You may have seen the lovely new LEGO “prototype set” revealed yesterday, on April 1st: The Majestic Horse. Here at BrickNerd we thought it would be a cool idea to tell you how the not-so-majestic-after-all horse came to be, so read on to find out how an “official” LEGO April Fools’ set was born!

We’ll have to start at the beginning though. For BrickNerd, it started nine days before April 1st, when we were given the opportunity from LEGO, along with a very select few other Recognized LEGO Fan Media, to participate in “a prototype review program”. We were sworn to secrecy and told that every week this Spring, LEGO would work with selected content creators, revealing one prototype set per week—”prototype” meaning a LEGO set that for some reason didn’t make it to the product stage yet.

Needless to say, some alarm bells went off. LEGO is known for being extremely tight-lipped about anything that doesn’t make it all the way through the development process (because, among other reasons, even if it didn’t make it this time, the set—or parts of it—might turn out to be useful for something else later). The photos accompanying the brief were also a bit… unusual. You will have seen the box art by now, and that was what we were shown. It was very nice, yes, but just slightly off.

Finally, in the request there were references to jokes and “having a lot of laughs over the upcoming months”, the deadlines were incredibly short (remember, we were told about the set nine days before April 1st and LEGO was going to ship something to us, physically) and… the set number was the dead giveaway: 010423. While this may seem wrong to all you North Americans, that is the way the date of April 1st this year is traditionally formatted in Europe.

Was LEGO trying to prank us? Or did they want us to prank everybody else on their behalf? They certainly weren’t telling us! So… what did we do?

Calling Their Bluff

Well, we reached out to LEGO and said that we were a bit perplexed regarding what they actually wanted from us, as this was clearly an April Fools’ joke—even if they weren’t telling us in clear text that it was. In return, we were told that we were the first to figure out that it was a joke and that we would be free to do whatever we wanted with the set. Or leave it alone if we decided it was not for us.

From our perspective, what’s not to like? Even with the oddity of the request, LEGO would ship an incredibly rare set to us, and we could do anything we liked with it… or not. We started brainstorming, because here at BrickNerd we try not to do regular set reviews and instead try to be creatively different: building the set in an unusual place; modifying it into something different; treating it as something it clearly isn’t; smashing it up; offering it to somebody it has a special meaning to… you get the idea. This time, my idea was to do a round-up of fan-made April Fools’ sets and hoaxes. So that was what I was originally planning on.

Somewhere in there is the part of my LEGO collection that hasn’t already been shipped to our new home town

In hindsight, what should probably have popped into our minds at that point was my very bad postal track record. If somebody is shipping something to me, chances are it gets delivered to my neighbour or it is returned to sender three months later with additional content without having visited me first. So it was really no surprise that, even though I did receive an email with the instructions in a password-protected and print-protected PDF file, the bricks were nowhere to be seen.

Normally I would just have tried to pull the parts from my own collection, but due to an impending move, all my LEGO is packed up and inaccessible. And when the box with the set finally arrived—two days before April 1st, with me working 10-hour shifts at my regular job—there was just no way to get a proper article done in time, especially as LEGO originally requested some photos in advance (before I even got the bricks, really) so they could include excerpts in their own social media content to be sent out on the day.

The box. Slightly squashed, obviously, couriers will be couriers

The Build Process

I did build the set, though, on the 31st of March. Or, I say “set”, but what arrived was a standard FedEx box with a thin four-litre freezer storage plastic bag inside, rated to endure -30°C, complete with “Dato” (date) and “Indhold” (contents) printed in Danish on it. It is most certainly, and probably will always be, the most non-official-looking thing I have every received from LEGO.

The “Dato” and “Indhold” fields haven’t even been filled out!

