July 30, 2025 • 58 mins
“you could just fill that gap on that second shelf” [EMPT]
If you discovered Sherlock Holmes when you were young, you might still recall the joy of your first reading. The world of Baker Street is fun, so much so that some adults still extend the Great Detective's career with their own stories. Many adults also enjoy LEGO as a nostalgic, relaxing, and creative outlet. That’s why we were eager to talk to LEGO Group Design Master Antica Bracanov and Graphic Designer Crisy Dyment about their creation of the LEGO Sherlock Holmes Book Nook. Joining us from LEGO’s offices in Billund, Denmark, Antica and Crisy take us through the concept, the process, and the community of designers, engineers, and model-makers who brought it to life. You’ll hear how the key moments and objects Sherlock Holmes fans will recognize were selected, and how they were adapted to fit LEGO’s style and humor. You’ll find there are some self-described “Sherlock Holmes nerds” on the LEGO team, too.Speaking of Sherlockian nerds (guilty), we share upcoming events for the first half of September in our "The Learned Societies" segment. Then, you will not want to miss this episode’s Canonical Couplet quiz, which this time is only open to our paying Patreon and Substack supporters. This episode’s prize is a LEGO Sherlock Holmes Book Nook! Send your answer to comment @ ihearofsherlock.com by August 14, 2025 at 11:59 a.m. EST. If your correct answer is selected at random, you’ll win!
Don't forget to become a supporter of the show on the platform of your choice (Patreon | Substack).
Download [Save As] | File size: 55.6 MB, 58:07
Listen to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere anywhere you get podcasts
Leave I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sponsors
Would you care to advertise with us? You can find more information here. Let's chat!
Links
Goodpods To
If you discovered Sherlock Holmes when you were young, you might still recall the joy of your first reading. The world of Baker Street is fun, so much so that some adults still extend the Great Detective's career with their own stories. Many adults also enjoy LEGO as a nostalgic, relaxing, and creative outlet. That’s why we were eager to talk to LEGO Group Design Master Antica Bracanov and Graphic Designer Crisy Dyment about their creation of the LEGO Sherlock Holmes Book Nook. Joining us from LEGO’s offices in Billund, Denmark, Antica and Crisy take us through the concept, the process, and the community of designers, engineers, and model-makers who brought it to life. You’ll hear how the key moments and objects Sherlock Holmes fans will recognize were selected, and how they were adapted to fit LEGO’s style and humor. You’ll find there are some self-described “Sherlock Holmes nerds” on the LEGO team, too.Speaking of Sherlockian nerds (guilty), we share upcoming events for the first half of September in our "The Learned Societies" segment. Then, you will not want to miss this episode’s Canonical Couplet quiz, which this time is only open to our paying Patreon and Substack supporters. This episode’s prize is a LEGO Sherlock Holmes Book Nook! Send your answer to comment @ ihearofsherlock.com by August 14, 2025 at 11:59 a.m. EST. If your correct answer is selected at random, you’ll win!
Don't forget to become a supporter of the show on the platform of your choice (Patreon | Substack).
Download [Save As] | File size: 55.6 MB, 58:07
Listen to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere anywhere you get podcasts
Leave I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sponsors
- MX Publishing has a number of new Sherlock Holmes books out by various authors. You'll want to check out the breadth of their offerings by visiting the site to learn more.
Would you care to advertise with us? You can find more information here. Let's chat!
Links
- Sherlock Holmes Book Nook (LEGO)
- Sherlock Holmes Book Nook (Barnes & Noble)
- Other episodes mentioned:
- Episode 110: Sociable and Clubbable
- The Learned Societies: Sherlockian Calendar
- Find all of our relevant links and social accounts at linktr.ee/ihearofsherlock.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Support for I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere comes from MX Publishing,
with the largest catalog of new Sherlock Holmes books in
the world. New novels, biographies, graphic novels, and short story
collections about Sherlock Holmes find them at MS publishing dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And listeners like you who support us on Patreon or
substack sign up for exclusive benefits at Patreon dot com,
slash I Hear of Sherlock or I Hear of Sherlock
dot Substack dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, Episode three hundred and fifteen,
The Sherlock Holmes Lego Booknook.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I Head of Sherlocke it very well, since you became
a drumming man.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
In a world where it's always eighteen ninety five. It's
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, a podcast for devotees of
mister Sherlock Holmes, the world's first unofficial consult detective.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
I've Heard of You Before, Holmes, The Medland Holmes, The
Busybody Homes, the stockland Yard, Jacket Office.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
The Game's afoot As we interview authors, editors, creators, and
other prominent Sherlockians on various aspects of the great detective
in popular culture.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
As we go to press, sensational developments have been reported.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So join your hosts Scott Monty and Bert Walder as
they talk about what's new in the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Time.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I'm Mill Curtis. This is I hear of Sherlock Everywhere.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Now here are your hosts, Scott Marty and Bert Walder.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh, thank you so much, mister Bill Curtis. It's a pleasure. Welcome,
Welcome every one too. I hear of Sherlock Everywhere. The
first podcast for Sherlock Holmes dets where it's always eighteen
ninety five. I'm Scott Monty, I'm Burt Wolder and Bert.
Have you have you picked up all your lego bricks
(02:14):
off of the floor so you don't injure yourself on
your way to bed tonight?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yes, I've picked up all of them except that one.
Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, a wonderful security system, you know, just toss out
a bunch of the smallest pieces of lego out onto
the floor and prevent any intruder from getting through your
house without making a noise. And that well, that's of course,
if they take the shoes off before they come trapsing
(02:44):
across the room.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's true. Well, in my house, if I cut, if
I gather up all the Legos and annoys, the mice
because they're always making these little ladders to reach the refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's all about teamwork. It is it is well, teamwork
is the name of the game. We're going to hear
that today in our interview with Antica and Chrissy, two
members of the Lego development team and design team that
came up with the concept of the Booknook and gave
(03:17):
it life in the face of Sherlock Holmes and two
to twenty one b Baker Street. It's a fascinating conversation
that takes you behind the scenes of what it's like
to collaborate with team members and to come up with
concepts and where it eventually landed. And you'll want to
stay tuned after the interview as well, because we have
(03:40):
the canonical couplet. It's our Sherlockian quiz program where we
give you two lines of poetry and we task you
with determining which Sherlock Holmes story it represents. In this case,
this is where we need the timpany.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Rollyes, Yes, is very stately and grandeur leg We have
as a prize the winner of this episode's canonical couple
of quiz. Are you ready.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
A Sherlock Holmes Lego booknook? Yes, it is a huge value.
It goes for one hundred and thirty dollars at retail,
so stay tuned for what you need to do to
participate in that and potentially win that wonderful prize. Meanwhile,
(04:32):
I want to remind you that if you would like
to support the show, you can do that in a
couple of ways, via substack or Patreon. You pick whichever
works for you. We take credit cards on both of them.
We also can work directly with your bank account for
as little as a dollar a month, you can help
support what we do here, help the production, help with
(04:53):
the everything that goes into editing and hosting files and
keeping files up. You know, we now have we have
episodes that go all the way back to two thousand
and seven, but please don't go listen to those early episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
They're terrible.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
It sounds like amateur hour compared to believe it or not,
what we've learned along the way maybe hard to tell,
but we do encourage you to become a supporter of
the show because that helps us do what we do,
and it also gives you the chance to listen to
the show ad free if you so choose. And we
(05:30):
also have special benefits for our supporters occasionally, like exclusive content,
bonus content, and in this case, and you'll if you're
interested in that lego say, you're going to want to
hear this. This episode's canonical couplet quiz requires you to
be a supporter of the show, right, So there's an
incentive if you needed an excuse. All you have to
(05:54):
do is become a supporter of the show to become
eligible to win. Of course you have to answer too,
but that's another thing. We'll talk about that when we
get to the quiz. But we do appreciate your support
on Patreon at patreon dot com, slash I Hear of
Sherlock and on substack at Ihear of Sherlock dot substack
dot com. Both of those that links are available in
(06:16):
the show notes, and we encourage you to check us
out there. Oh, that's stately music. That intro there means
that it is the time of the show when we
turn to the learned societies. These are the Sherlockian societies
(06:38):
that meet out in the various locales where they happen
to exist. Maybe there's one near you, and look, if
there isn't, maybe you can form a society to help
you determine how you'd like to meet with other Sherlockians
in your area. Actually, I think we did a We
did a whole show called Sociable and Clubbable, episode one
(07:04):
hundred and ten. If you'd like to go back and
listen to that in season ten, we'll have a link
to that in the show notes describes what Scherlokian societies
do and even how to form your own. So great
inspiration there as we get into what's going on in
the first half of the month of September in Sherlockian
(07:26):
society activities, Bert, why don't you kick us off?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Bang? Yes September From September three to September seventh, in
New Orleans, Louisiana, it's boutcher Khan. Boutcher Khan. For those
of you who don't know. I can't imagine there are
any of you who don't know, but if you don't,
it's the annual World Mystery Convention. It's a four day
gathering for everybody, readers and writers and publishers and editors
(07:53):
and agents and anyone who loves crime fiction. Named for
the great writer and editor Anthony Boucher. And it's held
in a different city each year, and September three to seven.
This year it's in New Orleans, Louisiana. And what's so
special about Anthony Boucher, Well, that is a quite a
(08:23):
it's quite a question. He had a tremendous imprint in
the world of Sherlock Holmes and in mystery fiction in general,
promoting well. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms. He
created some very memorable characters. He offered his own rules
for crafting detective fiction. He was an expert in things
(08:44):
like the locker room mystery. He was also very sociable.
He was a fellow who had his fingerprints all over
the world of crime fiction.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And he was a member of the Baker Streeter Regulars.
Was he not? Yes, Yes, his real name William Anthony
Parker White. Yeah, so we do remember him around these parts. Okay, Well,
moving on from Boucher, Khan in New Orleans. Also the
(09:14):
third of September, which is a Wednesday, that's the first
Wednesday of the month. Which means if you are in
New York City, you should go to the ASH Wednesday
dinner the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. The contact there is
Shana Carter, and of course you can find more information
on the ASH website.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And also on the third of September, the Transfixed Correspondence
of Phoenix. We'll be having a virtual meeting and Lauren
Sirconi is your contact.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
In Cincinnati, Ohio. On September fifth, the Tankerville Club will
be hosting a dinner meeting. You can find out more
on their Facebook page and by contacting Dan Andreaco.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And you can shine your shoes and be comfortable at home.
