any number of sci-fi mechs, but at the end of the day it's fully a product of Pete's imagination, not based on any one particular intellectual property, which makes it the first of its kind from Cuusoo/Ideas. All other sets so far have either been based on a real-world scientific exploration machine (Shinkai, Hayabusa, Curiosity), a movie (BttF, Ghostbusters), or videogame (Minecraft).

The r/LEGO subreddit thread about the reveal has some interesting Q&A with Mark "LEGO_Nabii" Stafford, the designer in charge of modifying the original submission into an approved official design and availability. Some highlights:

On the design process:

[–]abrahamalincoln 22 points 1 day ago

Been waiting form this one! It's interesting to see how different it is from the original build. It looks like they changed literally changed every component. I understand why many of the changes were made but it removes some of the nice details. If you never saw the original, this set would be the coolest thing ever but having studied the original for many months, it's a bit of a bummer seeing the changes. Now I'm not saying that I'm super stoked and won't buy four of them, it's just a bit more change than I wanted.

[–]Lego_Nabii 135 points 1 day ago*

Sorry, I stuck as close as I could. Pete's original is fragile as hell. built with parts that don't exist anymore, are only single stud connections being asked to carry too much weight or are connected in 'illegal' ways and it requires some skill to pose.

This one had to be stable and this necessitated many changes, my aim was to keep as much greebling as possible while maintaining the feel, look and scale of the original.

[–]abrahamalincoln 14 points 1 day ago

No, I know. I knew that it would never make it to production in its fragile state. I think you did a great job given the circumstances and like I said, I will buy four of them and enjoy the hell out each set, greebling and modifying with the mindset of a mad scientist! I also didn't expect my mild ranting to be addressed by the creator but since your here....a couple of questions for you.

When you guys take on theses projects there's obviously a lot of things to take into consideration: build, stability, price and playability to name a few. How many of your decisions are based on economics or the bottom line? Do you try and use as few pieces to get the needed effect to keep the cost down? What kind of rules come from the top brass? How many iterations do you do before you reach the final build? So many more questions!!

Also, thanks for checking in to see what we think. I think that's awesome!

[–]Lego_Nabii 21 points 23 hours ago

Lots of questions!

Every single LEGO element has a production cost that is known. When we start a model we are given a total production cost that our model should come in under. Apart from that it's entirely up to the designer/design teams to get the model looking good, stable and polished. (So we have a total cost the pieces should all up to less than.) I never try to reduce the number of pieces I try to get as much into a model as I can with the budget available, but the budget must be stuck to.

However with Ideas (ex-Cuusoo) I was given an expected retail price - told I know what sort of total that should be and asked to just make it look right. So I pushed it. First took about 5 full loops (and 20 smaller ones on various bits) to sort out the mech, was told the price was okay, so added a second figure, still okay, added the turtle, still okay, added something that you'll probably see when they reveal the back of the box, still okay! Added even more - told I was too expensive, what was going on with this model? So I took that extra thing out (a bit of Pete style wall greebling) refined what I had and called it a day!

Rules from the top are on legality of building and making sure the final model can be played with without too many bits falling off. Pete's original mech lasted about 3 seconds. The final set is pretty sturdy, though a few of the greebles are prone to unclipping when played with and the antenna pings off far too often! Apart from that it might have made it into an 8+ playtheme like Agents or Galaxy Squad without too many more changes.

On Green spacesuits

Thank you for the official explanation, the original did look really fragile and, as you said, used techniques not deemed legal for official sets. Whoever had the idea to make the classic space figs green is also a genius.

[–]Lego_Nabii 14 points 23 hours ago*

Given the limitations (the 'assembly' of the minifigure torso had to already be in present production with the same colour body, arms and hands, and I could add a new print) there were three possible choices for this classic spaceman colour: blue, because of Benny, this seemed too obvious, black, due to numerous minifigures (Darth Vader etc.) but that blended in to the mech too much, or a new colour, green, thanks to ninja-turtles.

Pete has had a green decal CS man he made himself for years and I always liked it, so I suggested we go for green to him. He was all over it! So we both pushed for the green.

On availability:

[–]SachielMF 1 point 1 day ago

Thank you for the insight. May I ask how many of them are going to ship upon release? Demand seems to go through the roof (though the internet isn't the best scale). It seems like LEGO chose this for production because so many people are expected to buy more than one. So, surely they're trying to meet the demand, right? If you are allowed to talk about that stuff of course.

[–]Lego_Nabii 6 points 22 hours ago

This is currently a single production run - I'm not sure of the figures - but if you see it and you want it then buy it, at the moment when it's gone it's gone for good. Don't be disappointed. (Not trying to do a hard sell here, this is currently the plan!)

[–]404_11 2 points 17 hours ago

Ho my, well, if the demand is ultra-mega-super-high (like the minecraft one), will it be produced again for another round?

please say yes, please say yes, please say yes....

[–]Lego_Nabii 2 points 23 hours ago

At the moment the plan is for a single run. Don't dawdle on this one! (sorry.)

On color choice:

[–]imtootiredforthis 1 point 1 day ago

I think it looks amazing as is. Would your preference have been to have pretty much the entire suit be light gray like the original, or are the barrels the only part you would have liked to be able to change from the color they are in the final set?

[–]Lego_Nabii 7 points 22 hours ago

No, I wouldn't have done it all light grey even if I could have - it would have given a horrible building experience, even with adult sets we can't include certain parts in the same colour as other very similar parts, the finding and accidentally placing wrong parts process become far too annoying! However I would have liked to change maybe three or four more parts to light grey or silver - and one of the light grey parts to dark grey!

Though I should point out though I love Pete's grey greebles, I also have my own style which is much more colourful and there might be some personal preference coming out!

[–]imtootiredforthis 1 point 20 hours ago

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I'm partial to the lighter gray since I grew up with the early classic space sets that were all light gray and blue. Any chance we'll ever see your ideally-colored version posted online sometime after the set is released? It would be interesting to see the differences. Actually, I was thinking of ordering a couple of the barrels in light grey so I can check out how it looks once I have the set.

[–]Lego_Nabii 2 points 13 hours ago

My personal preference would have been to bring in blue and make this much more of a classic blue/grey space colour scheme, but both Pete and the Ideas team objected! Pete because this is his baby and he wanted it a grey as possible - and the Ideas team because that's what people had voted for and I had to respect that!

I'll probably build my perfect version at some point. It'll turn up in my Flickr stream.

[Kintar]

Anyone have a rough idea size wise? It appears as though it would be twice the size of a big figure like Hulk.

[vynsane]

It would appear that it would tower over a "bigfig", frankly, but it would be a good way to get a sense of scale.

[legohunter]

Nice exo-suit. After reading more, I found out that there was a reason LEGO made the suit differently from original design. It was not a bad idea to make the suit more stable and soild otherwise it will fall apart after build. Being said that, I still like the original version more. It will be cool if the box set includes the instruction manual of the original version.

Other than the exo-suit itself, I am surprised to see the classic space minifigures in green color. It seems there is great chance of more color coming up in future, like orange.

[Mantisking]

321 pieces, according to this source. Here's a partial review from Brickset.

[vynsane]

Aaaand here's the FULL review from Toys N Bricks!