I started building, and even if we hadn’t been informed from the start that this would be a bit of a rough build, due to the “prototypical” nature of the set, it would very quickly have become clear that there were certainly building techniques applied and shortcuts taken in here that would certainly never have made it into a finished LEGO product. Some bricks were floating around unattached in the instructions, some elements were clearly being strained, and some steps felt illogical compared to regular LEGO sets:

At this point I had obviously been through the instructions already—of course I paged through them the second they arrived in my inbox!—so I was aware of the, shall we say, dubious and slightly unnatural nature of the finished “horse”. The build process was fun, though, and I particularly liked the foliage on the base and the rather lovely little log fences that the horse is jumping over. The body of the horse is lovely, too, as is the whole original horse model, really, as pictured on the box art.

I’m not big on Star Wars, but… AT-ST, anyone?

There was one part missing, and the four dark red quarter-circle 1x1 tiles that form part of the colour pattern on the (very pretty) saddle had been mistakenly supplied in regular red instead. This was undoubtedly a result of the parts being hand-picked, something we had been informed of earlier (and if we hadn’t, the freezer bag would kind of have given that away anyway). But all in all, it was enjoyable… and obviously, being a sucker for rare stuff—and the fun stories that come along with it— knowing that I was putting together a unique LEGO set that less then ten other people in the world had access to was a nice added bonus, even if the end result differed slightly from the box art!

And that was pretty much it. I had made my peace (piece?) with the fact that the other participating RLFMs would share their stories, whatever they might be, on April 1st, and that we probably would not have anything horse-related aside from our own April Fools article. But then…

April Fools’ Day

Brickset’s database entry for 010423 The Majestic Horse

The big day arrived, and I was obviously very curious about what the other outlets would do with their copies. Brickset served up a deadpan and mockingly serious review, which feels totally in their spirit, noticing that the head “strays from the source material somewhat”. That’s one way of putting it! My favourite bit about Brickset’s treatment of the set, though, is that they have actually put it into their database, as 010423 The Majestic Horse. I wonder how many people will tick the box for “I want this set”…?

Tiago Catarino, former LEGO designer with his own (great) YouTube channel, also did a review with his, I quote from the video, “biased LEGO fanboy hot takes that you all know and love”. In his review, Tiago “attempts” to find clues as to why the set reportedly didn’t make it past the prototype stage, noting that “there’s a decent amount of repetition, which I love about LEGO sets.” Muhahaha.

YouTuber Emmasaurus mentioned something that I also thought was very strange while building the hor… eh, doge, namely that the clutch of the bricks felt unusual. They had to be pushed very firmly to stick properly together without leaving gaps—bricks that don’t stick!? That’s a double April Fools joke. I also found two more RLFMs that produced content about the set: AustrianBrickFan and Brick Finds & Flips (maybe a logical choice, given the rarity of the set). Since I’ve seen a video from TikToker Ethan the Artist too.

Was That All…?

Thinking that BrickNerd wouldn’t be able to add much to this story, I enjoyed looking at the other videos and reading the articles… and the comments following them. And then something clicked into place, something that had been bugging me throughout the whole build process. Something’s very clearly off with this section of the horse’s instructions. Can you figure out what?

This might not be blatantly obvious to anybody who isn’t a diehard LEGO fan, but here at BrickNerd we can’t help but notice that there’s something here that LEGO themselves would never do. You see, the terms “Light Bluish Gray”, “Dark Tan” and “Tan” aren’t LEGO colour names—they are BrickLink colour names. And even though LEGO now owns BrickLink, the company itself never refers to these colours by these names. In LEGO terminology, they are “Medium Stone Grey”, “Sand Yellow” and “Brick Yellow” (more on this in contributor Chris’ lovely colour guide article here).

What does that mean, then? In my opinion, probably whoever designed this model wasn’t a LEGO designer at all, but an AFOL outside the company. And reading the comments, there were clear clues—look right here, below Tiago Catarino’s video:

Hmmm. I know that guy! That’s Nathan (Nate) Dias, who won the very first edition of LEGO Masters, released in the UK in 2017, together with Steve Guinness, fan designer of the LEGO Ideas Typewriter (the forerunner for which was, incidentally, part of their winning build in the LEGO Masters finals). And then I was made aware that Steve had posted this on Facebook:

Two clear suspects then—and that’s your typical BrickNerd angle right there: telling the story behind the story. So I reached out to Nate… and he agreed to shed some further light on how this whole thing came to be!