On September sixth, for the boot Makers of Toronto, they're
having a virtual meeting and the contact there is Thelma Beam.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Speaking of virtual meetings, you too can be five miles
from anywhere. On September sixth, five miles from anywhere as
the group out in Colorado, I believe, but the meeting
is virtual, so it doesn't matter where you are. Derek
Blanger is running that meeting and you can check out
their Facebook page YEP.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And September seventh, the crew of the bark Lone Star
floats their way to a virtual meeting. Scar pal Steve
Mason is the contact there.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Excellent and this date is to be determined, but it
lands between the seventh and the thirteenth of September, so
a little bit of a range there. In Northfield, Illinois,
Scotland Yarders will be meeting and Janis is in charge
of that.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I think that's part of the mystery. They want
you to figure out the day the date of the meeting.
Saint Louis, Missouri, September thirteen, the parallel case of Saint
Louis is meeting and our friend Rob Nunn is the
contact there.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And also on September thirteenth in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Illustrious
Clients will be having their dinner meeting. Louise Haskett is
your contact, and of course you can check out their
Facebook page.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And you can join the Cespudleians of London, Ontario for
a virtual meeting and their contact is at Cespudleyans dot
Weeblee dot com.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Easy for you to say not really no. And finally
pulling up the rear. On September fifteenth, in Columbia, Maryland,
Watson's tin Box of Ellicott City is having a dinner
meeting Hall is organizing that. You can find them at
Watson's Tinbox dot org. If you are part of a
(12:07):
Sherlockian society that is hosting an event, get in touch
with Ron Fish at the Sherlockian Calendar dot com sherlockean
Calendar dot com. His email address is listed there on
the site. Let him know when and where you're meeting
and who is your contact information and Ron will add
you to the calendar. Look forward to seeing your events
(12:28):
come up there.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Our friends at MX Publishing are always coming out with
new books, and of course we have talked your ear
off all about the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes
Stories and its final volumes. But what we'd like to
talk to you about now are four new books in
twenty twenty five. There's Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of
the Black Pharaoh by J. M. Reinbold Lockholmes Takes the
(13:01):
Case eight Tales of Mystery and Intrigue by David McGregor
to twenty one b on Her Majesty's Secret Service by
Mark d Ellis and The Hidden Enquiries of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Hall. All four of these books are exciting
(13:22):
adventures in the Pastiche style, taking you through various locations
and various time settings in the Sherlockian universe. Pick any
one of them, pick all four, It doesn't matter. You're
going to have a good time as you read some
of these new books that are available from MX Publishing,
and just as a reminder, MX offers audible books as
(13:46):
well as paperback and hardbout and ebooks, So pick your
format and get these books in whichever you choose. All
available at MX publishing dot com. Design Master Antiqua Brotchenof
(14:14):
is from Croatia and has been with a Lego group
since twenty sixteen. Before fulfilling her dream of becoming a
Lego designer, she worked in a library she never could
stay too far away from books, and prior to that,
she was a writer for an it magazine. She comes
from the adult fans of Lego community, and her love
of building with Lego bricks started out as a hobby
(14:37):
and slowly progressed into a career dream.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
She lives in a.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Small town in Denmark and spends her free time playing
video games, reading books, playing music, and occasionally writing Chrissy
Diamond is a graphic designer with a background in branding,
advertising and illustration. She's been with a Lego group over
two years and has contributed to a wide range of themes,
(15:04):
including Harry Potter, Speed Champions, Lego icons Ideas and Architecture,
among others. Born in Argentina, Chrissy grew up in the
US outside of Washington, d C. And is now enjoying
the higge life in Denmark with her husband's son and
one hundred pound dog Snips. Outside of work, you can
(15:28):
typically find her with her nose in a book and
adding to her ever growing stack of to be read next.
She's always up for the next literary adventure. Antica and Chrissy,
welcome to I hear of Sherlock everywhere.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Hi, thanks for having us, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Where are you coming to us from today?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
We're in Billund Denmark.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Lovely.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Yeah, so will he live and work here? But originally
so I'm from and I was born.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
In Argentina, but I grew up outside of Washington, d C.
In the States.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Wow, it's like the United Nations here today.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It's excellent.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Well, why don't we begin with the question we asked
all of our guests, and that is how did you
first meet Sherlock Holmes, Antico? Why don't you begin?
Speaker 6 (16:20):
So it's hard to remember because I was a very
little kid when I first heard of Sherlock Holmes. It
was actually a funny story because so I was very
much from early age when I learned how to read,
I was into mysteries and detective stories. That was just
like so interesting to me. But funny thing was when
like we had a city like a town library, but
(16:43):
as kids, we were actually not allowed to borrow any
of those books because they were intended for adults. And
then I would just I would come, I would ask
my mom to come with me, so I would tell
her what I want and then she would just borrow
it from me. So I was she was borrowing something
for herself, and I remember that I was with her,
and I was like, I wandered into like this mystery
isle and just the named the Hounds of the Baskerville
(17:08):
just sounded so interesting to me. And then I read
the summary on the back of the cover what it
was about. I was like, wow, this sounds so interesting,
like this this like terrifying dog like you know, haunting
the village that I have to read this. So that
was also the first story that the driver read and
it's still to this day my favorite one.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's fantastic And what about you, Chrissy.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, I think I read every single sharel Like story
I could. As a kid, I was not forbidden from
checking him out of the library, so I grabbed as
many of them as I could and ran out of there,
and so much that that I thought he was a
real person.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And so.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
My family and I went to London when I was
in grade school, and I insisted that I wanted to
go to his house to see his house, and I
was so thrilled to see that they had created his
house into a museum. And so it wasn't until I
was there that someone actually said like, yeah, you know,
we were able to get the address and set it
all up.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
But it was still so wonderful to be there, and
it made a very lasting impression to actually see kind
of the living space recreated physically. But yeah, I tried
desperately to kind of mimic his method of deduction and everything.
I was a complete nerd as a kid, and I
don't think i've grown out of it at all.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, OK, one of us, all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Well, it's strange because for many years, even back when
Arthur Conan Doyle was still alive, people wrote to him,
I'm at to twenty one b Baker Street, which didn't
actually exist during his time, so letters were sent in
and still kept getting sent in well into the late
twentieth century. And as you note, the museum is actually
(18:51):
at two thirty nine Baker Street, but they've petitioned the
city to officially become to twenty one. It's just a
fascinating melding of the real and the fictional. And I
think there's so many representations that have really brought Sherlock
Holmes to life that makes it difficult, which brings us
(19:14):
to why we're here today to talk with both of
you about the Sherlock Holmes booknook from Lego. Can't tell
you how thrilled we as a community were to see
this because well, I don't know if you can see
in my background here, I've got my little mini figure
(19:35):
that was a generic Sherlock Holme from years ago. And
people had always wished for a two twenty one b
Baker Street recreation and here we have it writ large
in the book nook. So we were wondering if you
might take us through what was the reasoning behind us,
what was the creative spark that caused you to say, Aha,
(19:58):
we need a Sherlock Holmes b knock.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
So that actually started a few years ago. We have
this amazing thing in the Lego group. It's called a
Boost Week. So basically it is like we can pitch
our ideas at any point, but we have this very
specific week that is just dedicated to the broader organizations,
specific designers to to pitch their ideas to the company.
(20:23):
And I had this idea of making Lego booknocks for
for a while, and I used that week to actually
pitch the idea. And then of course I started thinking,
so what what do I want to show in the
bookknock concept? And I paired up with a couple of
my other colleagues, so we all came together and we
made a few concepts. And I said, from from my end,
(20:45):
I knew right away, Uh, the Shearlock was something that
I like. It's something that it's been on my mind
for a while, and I thought this, I think this
is a really perfect concept for Sherlock Holmes. So it
was from day one when I started working on this concept.
Charlock was was the the concept that like the idea
that that I wanted to bring forwards. And luckily it
(21:08):
was recognized as as a really interesting new concept and everybody,
like nobody questioned Sherlock as as the you know, the
thing that we should go with, and I was super happy.
And then we brought Chrissy and another designer Johanna uh
As other Sherlock nerds, so yeah, to work on this,
and it was it was just like such a fun,
(21:30):
fun thing to work on.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So so what was I mean, it's it's was that
a unique thing at the time, The idea that that
you'd have, you know, a lego instantiation that would that
would then be able to open and close and and
be on a shelf. Was that was that sort of
the the concept was that was that a new thing?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah? It was.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Booknooks are not new in general, like they do exist,
but we didn't have any uh in in you know,
lego breakfaw, so there was new. But we want we
like the idea of having a nook between the books,
but we also wanted to do a little bit more.
So we also want like especially because it is like
a detective story, like I do actually have the model
(22:14):
so you can see it physically. Like the idea was
that you can actually play with it and interact, so
you can open it and get closer and inspect, you
know everything and get this little like Chrissy made an
amazing job with all the references. So we have so
many references from so many different books and stories, and
(22:35):
we just wanted to offer everybody, uh, the opportunity to
get closer to the model and you know, look at
it that way. So yeah, so you have you have
different options, like you can you know, display it like
this between your books, and you can also come closer
and actually play with everything.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's brilliant. Now is that the actual working model that
you have.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
There or is that a model? Yes?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Oh, terrific, fabulous Now just out of curiosity. How do
you go about in the company creating something like that?
I mean, this is this is not you know, this
is not an afternoon's worth of work too. Yeah, I
mean physically get it off the page and into the
three D world.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
Yeah, well it's that's where we have this, you know,
a whole process. It does take a while. A first
sketch might take you know, maybe in a few days
or something. But then you start thinking. Something that's very
important to us is the building experience. So first, one
of the things that we think when we're working on
these models is how is someone else going to build this?
