Vote for the sewer heroes fighting the fatberg. Vote for MOCingbird’s LEGO design!
Can you imagine a better toy than LEGO? What about a LEGO Sewer Set?
LEGO recently announced on their product idea page SEWER HEROES: FIGHTING THE FATBERG, a new model “Playfully educating kids and adults about what’s going on beneath our cities’ streets, this 360-degree underground cutaway display & play set is starring the dauntless members of a fatberg removal team at work: Recently a big fatberg had been discovered in the main sewer nearby the mixed-use residential/commercial building with the “Burgers & Fries” restaurant on the ground floor and residential units above. Now the “Sewer Heroes” have been called to take care of this indelicate situation before it’s too late.”
If you want to see this go into production, LEGO needs your support. Set up a LEGO account and vote for this great idea.
Meet MOCingbird the designer from Berlin, Germany behind the model.
I don’t work in the water industry myself, but I got interested in water and wastewater topics through my prior LEGO® IDEAS project “Basement & Sewerage”. When I was building that set back in 2020, based on a spontaneous idea out of nowhere, I designed it more or less according to what I imagined it might look like – without doing much research. Hence, I did not get all the details right.
A lot of water and wastewater professionals and the civil engineering community still liked the model when they learned about it. When “Basement & Sewerage” finally reached 10,000 supporters with their help, I decided to create one dedicated new IDEAS project for each of the two communities to say “Thanks for your support on Basement & Sewerage!” and to also give myself a new opportunity to get the details right on the next try.
I created my project “The World of Civil Engineering: Types of Bridges” for civil engineers (which also hit 10,000 supporters), the second new design was to be dedicated to the water and wastewater community.
To get all the details right this time, I did hours of research on every aspect of the build – from the truck to the kitchen to the sewer to the color of the workers’ helmets.
I also asked workers in a wastewater group on the internet for their input on some things. For the fatberg details I got in contact with two FOG experts from the industry, too.
You see, I really wanted to make sure everything was perfect this time. Some minor details had to be omitted to keep things easily recognizable, but overall I went for as much realism as possible.
I think that anything underground is one of the coolest scenarios for LEGO sets in general – so for me there’s this kind of “natural connection” between the sewer topic and my passion for creating LEGO models. For my two IDEAS sewer projects both things came together naturally.
To my knowledge there has never been any realistic sewer-themed official LEGO sets before. Since I’m always trying to come up with unique ideas no one has built before, this was yet another reason to engage with the topic.
I also liked having the opportunity to add an educational aspect to the second model, making people aware of the problems sewer blockages can cause.
MOCingbird’s design
Absolutely! Millions of professionals around the world are involved in designing, constructing, operating, managing and maintaining our cities’ crucial water and wastewater infrastructure. They keep the water cycle running smoothly at all times.
Despite their essential contributions to society, the people working in the water and wastewater industry in hundreds of different types of indispensable jobs usually remain invisible to the public. They’re not getting the amount of recognition they deserve – both in real life and in our LEGO cities.
I hope my design “Sewer Heroes: Fighting the Fatberg” can now help to make a change.
Everybody is invited go to the project page, click the “Support” button to vote.
Maybe post a comment, too, to let LEGO know why they’d like to see my design become an official set.
Thanks a lot in advance to everyone taking the time to support the project!
I still have one or two water/wastewater-related model ideas left for future projects, but the next design I’m going to submit will probably be something completely different for a change.
My Profile