Nate’s Background Story

“Since winning the first series of LEGO Masters, we occasionally get asked to help out on projects with the LEGO Group. Originally, Steve was asked to do this project, but he was already busy and this project had a short timeframe—so he asked for my help.”

Left to right: Matthew Ashton (LEGO V.P. of Design and LEGO Masters UK judge), Steve Guinness, Nate Dias, and Melvin Odoom, LEGO Masters UK host. Note the typewriter in the bottom of the picture—that’s the prototype for the Ideas typewriter

“The brief was to create a beautiful horse for the box art, but then an ugly horse for the actual set. As the week (only one week) went on, the brief changed several times. We decided that we would design one model each: one of us would do the beautiful horse, and one would design the ugly horse. To decide this, we tossed a coin at Bricktastic. I won the toss and got to design the one for the box! And then Steve tweaked it to make the doge version.”

So this thing was going on under my very nose, while I was walking around chatting to people—Steve and Nate included!—at Fairy Bricks’ Bricktastic event in Manchester in February!

Now, before we move on I should mention that if any of you have looked at that adorable(?) doge face and felt that there’s something familiar about it, it’s not necessarily just you recognising it from the many memes—there actually is a LEGO version of the meme dating back seven and a half years, made by LEGO pop culture specialist (and long-time BrickNerd fan) Iain Heath, aka Ochre Jelly:

LEGO Doge by Iain Heath, aka Ochre Jelly. Image via Flickr

Iain showed this MOC back at BrickCon in Seattle in 2015 and posted the above picture on Flickr with a “free to use” note, welcoming other people to make their own memes using it. As you can see, Steve has clearly taken that statement to heart because the April Fools’ version is nearly identical… but at least that means that Iain, too, can rest assured that his design has been found worthy of being the punchline of an “official” set featuring the LEGO logo. Box ticked!

Back to Nate’s story: “We officially started designing the weekend of Bricktastic, and our design work was done within a week, spending so many hours outside of our teaching hours on the project. The instructions and box art were done by a vendor at LEGO.”

Sadly, we weren’t sent the actual box, which looks like a thing of beauty, certainly compared to the battered FedEx box I received! Nevertheless, Steve (who has admittedly already had his bit of Ideas fame) and Nate could bask in the glory of being actual LEGO set designers for a day.

“It's been amazing to see the reactions today. People actually think that my work is suitable to be a LEGO set—and not just that, but a 18+ set too! We are being sent a set each next week, I can't wait to receive mine. I feel out of this world to be a LEGO set designer for a day. It's fantastic to see a model I designed on the box art of a LEGO set, and a lot of the model I designed (with changed head and front legs, etc.) being built by LEGO fans around the world too! An amazing experience and opportunity.”

And then only one last question remains, one that I'm sure soooo many of you want to ask…

“I expect that a lot of people will be getting in touch with us for instructions soon. Sadly, we are under strict instructions to not share instructions or files with anybody. So sorry guys, we can't give you anything!”

Nate has already told me, though, that he’ll be heading straight to BrickLink to buy pieces for a second set so that he can have his own, original Majestic Horse model sitting next to the April Fools set on his shelf. That sounds like a good idea, by the way… now let me see if I can reverse-engineer the head from those box art pictures…!

The desk at which this article was written. I don’t know about you, but I think this gives LEGO’s own notorious ambience model shots a good run for their money!

So now you know the full story behind the time that LEGO created their own April Fool set. We can’t imagine the amount of work this took to pull off, and we look forward to what they come up with for next year.

Were you fooled by any of the mock reviews of this fake LEGO prototype set? Would you have bought the Majestic Horse—or maybe the doge version? Or do you have a better LEGO April Fools’ prank that you want to share with us? Let us know in the comments!

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