(23:38):
So you think about stability of the model. This model
is very specific, like it's very different than some of
the models that we normally have because these are buildings,
but they are very thin, like because it is sort
of a book that kind of opens. So that was
you know, one of the challenges. How do you make
something that's very tall but very narrow, has to be
(23:59):
very state. But we also have so many of these
things that you can interact with. So yeah, like we
had a lot of different iterations, and then with every
iteration you add something else. You think, oh, what if
we had this, but if we had something that opens,
it rotates what we have this here. So it's like
it's a process and we have a huge team that contributes,
(24:20):
so we we You don't work alone, you work with
a lot of different people, so a lot of ideas
come to you during this process. So yeah, it's it's
just so much fun.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Making an animated film almost you know that.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Where if we had the whole team, we would not
fit in this room, like it's just a two of
us today, But it's definitely more than just a two
of us working on it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So it's and that's interesting to me, you know, having
worked in corporate before and knowing how things die slowly
by committee. You take what you think is a great
idea and it gets watered down and water down and
water down. But here, you know, we're seeing the execution,
which is marvel. And you talked about so many different
(25:02):
people on the team that are part of this. It
talked to us a little bit about how or perhaps
what different roles are involved, what kinds of positions these
people hold, and how they contribute to the process to
make this a reality.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I don't know if we could go through every single
touch point, because since it is a physical product, we
would have to acknowledge, you know, the folks actually doing
the production of the elements and everything, and down to
the element designers. I think if we did a quick
zoom into our team, we do have different themes and
teams that kind of come together. So I come from
the graphics team and there were several of us that
actually contributed to the set. We also have a textiles team,
(25:43):
so this set did include textiles, so the fabrics for
the keeps, and so they also have their inputs. We
have the element designers that will help us if we
have to color change something or create a new mold.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
We made a hat for Sherlock, so there was our
element design team.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
And then we also have the building instructions that helps
us and teachers saying with the actual process and making
sure that it is as fun as humanly possible to
actually build and then play with it afterwards so.
Speaker 6 (26:13):
It sounds yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
And then model, so your cell.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
Model of course, so we have we also have a
big team of model designers. So we are a group
of designers that physically work on on these sets and
we just wespire a lot together. We help each other.
So you have an idea, but you will at all
stages of development, you will go to your colleagues and
say what do you think of this? What can I improve?
And they will give you feedback. So that that's just
(26:38):
how we worked. That's very normal us.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What a lot of sense I would imagine you had
to practice putting the set together assembling the set. Is
that something you had to do in totality or was
one of you assigned to a particular area of it?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
How was that?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Was that?
Speaker 6 (26:56):
We normally have one person that is a kind of
assigned to the set to take it through all the stages,
through the in production and yes, so basically the way works.
You do have to build your sets several times from
you know, beginning to end to because you have to
make sure that whoever is going to be following the
instructions is going to be able to do that, because yeah,
(27:20):
you can, you know, you can build it yourself, but
this has to be possible to build to anybody who
buys the sets. So we work very closely with designers
of building instructions and make sure that every step is
everything that you see is broken down into steps that
are easy to follow. So for to be able to
do that, you have to keep building the model over
and over.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Wow, that's grand. So you mentioned you mentioned some of
the the details, you know, the references to the Sherlockian
world that Chrissy brought to the table. So tell us
a little bit about that, about you know, what the
detective experience is like in assembling and playing with this.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, I have to. So
it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with these stories that,
as I mentioned, I read as a child and just
fell in love with. And it was trying to find
moments in the stories that both casual and more intense
fans or more beloved fans of the set in the
series I could appreciate. It's that way we were inviting
(28:28):
everyone into the Sherlock world and so just combing through
all the stories to see what key moments could stand
out both visually and also falling within the Lego design
kind of style and humor, and so like some of
my favorite details are we use a dancing menco to
spell out Lego. We were also able to include the
infamous red Herring of Rash and the Golden Ring, and
(28:50):
so just trying to dive in as deep as we could,
and then even including like the Lego dog element as
the Hounds of Baskerville's that we just feels within the
Lego universe and kind of doing our own sort of
representation of it.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
I remember when I when I started, when we started,
you know, going deeper into development of this model, I
was talking to Chrissy, and she had like this gigantic
list of all the references that we could put in
the model, and we're just thinking, Okay, I need to
make I really want to put this one. I need
to make space to actually reference this. So it was
it was so much fun, and we had I think
she had so many references just like physically we could
(29:26):
not put in the model when there was Yeah, and
we had.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
A specific group chat just for this project, and we're like,
oh what about this, and yeah, the degree idea. It's
a lot of excitement.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Now here's a nerd, a Sherlock nerd question. And one
of the things that that and I imagine just thinking
about what you're talking about, I can imagine the whole team,
you know, the dozens and dozens and dozens of people
who are working on this. We're running off to the
library and buying Sherlock home stories saying, you know, what's
all this about. But one of the one of the
curiosities of the Sherlockian world is that all we know,
(30:00):
we know a lot about a lot of locations, and
we know something about Baker Street, about his sitting room,
but Watson sort of you know, if both windows come
and go, curtains come and go. How did you decide,
you know, what the key elements were in the Baker
Street sitting rooms? So much variety, you know, it's not
(30:24):
isn't consistent in what he's talking about.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Actually that that's that's a good point because that actually
made us think, how do we see this? So we
we did well, not like because both of us read
these books, you know, since we were kids, and when
you read, you create the image in your head. So
we were also guided a little bit by what is written,
but also a little bit how we ourselves imagined these
(30:49):
places and these these characters as we were reading about them.
So when it comes to his reading room, I had
different iterations, But then it did come down to what
like how much, oh, it can fit in the available
space that we made, because it is a very narrow space,
because this is you know, as I said before, it's
(31:11):
a very narrow model. So the space that's allocated to
be his study room is not that big. So we
wanted to put the most important things, like you want
to have like a little task, you want to have
some references, and we're imagining, like I don't know if
it was I can't remember anymore. If it was mentioned
that he has this clue board, but we're like, oh,
(31:31):
we should just put this clueboard where he's like linking
these things we have. Of course we have a violin
because it's really important to have that detail. Yeah, we
had just little little bits and pieces that we thought
make makes sense and just wanted to create like this,
just a cozy space where we can imagine him sitting
down and you know, mulling over clues.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
But it works really well. And I mean I have
to imagine that the list of things that are not
on that that you made that did not make it
into the set, well maybe they could contribute to a
volume two someday. I'm not telling your product team what
to do. I'm just saying, so, this just seems like
(32:22):
it had to be a lot of fun to work on,
and I think we were getting that from it. This
is a labor of love. It's a it's a personal
interest that you brought to it. So talk to us
a little bit about the idea of doing a booknook
and putting Sherlock Holmes as the first iteration out there
(32:43):
for Lego. Why why does Sherlock Holmes work in this
regard better than some other literary reference.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
At LEGO here, especially Lego Design, we had three values
that we really kind of adhere to, which are bravery, curiosity,
and focus. And we felt as though, at least I
personally was really excited, and I thought that Sherlock was
a perfect fit because he also kind of reflects those
three attributes and those three values. So I think for
us it was just a fun part to you know,
(33:15):
Lego is all about discovering and thinking like, well, what
if this and what if this and what if this happens?
And you know, we do have sets that have building instructions,
but we're heavily encouraging everyone to then take it apart
and make it their own. And what better than, you know,
the master of deduction and the master of curiosity than
Sherlock himself kind of taking this apart and creating his
own stories afterwards with it. So for me personally, it
(33:37):
was a no brainer to do Sherlock. I don't know,
we don't have the marketing team here, so I don't
know how they decided or what they put into it,
but that was for me the ultimate thumbs up.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Yeah, I think I can just say, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Terrific, that's great. So as you're thinking about this, the
success of this booknook, and I have to imagine that
it's flying off the shelves, you know, I know your
your marketing team isn't here to report on the actual
statistics yet, but based on our community, the excitement that
(34:15):
we've seen around it has been really reinforcing. And that
that actually it leads me to another question before I
was going to get to that one, talk about the marketability,
the appeal of Sherlock Holmes to the general public versus
(34:35):
a say, a specialty nerd group like ours.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
Yeah, so that I think we're we are always trying
to make something that will appeal to broader audience. And
I think the versatility of versatility of this set is
something that you know, enables us to talk to different
to speak to different audience. So this set is something
(35:00):
that it has like a very clear intention and almost
like a designated space where we intend for the set
to be placed, which is on your bookshelf. And we
are inspired, but we were inspired by you know, the
reading community, especially a lot of us be in book
bookworms here ourselves, but also we did make it so
(35:23):
that you can also play with the sets. So it
is it doesn't matter what age you are, you can
build set, you can you can play with it. There's
so many interactive things in the set that you can
actually play with. You have many figures that you can
play with as well. And it's so interesting and amazing
(35:44):
to me. Every time we put these sets, people take
them and they're inspired to do something else with them,
to expand them. It's something that I used to do
with myself. I would buy a set and then I
would think, oh, I would not I want to add
something by myself to this set. So they take it
and they turn it in to like a big big
house or like a bigger town layout. So I think
(36:06):
it's very I'm always just so happy to see how
people take something and just you know, use it in
a different way.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So yeah, you know, And that's the marvelous thing about
the Lego community is just how creative they are and
how they can build literally build on what you've already created.
And you mentioned the many figures Antica. Obviously we have
Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson here, but talk to us
(36:34):
a little bit about the selection of and the creation
of additional figures and how you came to actually choosing these.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
I think we started we had, of course a list
of characters that we wanted to include, and we were
we actually spoke with the Arthur Conan Doyle estate because
they were all partners on this, and they also had
their own suggestions, so we were, you know, just trying
to balance first of all, how many figures are we
(37:05):
going to have, because this is is like an outdoors scene,
so we don't have a lot of space actually in
the street, and we don't have interiors. So we were
talking about we just we had a list of names
that we wanted to include. So first you need to
have Sherlock and Watson, of course, and of course we
wanted to include Mariarty because we wanted to have you know,
(37:26):
both the good guys and the villain. And we thought,
maybe we have a little bit more space to tell
some other stories and you know, reference some other characters.
We couldn't put all of them, so yeah, I mean
we want to talk a bit more about those.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yeah. And Irene is you know, his ultimate almost rival
or like counterpart in the world, and so we felt
very strongly about including her and then page for us
was really fun to include. The page is the regular
and we named her because I am personally a huge
fan of puns. But we thought it was really exciting
too to have not only the irregular is represented because
sometimes they're forgotten in representation, but also she became a
(38:05):
mystery within the set itself, so everyone was asking whose page,
whose page, And for us that like to be able
to spark a mystery just by naming a character was
so much fun and it leads right into Sherlock's own style,
but also it allows fans to kind of dream up
their own stories and have their own page in the
Sherlock story and so that for us, it was a
really fun character to include, even though she doesn't show
(38:28):
up in the books, but it was our own little
kind of mystery to add into the set.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
And something that I love so much is I was
listening to someone and talk about the set. They built
it and we only would name the character page but
the character doesn't have a last name. But I heard
someone referring to the characters page Turner, and I just love.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Them so much.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
So the fact that yeah, they're being inspired to continue
naming the characters just that's that's what we love to see, Like,
we love seeing the fans kind of take what we've
put down and kind of run with it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So, oh, that's great.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
One of the many lovely things about this is that
you know, you've got these properties, these these stories, not
really properties, these stories Harry Potter, you know, and there
are some wonderful Lego instantiations of Hogwarts and all sorts
of things to do with Harry Potter. And then you've
got Batman and you know, the superhero characters in their
(39:24):
own places, you know, the Batcave and things like that,
and the Lego movie. You know, you get to see
the characters, you know, tell a story on the screen.
But all of this has a wonderful thing with the
book nooks of encouraging reading. And so now you're reaching
people who might not have read anything about Sherlock Holmes.
But hey, it's a book nooks, so why don't I
(39:44):
get a book to go with it? So it can
I imagine that they're going to be sort of more
basically literary literary things in as book. I mean, it
would be silly to have only one book. I mean,
clearly there are going to be more booknooks, aren't they?
Speaker 6 (40:00):
We actually have so far we have three booknooks so
we have we have this one, we have one that
is Lord of the Rings theme, so we have Gandal
versus Balrog, and we have one from Harry Potter. So
we do have just we don't just have book notes.
We do have little I think you mentioned some that
we have.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
We have other kind of book related sets, typically based
on like classic fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood,
Jack and the Beanstock. We have a Christmas Carol Hunst
Krison Anderson. Most recently, we have a tribute series based
on famous authors. So Jane Austin and Jules Verne have
their own little sets.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
And so you know, as an avid book reader, I
would love to see even more. There's only so much
can we personally can do. But it's always fun to
hear from the community too, to see what they're interested in.
So we highly encourage that if it's something they're interested in,
we do listen to the comments. So yeah, definitely, right back.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
What tell me a little bit about the jewel Verne.
I didn't know that existed. That's fabulous.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Yeah, it was a gift with purchase. I believe that
came out. It was like a smaller it was a
smaller set, and it was available through the Lego story
and website, and it was just a little tribute. Its
super cute. I heighly encourage you to look it up.
I'm just a cute little tribute to him. And I
definitely that one.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Was it under this? Was it twenty thousand Leagues under
the Sea or was it?
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think it was several of his stories.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
I think when we referenced the specific authors, we tried
to put like little references to their books. I think
the latest one, Jane Austin, has like just references from
her books and characters.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, that's grand.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And you know, you put these together from from different
times from throughout the eighteen hundreds, whether it's a Christmas
Carol or Jules Fern or Jane Austin, and you get
a whole Victorian era Lego town or construction to work
with us fast. So talk to us a little bit
(42:05):
about well as much as you can about future plans,
what you're working on, or what is coming to market
that we can expect to see from Lego in this
particular realm.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
Yeah. So of coursely we can't talk about anything in
the future, so we can only hope that you will
be pleasantly surprised with everything that we have. We have
amazing products coming, you know. I have this thing that
I keep saying. I spoke like in a different interview
when I ask me, what is your favorite model the
you work so far, and I always say like that,
(42:37):
like the one that I'm holding. I always say this
was my favorite one. And I say that for every
single one that comes out. So I feel like I'm
just excited for everything that we keep doing and hopefully
everybody else will be as well.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Terrific.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Well, is there anything else that you would like people
to know about the process or the behind the scenes
of the product, the stuff that we don't know about. Typically,
as we receive these sets and open them and build
them and play.
Speaker 6 (43:11):
With them, I think something about this one that I
think is interesting. When I first made the first concept,
I had this idea that it would be really cool
to put some sort of a mystery to solve in
the model, and we wanted to do that physically so
that you have, like here, you have a hidden door
(43:31):
that I have these two like chimneys, and one of
them doesn't do anything, and the other one actually opens
the door, so if you just something, if you open it,
you have more arty actually hiding behind the door. So
originally I had this idea that you first have to
find a key somewhere in the model in order to
do that, and we had this version of the model
(43:53):
for some time, but it was just one of those
challenges where it was very difficult to to maintain a
quality of the building experience that we wanted. So it
was it was it just made a model that, as
I said a few times, it's very narrow, it doesn't
have a lot of space, so you have to really
be smart about how you're going to build this whole thing.
(44:15):
And just adding this another layer of it like a
puzzle solving it just it turned the whole model into
like it was like a you know, it was like
this not a scape room, but like a puzzle box.
And it was just so complex that it was just
too tedious to build. It was so many tiny details,
so many like little things. We kind of cleaned it
(44:39):
up a little bit, so we wanted to still keep
the mystery, so you still have a lot of things
that you can open and like, you know, you can
turn things, but it's just on a bit of more
contained level. But I think I think it's interesting, like
to to track the model from from beginning to to
an end. I personally think it's it's way better now
than it was when it just started on it. But
(45:00):
this is also thanks thanks to my team and all
the input that we got, like because we also have
a lot of people that physically take the model and
just play with it and see, you know, every idea
that you have, you give it to someone else and
you asked, what do you think of this? Can you
show me how you would play with this, how you
would open this? So that also guides you to you know,
improving things like if you if some something breaks, if
(45:21):
people are trying to open it, then you have to
change that and make it better, more intuitive.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
And all that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
So yeah, so this is very clearly the best possible
addition that has made it to market.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
It goes through a lot of love, like a lot
of refinements, and we're always so proud to see the
final result because you know, you start with the idea
and you're like, oh, this is perfect, and then you
fix it and now it's perfect, and you get to
the end, you're like, oh my goodness, like how did
it get better? And then from my end from graphics,
actually we're really excited because in the so we have
(45:55):
the elementary bookshop as part of the set. So when
you open up the doors, and Teacher was talking about
like how we're able to hide things within such a
narrow space. Within one of the graphics, we actually have
the original cover of the book in there, and that
was really fun for us to be able to tie
that into the book shop, to have the original cover
of the stories in there as well. And like I said,
(46:18):
we had so much fun putting as many little details
as possible. And I think these graphics went through so
many changes just between like oh this works better, this
is better represented, or this is a better story. We
even have like a jar of honey because Charlotte becomes
a beekeeper later on. So just trying to touch all
these different points within the stories in the universe.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Just just a lot of foot for us, little easter
eggs that people can find.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Well, I have to say that there is one downside
about this book nook. I hate to break it to
It's going to take up valuable space on my bookshelves.
It could be dedicated to.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Books by another bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Books, another bookshelf.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
That's always the solution.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
That's why I tell my husband at work at home,
Actually I just I need another bookshelf. I got another book.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
That's the only solution. Every time I bought a new book,
I'm like, oh, where am I going to put this book?
And you know it doesn't stop me from buying more books.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
No, it's a business expense. Yeah, sure, great, I wish Yeah, fabulous.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Well, if people would like to learn more about this,
Sherlock Holmes to twenty one b Baker Street Booknook and
buy it. Where would they go?
Speaker 6 (47:43):
So we have, of course in every Lego store, and
we have them on Lego dot Com and you can
also walk into Barnes and Noble and find it there.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yes, that's amazing, I mean, perfect integration. Really Yeah, wonderful?
Love it? Well? Is there is there anything else that
we missed that we should have asked you about before.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
We let you go?
Speaker 6 (48:10):
Can you remember?
Speaker 4 (48:11):
I don't know, I got my notes in front of me,
but I think we hit everything.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
You're as flabbergasted as we are.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
You guys areuck to you guys, so yeah, well, you
guys are great. You know, the lovely thing about this
is that you brought your own personal enthusiasm to it,
you know, in your knowledge and and you know you
just thought about the details and the atmosphere and and
you know, built around that, and you know, it's terrific,
(48:38):
really is terrific, wonderful to see it come to life.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Well, thank you both very much for being with us
here on I here of sher walk everywhere.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
This was so much fun.
Speaker 6 (48:53):
We're just so happy to be able to speak to
other Sherlock fans as well.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Fellaters.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
It's it's wonderful. You know, we talked about this. I
think we hit all the points, but the connection to
reading and so on. You know, early on, before we
began recording, I was talking to them about their own
experiences and Antika mentioned that she sort of came to
Lego as an adult, and it's just it's just such
(49:37):
a lovely, you know, mix of people, the whole, the
whole synthesis here of play, storytelling, characters, making it personal,
focusing attention, being faithful to the environment, wanting to recreate
these sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
You know, it's like it's like a huge animated film
with a enormous number of people behind the scenes, technicians
and storyboarding and just look at the things that they're
thinking about, how the instructions work, and what about the
experience and putting it together? And is it really fun?
(50:15):
It's terrific amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah. I mean as a consumer, you wouldn't normally think
of all of these things. You just you see your
set and you build it, and maybe you get frustrated
along the way that you, oh, I skipped a step
or I missed a piece or what have you. And
that's all part and parcel of it. But there are
people behind the scenes who have gone through this umpteen
(50:38):
times who have figured out how to make it the
best possible experience, as you say, and to me, Lego
is a legendary brand, and particularly when it comes to storytelling.
You know, we don't think that often about building bricks
or building blocks as elements of story telling, and yet
(51:02):
Lego is the physical manifestation of our imagination and we
can create so many of our own versions of this. Yes,
they come in a set, but you can also take
little pieces of part you can start to build your own.
And so to me, what Lego has is a lock
on physical fan fiction. You know, as much as we
(51:23):
talk about Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson and their iterations,
well look they've put they've put page in there, and
they've they've they've given us things to work with and
to build upon ourselves as literally as a building block
of storytelling. The jaunty strings are here again.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
It's time for the canonical couplet, the Sherlockian quiz program,
where we give you two lines of poetry and we
ask you to play luth and identify which Sherlock Holme
story we are talking about. Well, the last time we
were around here, we gave you this clue. A wild
(52:17):
goose chase is sometimes all you need to accommodate the
object of a felon's greed. Oh Bert, any whiff sense
of what's going on here?
Speaker 6 (52:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Of course, that's an interesting case because it stems from
Watson's exclamation when he dressed the wound of a hydraulics
expert who explained to him that he built a wine
press with no room for the grapes. That's the case
Watson called the engineer's.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Dumb He sure is, why you're not going to get
points for that?
Speaker 3 (53:03):
However, oh you are not.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
But our friend Eric Deckers came to the rescue. He writes,
Holy schnikes, I solved it. This is the adventure when
Holmes and Watson helped track down three men with the
name Garadeb in the hopes that they can raise a
baby girl who have been left on Nathan Garretteb's doorstep.
It's the story Watson called three Garadebs and a baby.
(53:32):
Except when I watched this, one of the Garradibs looked
like Tom Sellick, so I may have confused this story
with a classic eighties movie. It's more likely to be
the adventure of the three Garadebs. Why yes, Eric, that
is correct. Okay, well, you know normally what we do
during this time is we turn to we turned to
(53:57):
the big prize wheel and give it a spin and
selecting one lucky entry at random. Because everyone's supposed to
submit an accurate entry, and in this case, Bert no
one submitted the three Garadibs. We had a lot of people,
(54:20):
almost everyone exclusively guess the blue carbuncle. That line about
the wild goose chase is what threw them off. But
what you should have focused on was the object of
a felon's greed. Remember Nathan Garadib was sent off on
(54:44):
a wild goose chase to get him out of the
house so killer Evans could come in and grab the
the plates from the Bank of England that were underneath
the floorboards there. So tricky one.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's a real shame because is the prize, you know,
is the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow in the nineteen sixty
seven Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. Well, I guess we're not
going to be giving that away.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
No, You and I keep get keep getting to drive
around in it. So oh good, no no harm, no foul. However,
this is better than a Rolls Royce. The prize, as
we said this time around, is for the Lego Sherlock
Holmes booknook. So you have to be a supporting member
(55:28):
of the show either on Patreon or on substack, and
you have to submit the correct response and then we'll
choose your name at random that'll allow you to potentially
win that prize. So if everyone is ready for it,
take notes. Here is your clue. A figure at the
(55:52):
window gave a fright that took a note from Holmes
to set a right. If you know the answer to
this episode's canonical couplet, put it in an email addressed
to comment that I hear of Sherlock dot com with
canonical couplet in the subject line. If you have one
of the correct answers, and we choose your name at
(56:13):
random and you'll win, good luck. Well Bert, yes, you
feel lucky for next week and you're not clos win unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Drat Well, I'll make myself comfortable in the backseat of the.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Rolls and okay, have another You just park there. That's
it good. And the turning radius of sixty feet.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Whatever it is, that's right. Well, if you're really driving
one of those cars, you're not going to pay any
attention to the turning radius. You just pull over to
the side of the road and wait for an earthquake.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
I love it, very sturdy and steady. Well, until we
are around here with you folks next time. This is
Scott Monty, the Rolls Royce of podcast hosts, and this
is Bert.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Walder, the Hugo of Hugos, and together we say.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
The game sha of the Foot, the games that foot.
Speaker 5 (57:29):
I'm afraid that in the pleasure of this conversation I'm
neglecting business of importance which awaits me. Thank you for listening.
Please be sure to join us again for the next
episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the first podcast
dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Goodbye and good luck, and believe me to be my
dear women. That is Eddygons Shellock Hounds
Support for I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere comes from MX Publishing,
with the largest catalog of new Sherlock Holmes books in
the world. New novels, biographies, graphic novels, and short story
collections about Sherlock Holmes find them at MS publishing dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And listeners like you who support us on Patreon or
substack sign up for exclusive benefits at Patreon dot com,
slash I Hear of Sherlock or I Hear of Sherlock
dot Substack dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, Episode three hundred and fifteen,
The Sherlock Holmes Lego Booknook.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I Head of Sherlocke it very well, since you became
a drumming man.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
In a world where it's always eighteen ninety five. It's
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, a podcast for devotees of
mister Sherlock Holmes, the world's first unofficial consult detective.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
I've Heard of You Before, Holmes, The Medland Holmes, The
Busybody Homes, the stockland Yard, Jacket Office.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
The Game's afoot As we interview authors, editors, creators, and
other prominent Sherlockians on various aspects of the great detective
in popular culture.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
As we go to press, sensational developments have been reported.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So join your hosts Scott Monty and Bert Walder as
they talk about what's new in the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Time.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I'm Mill Curtis. This is I hear of Sherlock Everywhere.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Now here are your hosts, Scott Marty and Bert Walder.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh, thank you so much, mister Bill Curtis. It's a pleasure. Welcome,
Welcome every one too. I hear of Sherlock Everywhere. The
first podcast for Sherlock Holmes dets where it's always eighteen
ninety five. I'm Scott Monty, I'm Burt Wolder and Bert.
Have you have you picked up all your lego bricks
(02:14):
off of the floor so you don't injure yourself on
your way to bed tonight?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yes, I've picked up all of them except that one.
Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, a wonderful security system, you know, just toss out
a bunch of the smallest pieces of lego out onto
the floor and prevent any intruder from getting through your
house without making a noise. And that well, that's of course,
if they take the shoes off before they come trapsing
(02:44):
across the room.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's true. Well, in my house, if I cut, if
I gather up all the Legos and annoys, the mice
because they're always making these little ladders to reach the refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's all about teamwork. It is it is well, teamwork
is the name of the game. We're going to hear
that today in our interview with Antica and Chrissy, two
members of the Lego development team and design team that
came up with the concept of the Booknook and gave
(03:17):
it life in the face of Sherlock Holmes and two
to twenty one b Baker Street. It's a fascinating conversation
that takes you behind the scenes of what it's like
to collaborate with team members and to come up with
concepts and where it eventually landed. And you'll want to
stay tuned after the interview as well, because we have
(03:40):
the canonical couplet. It's our Sherlockian quiz program where we
give you two lines of poetry and we task you
with determining which Sherlock Holmes story it represents. In this case,
this is where we need the timpany.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Rollyes, Yes, is very stately and grandeur leg We have
as a prize the winner of this episode's canonical couple
of quiz. Are you ready.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
A Sherlock Holmes Lego booknook? Yes, it is a huge value.
It goes for one hundred and thirty dollars at retail,
so stay tuned for what you need to do to
participate in that and potentially win that wonderful prize. Meanwhile,
(04:32):
I want to remind you that if you would like
to support the show, you can do that in a
couple of ways, via substack or Patreon. You pick whichever
works for you. We take credit cards on both of them.
We also can work directly with your bank account for
as little as a dollar a month, you can help
support what we do here, help the production, help with
(04:53):
the everything that goes into editing and hosting files and
keeping files up. You know, we now have we have
episodes that go all the way back to two thousand
and seven, but please don't go listen to those early episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
They're terrible.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
It sounds like amateur hour compared to believe it or not,
what we've learned along the way maybe hard to tell,
but we do encourage you to become a supporter of
the show because that helps us do what we do,
and it also gives you the chance to listen to
the show ad free if you so choose. And we
(05:30):
also have special benefits for our supporters occasionally, like exclusive content,
bonus content, and in this case, and you'll if you're
interested in that lego say, you're going to want to
hear this. This episode's canonical couplet quiz requires you to
be a supporter of the show, right, So there's an
incentive if you needed an excuse. All you have to
(05:54):
do is become a supporter of the show to become
eligible to win. Of course you have to answer too,
but that's another thing. We'll talk about that when we
get to the quiz. But we do appreciate your support
on Patreon at patreon dot com, slash I Hear of
Sherlock and on substack at Ihear of Sherlock dot substack
dot com. Both of those that links are available in
(06:16):
the show notes, and we encourage you to check us
out there. Oh, that's stately music. That intro there means
that it is the time of the show when we
turn to the learned societies. These are the Sherlockian societies
(06:38):
that meet out in the various locales where they happen
to exist. Maybe there's one near you, and look, if
there isn't, maybe you can form a society to help
you determine how you'd like to meet with other Sherlockians
in your area. Actually, I think we did a We
did a whole show called Sociable and Clubbable, episode one
(07:04):
hundred and ten. If you'd like to go back and
listen to that in season ten, we'll have a link
to that in the show notes describes what Scherlokian societies
do and even how to form your own. So great
inspiration there as we get into what's going on in
the first half of the month of September in Sherlockian
(07:26):
society activities, Bert, why don't you kick us off?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Bang? Yes September From September three to September seventh, in
New Orleans, Louisiana, it's boutcher Khan. Boutcher Khan. For those
of you who don't know. I can't imagine there are
any of you who don't know, but if you don't,
it's the annual World Mystery Convention. It's a four day
gathering for everybody, readers and writers and publishers and editors
(07:53):
and agents and anyone who loves crime fiction. Named for
the great writer and editor Anthony Boucher. And it's held
in a different city each year, and September three to seven.
This year it's in New Orleans, Louisiana. And what's so
special about Anthony Boucher, Well, that is a quite a
(08:23):
it's quite a question. He had a tremendous imprint in
the world of Sherlock Holmes and in mystery fiction in general,
promoting well. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms. He
created some very memorable characters. He offered his own rules
for crafting detective fiction. He was an expert in things
(08:44):
like the locker room mystery. He was also very sociable.
He was a fellow who had his fingerprints all over
the world of crime fiction.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And he was a member of the Baker Streeter Regulars.
Was he not? Yes, Yes, his real name William Anthony
Parker White. Yeah, so we do remember him around these parts. Okay, Well,
moving on from Boucher, Khan in New Orleans. Also the
(09:14):
third of September, which is a Wednesday, that's the first
Wednesday of the month. Which means if you are in
New York City, you should go to the ASH Wednesday
dinner the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. The contact there is
Shana Carter, and of course you can find more information
on the ASH website.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And also on the third of September, the Transfixed Correspondence
of Phoenix. We'll be having a virtual meeting and Lauren
Sirconi is your contact.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
In Cincinnati, Ohio. On September fifth, the Tankerville Club will
be hosting a dinner meeting. You can find out more
on their Facebook page and by contacting Dan Andreaco.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And you can shine your shoes and be comfortable at home.
On September sixth, for the boot Makers of Toronto, they're
having a virtual meeting and the contact there is Thelma Beam.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Speaking of virtual meetings, you too can be five miles
from anywhere. On September sixth, five miles from anywhere as
the group out in Colorado, I believe, but the meeting
is virtual, so it doesn't matter where you are. Derek
Blanger is running that meeting and you can check out
their Facebook page YEP.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And September seventh, the crew of the bark Lone Star
floats their way to a virtual meeting. Scar pal Steve
Mason is the contact there.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Excellent and this date is to be determined, but it
lands between the seventh and the thirteenth of September, so
a little bit of a range there. In Northfield, Illinois,
Scotland Yarders will be meeting and Janis is in charge
of that.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I think that's part of the mystery. They want
you to figure out the day the date of the meeting.
Saint Louis, Missouri, September thirteen, the parallel case of Saint
Louis is meeting and our friend Rob Nunn is the
contact there.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And also on September thirteenth in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Illustrious
Clients will be having their dinner meeting. Louise Haskett is
your contact, and of course you can check out their
Facebook page.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And you can join the Cespudleians of London, Ontario for
a virtual meeting and their contact is at Cespudleyans dot
Weeblee dot com.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Easy for you to say not really no. And finally
pulling up the rear. On September fifteenth, in Columbia, Maryland,
Watson's tin Box of Ellicott City is having a dinner
meeting Hall is organizing that. You can find them at
Watson's Tinbox dot org. If you are part of a
(12:07):
Sherlockian society that is hosting an event, get in touch
with Ron Fish at the Sherlockian Calendar dot com sherlockean
Calendar dot com. His email address is listed there on
the site. Let him know when and where you're meeting
and who is your contact information and Ron will add
you to the calendar. Look forward to seeing your events
(12:28):
come up there.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Our friends at MX Publishing are always coming out with
new books, and of course we have talked your ear
off all about the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes
Stories and its final volumes. But what we'd like to
talk to you about now are four new books in
twenty twenty five. There's Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of
the Black Pharaoh by J. M. Reinbold Lockholmes Takes the
(13:01):
Case eight Tales of Mystery and Intrigue by David McGregor
to twenty one b on Her Majesty's Secret Service by
Mark d Ellis and The Hidden Enquiries of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Hall. All four of these books are exciting
(13:22):
adventures in the Pastiche style, taking you through various locations
and various time settings in the Sherlockian universe. Pick any
one of them, pick all four, It doesn't matter. You're
going to have a good time as you read some
of these new books that are available from MX Publishing,
and just as a reminder, MX offers audible books as
(13:46):
well as paperback and hardbout and ebooks, So pick your
format and get these books in whichever you choose. All
available at MX publishing dot com. Design Master Antiqua Brotchenof
(14:14):
is from Croatia and has been with a Lego group
since twenty sixteen. Before fulfilling her dream of becoming a
Lego designer, she worked in a library she never could
stay too far away from books, and prior to that,
she was a writer for an it magazine. She comes
from the adult fans of Lego community, and her love
of building with Lego bricks started out as a hobby
(14:37):
and slowly progressed into a career dream.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
She lives in a.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Small town in Denmark and spends her free time playing
video games, reading books, playing music, and occasionally writing Chrissy
Diamond is a graphic designer with a background in branding,
advertising and illustration. She's been with a Lego group over
two years and has contributed to a wide range of themes,
(15:04):
including Harry Potter, Speed Champions, Lego icons Ideas and Architecture,
among others. Born in Argentina, Chrissy grew up in the
US outside of Washington, d C. And is now enjoying
the higge life in Denmark with her husband's son and
one hundred pound dog Snips. Outside of work, you can
(15:28):
typically find her with her nose in a book and
adding to her ever growing stack of to be read next.
She's always up for the next literary adventure. Antica and Chrissy,
welcome to I hear of Sherlock everywhere.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Hi, thanks for having us, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Where are you coming to us from today?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
We're in Billund Denmark.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Lovely.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Yeah, so will he live and work here? But originally
so I'm from and I was born.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
In Argentina, but I grew up outside of Washington, d C.
In the States.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Wow, it's like the United Nations here today.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It's excellent.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Well, why don't we begin with the question we asked
all of our guests, and that is how did you
first meet Sherlock Holmes, Antico? Why don't you begin?
Speaker 6 (16:20):
So it's hard to remember because I was a very
little kid when I first heard of Sherlock Holmes. It
was actually a funny story because so I was very
much from early age when I learned how to read,
I was into mysteries and detective stories. That was just
like so interesting to me. But funny thing was when
like we had a city like a town library, but
(16:43):
as kids, we were actually not allowed to borrow any
of those books because they were intended for adults. And
then I would just I would come, I would ask
my mom to come with me, so I would tell
her what I want and then she would just borrow
it from me. So I was she was borrowing something
for herself, and I remember that I was with her,
and I was like, I wandered into like this mystery
isle and just the named the Hounds of the Baskerville
(17:08):
just sounded so interesting to me. And then I read
the summary on the back of the cover what it
was about. I was like, wow, this sounds so interesting,
like this this like terrifying dog like you know, haunting
the village that I have to read this. So that
was also the first story that the driver read and
it's still to this day my favorite one.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's fantastic And what about you, Chrissy.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, I think I read every single sharel Like story
I could. As a kid, I was not forbidden from
checking him out of the library, so I grabbed as
many of them as I could and ran out of there,
and so much that that I thought he was a
real person.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And so.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
My family and I went to London when I was
in grade school, and I insisted that I wanted to
go to his house to see his house, and I
was so thrilled to see that they had created his
house into a museum. And so it wasn't until I
was there that someone actually said like, yeah, you know,
we were able to get the address and set it
all up.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
But it was still so wonderful to be there, and
it made a very lasting impression to actually see kind
of the living space recreated physically. But yeah, I tried
desperately to kind of mimic his method of deduction and everything.
I was a complete nerd as a kid, and I
don't think i've grown out of it at all.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, OK, one of us, all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Well, it's strange because for many years, even back when
Arthur Conan Doyle was still alive, people wrote to him,
I'm at to twenty one b Baker Street, which didn't
actually exist during his time, so letters were sent in
and still kept getting sent in well into the late
twentieth century. And as you note, the museum is actually
(18:51):
at two thirty nine Baker Street, but they've petitioned the
city to officially become to twenty one. It's just a
fascinating melding of the real and the fictional. And I
think there's so many representations that have really brought Sherlock
Holmes to life that makes it difficult, which brings us
(19:14):
to why we're here today to talk with both of
you about the Sherlock Holmes booknook from Lego. Can't tell
you how thrilled we as a community were to see
this because well, I don't know if you can see
in my background here, I've got my little mini figure
(19:35):
that was a generic Sherlock Holme from years ago. And
people had always wished for a two twenty one b
Baker Street recreation and here we have it writ large
in the book nook. So we were wondering if you
might take us through what was the reasoning behind us,
what was the creative spark that caused you to say, Aha,
(19:58):
we need a Sherlock Holmes b knock.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
So that actually started a few years ago. We have
this amazing thing in the Lego group. It's called a
Boost Week. So basically it is like we can pitch
our ideas at any point, but we have this very
specific week that is just dedicated to the broader organizations,
specific designers to to pitch their ideas to the company.
(20:23):
And I had this idea of making Lego booknocks for
for a while, and I used that week to actually
pitch the idea. And then of course I started thinking,
so what what do I want to show in the
bookknock concept? And I paired up with a couple of
my other colleagues, so we all came together and we
made a few concepts. And I said, from from my end,
(20:45):
I knew right away, Uh, the Shearlock was something that
I like. It's something that it's been on my mind
for a while, and I thought this, I think this
is a really perfect concept for Sherlock Holmes. So it
was from day one when I started working on this concept.
Charlock was was the the concept that like the idea
that that I wanted to bring forwards. And luckily it
(21:08):
was recognized as as a really interesting new concept and everybody,
like nobody questioned Sherlock as as the you know, the
thing that we should go with, and I was super happy.
And then we brought Chrissy and another designer Johanna uh
As other Sherlock nerds, so yeah, to work on this,
and it was it was just like such a fun,
(21:30):
fun thing to work on.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So so what was I mean, it's it's was that
a unique thing at the time, The idea that that
you'd have, you know, a lego instantiation that would that
would then be able to open and close and and
be on a shelf. Was that was that sort of
the the concept was that was that a new thing?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah? It was.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Booknooks are not new in general, like they do exist,
but we didn't have any uh in in you know,
lego breakfaw, so there was new. But we want we
like the idea of having a nook between the books,
but we also wanted to do a little bit more.
So we also want like especially because it is like
a detective story, like I do actually have the model
(22:14):
so you can see it physically. Like the idea was
that you can actually play with it and interact, so
you can open it and get closer and inspect, you
know everything and get this little like Chrissy made an
amazing job with all the references. So we have so
many references from so many different books and stories, and
(22:35):
we just wanted to offer everybody, uh, the opportunity to
get closer to the model and you know, look at
it that way. So yeah, so you have you have
different options, like you can you know, display it like
this between your books, and you can also come closer
and actually play with everything.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's brilliant. Now is that the actual working model that
you have.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
There or is that a model? Yes?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Oh, terrific, fabulous Now just out of curiosity. How do
you go about in the company creating something like that?
I mean, this is this is not you know, this
is not an afternoon's worth of work too. Yeah, I
mean physically get it off the page and into the
three D world.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
Yeah, well it's that's where we have this, you know,
a whole process. It does take a while. A first
sketch might take you know, maybe in a few days
or something. But then you start thinking. Something that's very
important to us is the building experience. So first, one
of the things that we think when we're working on
these models is how is someone else going to build this?
(23:38):
So you think about stability of the model. This model
is very specific, like it's very different than some of
the models that we normally have because these are buildings,
but they are very thin, like because it is sort
of a book that kind of opens. So that was
you know, one of the challenges. How do you make
something that's very tall but very narrow, has to be
(23:59):
very state. But we also have so many of these
things that you can interact with. So yeah, like we
had a lot of different iterations, and then with every
iteration you add something else. You think, oh, what if
we had this, but if we had something that opens,
it rotates what we have this here. So it's like
it's a process and we have a huge team that contributes,
(24:20):
so we we You don't work alone, you work with
a lot of different people, so a lot of ideas
come to you during this process. So yeah, it's it's
just so much fun.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Making an animated film almost you know that.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Where if we had the whole team, we would not
fit in this room, like it's just a two of
us today, But it's definitely more than just a two
of us working on it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So it's and that's interesting to me, you know, having
worked in corporate before and knowing how things die slowly
by committee. You take what you think is a great
idea and it gets watered down and water down and
water down. But here, you know, we're seeing the execution,
which is marvel. And you talked about so many different
(25:02):
people on the team that are part of this. It
talked to us a little bit about how or perhaps
what different roles are involved, what kinds of positions these
people hold, and how they contribute to the process to
make this a reality.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I don't know if we could go through every single
touch point, because since it is a physical product, we
would have to acknowledge, you know, the folks actually doing
the production of the elements and everything, and down to
the element designers. I think if we did a quick
zoom into our team, we do have different themes and
teams that kind of come together. So I come from
the graphics team and there were several of us that
actually contributed to the set. We also have a textiles team,
(25:43):
so this set did include textiles, so the fabrics for
the keeps, and so they also have their inputs. We
have the element designers that will help us if we
have to color change something or create a new mold.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
We made a hat for Sherlock, so there was our
element design team.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
And then we also have the building instructions that helps
us and teachers saying with the actual process and making
sure that it is as fun as humanly possible to
actually build and then play with it afterwards so.
Speaker 6 (26:13):
It sounds yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
And then model, so your cell.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
Model of course, so we have we also have a
big team of model designers. So we are a group
of designers that physically work on on these sets and
we just wespire a lot together. We help each other.
So you have an idea, but you will at all
stages of development, you will go to your colleagues and
say what do you think of this? What can I improve?
And they will give you feedback. So that that's just
(26:38):
how we worked. That's very normal us.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What a lot of sense I would imagine you had
to practice putting the set together assembling the set. Is
that something you had to do in totality or was
one of you assigned to a particular area of it?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
How was that?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Was that?
Speaker 6 (26:56):
We normally have one person that is a kind of
assigned to the set to take it through all the stages,
through the in production and yes, so basically the way works.
You do have to build your sets several times from
you know, beginning to end to because you have to
make sure that whoever is going to be following the
instructions is going to be able to do that, because yeah,
(27:20):
you can, you know, you can build it yourself, but
this has to be possible to build to anybody who
buys the sets. So we work very closely with designers
of building instructions and make sure that every step is
everything that you see is broken down into steps that
are easy to follow. So for to be able to
do that, you have to keep building the model over
and over.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Wow, that's grand. So you mentioned you mentioned some of
the the details, you know, the references to the Sherlockian
world that Chrissy brought to the table. So tell us
a little bit about that, about you know, what the
detective experience is like in assembling and playing with this.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, I have to. So
it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with these stories that,
as I mentioned, I read as a child and just
fell in love with. And it was trying to find
moments in the stories that both casual and more intense
fans or more beloved fans of the set in the
series I could appreciate. It's that way we were inviting
(28:28):
everyone into the Sherlock world and so just combing through
all the stories to see what key moments could stand
out both visually and also falling within the Lego design
kind of style and humor, and so like some of
my favorite details are we use a dancing menco to
spell out Lego. We were also able to include the
infamous red Herring of Rash and the Golden Ring, and
(28:50):
so just trying to dive in as deep as we could,
and then even including like the Lego dog element as
the Hounds of Baskerville's that we just feels within the
Lego universe and kind of doing our own sort of
representation of it.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
I remember when I when I started, when we started,
you know, going deeper into development of this model, I
was talking to Chrissy, and she had like this gigantic
list of all the references that we could put in
the model, and we're just thinking, Okay, I need to
make I really want to put this one. I need
to make space to actually reference this. So it was
it was so much fun, and we had I think
she had so many references just like physically we could
(29:26):
not put in the model when there was Yeah, and
we had.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
A specific group chat just for this project, and we're like,
oh what about this, and yeah, the degree idea. It's
a lot of excitement.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Now here's a nerd, a Sherlock nerd question. And one
of the things that that and I imagine just thinking
about what you're talking about, I can imagine the whole team,
you know, the dozens and dozens and dozens of people
who are working on this. We're running off to the
library and buying Sherlock home stories saying, you know, what's
all this about. But one of the one of the
curiosities of the Sherlockian world is that all we know,
(30:00):
we know a lot about a lot of locations, and
we know something about Baker Street, about his sitting room,
but Watson sort of you know, if both windows come
and go, curtains come and go. How did you decide,
you know, what the key elements were in the Baker
Street sitting rooms? So much variety, you know, it's not
(30:24):
isn't consistent in what he's talking about.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Actually that that's that's a good point because that actually
made us think, how do we see this? So we
we did well, not like because both of us read
these books, you know, since we were kids, and when
you read, you create the image in your head. So
we were also guided a little bit by what is written,
but also a little bit how we ourselves imagined these
(30:49):
places and these these characters as we were reading about them.
So when it comes to his reading room, I had
different iterations, But then it did come down to what
like how much, oh, it can fit in the available
space that we made, because it is a very narrow space,
because this is you know, as I said before, it's
(31:11):
a very narrow model. So the space that's allocated to
be his study room is not that big. So we
wanted to put the most important things, like you want
to have like a little task, you want to have
some references, and we're imagining, like I don't know if
it was I can't remember anymore. If it was mentioned
that he has this clue board, but we're like, oh,
(31:31):
we should just put this clueboard where he's like linking
these things we have. Of course we have a violin
because it's really important to have that detail. Yeah, we
had just little little bits and pieces that we thought
make makes sense and just wanted to create like this,
just a cozy space where we can imagine him sitting
down and you know, mulling over clues.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
But it works really well. And I mean I have
to imagine that the list of things that are not
on that that you made that did not make it
into the set, well maybe they could contribute to a
volume two someday. I'm not telling your product team what
to do. I'm just saying, so, this just seems like
(32:22):
it had to be a lot of fun to work on,
and I think we were getting that from it. This
is a labor of love. It's a it's a personal
interest that you brought to it. So talk to us
a little bit about the idea of doing a booknook
and putting Sherlock Holmes as the first iteration out there
(32:43):
for Lego. Why why does Sherlock Holmes work in this
regard better than some other literary reference.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
At LEGO here, especially Lego Design, we had three values
that we really kind of adhere to, which are bravery, curiosity,
and focus. And we felt as though, at least I
personally was really excited, and I thought that Sherlock was
a perfect fit because he also kind of reflects those
three attributes and those three values. So I think for
us it was just a fun part to you know,
(33:15):
Lego is all about discovering and thinking like, well, what
if this and what if this and what if this happens?
And you know, we do have sets that have building instructions,
but we're heavily encouraging everyone to then take it apart
and make it their own. And what better than, you know,
the master of deduction and the master of curiosity than
Sherlock himself kind of taking this apart and creating his
own stories afterwards with it. So for me personally, it
(33:37):
was a no brainer to do Sherlock. I don't know,
we don't have the marketing team here, so I don't
know how they decided or what they put into it,
but that was for me the ultimate thumbs up.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Yeah, I think I can just say, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Terrific, that's great. So as you're thinking about this, the
success of this booknook, and I have to imagine that
it's flying off the shelves, you know, I know your
your marketing team isn't here to report on the actual
statistics yet, but based on our community, the excitement that
(34:15):
we've seen around it has been really reinforcing. And that
that actually it leads me to another question before I
was going to get to that one, talk about the marketability,
the appeal of Sherlock Holmes to the general public versus
(34:35):
a say, a specialty nerd group like ours.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
Yeah, so that I think we're we are always trying
to make something that will appeal to broader audience. And
I think the versatility of versatility of this set is
something that you know, enables us to talk to different
to speak to different audience. So this set is something
(35:00):
that it has like a very clear intention and almost
like a designated space where we intend for the set
to be placed, which is on your bookshelf. And we
are inspired, but we were inspired by you know, the
reading community, especially a lot of us be in book
bookworms here ourselves, but also we did make it so
(35:23):
that you can also play with the sets. So it
is it doesn't matter what age you are, you can
build set, you can you can play with it. There's
so many interactive things in the set that you can
actually play with. You have many figures that you can
play with as well. And it's so interesting and amazing
(35:44):
to me. Every time we put these sets, people take
them and they're inspired to do something else with them,
to expand them. It's something that I used to do
with myself. I would buy a set and then I
would think, oh, I would not I want to add
something by myself to this set. So they take it
and they turn it in to like a big big
house or like a bigger town layout. So I think
(36:06):
it's very I'm always just so happy to see how
people take something and just you know, use it in
a different way.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So yeah, you know, And that's the marvelous thing about
the Lego community is just how creative they are and
how they can build literally build on what you've already created.
And you mentioned the many figures Antica. Obviously we have
Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson here, but talk to us
(36:34):
a little bit about the selection of and the creation
of additional figures and how you came to actually choosing these.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
I think we started we had, of course a list
of characters that we wanted to include, and we were
we actually spoke with the Arthur Conan Doyle estate because
they were all partners on this, and they also had
their own suggestions, so we were, you know, just trying
to balance first of all, how many figures are we
(37:05):
going to have, because this is is like an outdoors scene,
so we don't have a lot of space actually in
the street, and we don't have interiors. So we were
talking about we just we had a list of names
that we wanted to include. So first you need to
have Sherlock and Watson, of course, and of course we
wanted to include Mariarty because we wanted to have you know,
(37:26):
both the good guys and the villain. And we thought,
maybe we have a little bit more space to tell
some other stories and you know, reference some other characters.
We couldn't put all of them, so yeah, I mean
we want to talk a bit more about those.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yeah. And Irene is you know, his ultimate almost rival
or like counterpart in the world, and so we felt
very strongly about including her and then page for us
was really fun to include. The page is the regular
and we named her because I am personally a huge
fan of puns. But we thought it was really exciting
too to have not only the irregular is represented because
sometimes they're forgotten in representation, but also she became a
(38:05):
mystery within the set itself, so everyone was asking whose page,
whose page, And for us that like to be able
to spark a mystery just by naming a character was
so much fun and it leads right into Sherlock's own style,
but also it allows fans to kind of dream up
their own stories and have their own page in the
Sherlock story and so that for us, it was a
really fun character to include, even though she doesn't show
(38:28):
up in the books, but it was our own little
kind of mystery to add into the set.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
And something that I love so much is I was
listening to someone and talk about the set. They built
it and we only would name the character page but
the character doesn't have a last name. But I heard
someone referring to the characters page Turner, and I just love.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Them so much.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
So the fact that yeah, they're being inspired to continue
naming the characters just that's that's what we love to see, Like,
we love seeing the fans kind of take what we've
put down and kind of run with it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So, oh, that's great.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
One of the many lovely things about this is that
you know, you've got these properties, these these stories, not
really properties, these stories Harry Potter, you know, and there
are some wonderful Lego instantiations of Hogwarts and all sorts
of things to do with Harry Potter. And then you've
got Batman and you know, the superhero characters in their
(39:24):
own places, you know, the Batcave and things like that,
and the Lego movie. You know, you get to see
the characters, you know, tell a story on the screen.
But all of this has a wonderful thing with the
book nooks of encouraging reading. And so now you're reaching
people who might not have read anything about Sherlock Holmes.
But hey, it's a book nooks, so why don't I
(39:44):
get a book to go with it? So it can
I imagine that they're going to be sort of more
basically literary literary things in as book. I mean, it
would be silly to have only one book. I mean,
clearly there are going to be more booknooks, aren't they?
Speaker 6 (40:00):
We actually have so far we have three booknooks so
we have we have this one, we have one that
is Lord of the Rings theme, so we have Gandal
versus Balrog, and we have one from Harry Potter. So
we do have just we don't just have book notes.
We do have little I think you mentioned some that
we have.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
We have other kind of book related sets, typically based
on like classic fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood,
Jack and the Beanstock. We have a Christmas Carol Hunst
Krison Anderson. Most recently, we have a tribute series based
on famous authors. So Jane Austin and Jules Verne have
their own little sets.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
And so you know, as an avid book reader, I
would love to see even more. There's only so much
can we personally can do. But it's always fun to
hear from the community too, to see what they're interested in.
So we highly encourage that if it's something they're interested in,
we do listen to the comments. So yeah, definitely, right back.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
What tell me a little bit about the jewel Verne.
I didn't know that existed. That's fabulous.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Yeah, it was a gift with purchase. I believe that
came out. It was like a smaller it was a
smaller set, and it was available through the Lego story
and website, and it was just a little tribute. Its
super cute. I heighly encourage you to look it up.
I'm just a cute little tribute to him. And I
definitely that one.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Was it under this? Was it twenty thousand Leagues under
the Sea or was it?
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think it was several of his stories.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
I think when we referenced the specific authors, we tried
to put like little references to their books. I think
the latest one, Jane Austin, has like just references from
her books and characters.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, that's grand.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And you know, you put these together from from different
times from throughout the eighteen hundreds, whether it's a Christmas
Carol or Jules Fern or Jane Austin, and you get
a whole Victorian era Lego town or construction to work
with us fast. So talk to us a little bit
(42:05):
about well as much as you can about future plans,
what you're working on, or what is coming to market
that we can expect to see from Lego in this
particular realm.
Speaker 6 (42:17):
Yeah. So of coursely we can't talk about anything in
the future, so we can only hope that you will
be pleasantly surprised with everything that we have. We have
amazing products coming, you know. I have this thing that
I keep saying. I spoke like in a different interview
when I ask me, what is your favorite model the
you work so far, and I always say like that,
(42:37):
like the one that I'm holding. I always say this
was my favorite one. And I say that for every
single one that comes out. So I feel like I'm
just excited for everything that we keep doing and hopefully
everybody else will be as well.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Terrific.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Well, is there anything else that you would like people
to know about the process or the behind the scenes
of the product, the stuff that we don't know about. Typically,
as we receive these sets and open them and build
them and play.
Speaker 6 (43:11):
With them, I think something about this one that I
think is interesting. When I first made the first concept,
I had this idea that it would be really cool
to put some sort of a mystery to solve in
the model, and we wanted to do that physically so
that you have, like here, you have a hidden door
(43:31):
that I have these two like chimneys, and one of
them doesn't do anything, and the other one actually opens
the door, so if you just something, if you open it,
you have more arty actually hiding behind the door. So
originally I had this idea that you first have to
find a key somewhere in the model in order to
do that, and we had this version of the model
(43:53):
for some time, but it was just one of those
challenges where it was very difficult to to maintain a
quality of the building experience that we wanted. So it
was it was it just made a model that, as
I said a few times, it's very narrow, it doesn't
have a lot of space, so you have to really
be smart about how you're going to build this whole thing.
(44:15):
And just adding this another layer of it like a
puzzle solving it just it turned the whole model into
like it was like a you know, it was like
this not a scape room, but like a puzzle box.
And it was just so complex that it was just
too tedious to build. It was so many tiny details,
so many like little things. We kind of cleaned it
(44:39):
up a little bit, so we wanted to still keep
the mystery, so you still have a lot of things
that you can open and like, you know, you can
turn things, but it's just on a bit of more
contained level. But I think I think it's interesting, like
to to track the model from from beginning to to
an end. I personally think it's it's way better now
than it was when it just started on it. But
(45:00):
this is also thanks thanks to my team and all
the input that we got, like because we also have
a lot of people that physically take the model and
just play with it and see, you know, every idea
that you have, you give it to someone else and
you asked, what do you think of this? Can you
show me how you would play with this, how you
would open this? So that also guides you to you know,
improving things like if you if some something breaks, if
(45:21):
people are trying to open it, then you have to
change that and make it better, more intuitive.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
And all that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
So yeah, so this is very clearly the best possible
addition that has made it to market.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
It goes through a lot of love, like a lot
of refinements, and we're always so proud to see the
final result because you know, you start with the idea
and you're like, oh, this is perfect, and then you
fix it and now it's perfect, and you get to
the end, you're like, oh my goodness, like how did
it get better? And then from my end from graphics,
actually we're really excited because in the so we have
(45:55):
the elementary bookshop as part of the set. So when
you open up the doors, and Teacher was talking about
like how we're able to hide things within such a
narrow space. Within one of the graphics, we actually have
the original cover of the book in there, and that
was really fun for us to be able to tie
that into the book shop, to have the original cover
of the stories in there as well. And like I said,
(46:18):
we had so much fun putting as many little details
as possible. And I think these graphics went through so
many changes just between like oh this works better, this
is better represented, or this is a better story. We
even have like a jar of honey because Charlotte becomes
a beekeeper later on. So just trying to touch all
these different points within the stories in the universe.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Just just a lot of foot for us, little easter
eggs that people can find.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Well, I have to say that there is one downside
about this book nook. I hate to break it to
It's going to take up valuable space on my bookshelves.
It could be dedicated to.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Books by another bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Books, another bookshelf.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
That's always the solution.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
That's why I tell my husband at work at home,
Actually I just I need another bookshelf. I got another book.
Speaker 6 (47:14):
That's the only solution. Every time I bought a new book,
I'm like, oh, where am I going to put this book?
And you know it doesn't stop me from buying more books.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
No, it's a business expense. Yeah, sure, great, I wish Yeah, fabulous.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Well, if people would like to learn more about this,
Sherlock Holmes to twenty one b Baker Street Booknook and
buy it. Where would they go?
Speaker 6 (47:43):
So we have, of course in every Lego store, and
we have them on Lego dot Com and you can
also walk into Barnes and Noble and find it there.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yes, that's amazing, I mean, perfect integration. Really Yeah, wonderful?
Love it? Well? Is there is there anything else that
we missed that we should have asked you about before.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
We let you go?
Speaker 6 (48:10):
Can you remember?
Speaker 4 (48:11):
I don't know, I got my notes in front of me,
but I think we hit everything.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
You're as flabbergasted as we are.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
You guys areuck to you guys, so yeah, well, you
guys are great. You know, the lovely thing about this
is that you brought your own personal enthusiasm to it,
you know, in your knowledge and and you know you
just thought about the details and the atmosphere and and
you know, built around that, and you know, it's terrific,
(48:38):
really is terrific, wonderful to see it come to life.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Well, thank you both very much for being with us
here on I here of sher walk everywhere.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 6 (48:50):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
This was so much fun.
Speaker 6 (48:53):
We're just so happy to be able to speak to
other Sherlock fans as well.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Fellaters.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
It's it's wonderful. You know, we talked about this. I
think we hit all the points, but the connection to
reading and so on. You know, early on, before we
began recording, I was talking to them about their own
experiences and Antika mentioned that she sort of came to
Lego as an adult, and it's just it's just such
(49:37):
a lovely, you know, mix of people, the whole, the
whole synthesis here of play, storytelling, characters, making it personal,
focusing attention, being faithful to the environment, wanting to recreate
these sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
You know, it's like it's like a huge animated film
with a enormous number of people behind the scenes, technicians
and storyboarding and just look at the things that they're
thinking about, how the instructions work, and what about the
experience and putting it together? And is it really fun?
(50:15):
It's terrific amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah. I mean as a consumer, you wouldn't normally think
of all of these things. You just you see your
set and you build it, and maybe you get frustrated
along the way that you, oh, I skipped a step
or I missed a piece or what have you. And
that's all part and parcel of it. But there are
people behind the scenes who have gone through this umpteen
(50:38):
times who have figured out how to make it the
best possible experience, as you say, and to me, Lego
is a legendary brand, and particularly when it comes to storytelling.
You know, we don't think that often about building bricks
or building blocks as elements of story telling, and yet
(51:02):
Lego is the physical manifestation of our imagination and we
can create so many of our own versions of this. Yes,
they come in a set, but you can also take
little pieces of part you can start to build your own.
And so to me, what Lego has is a lock
on physical fan fiction. You know, as much as we
(51:23):
talk about Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson and their iterations,
well look they've put they've put page in there, and
they've they've they've given us things to work with and
to build upon ourselves as literally as a building block
of storytelling. The jaunty strings are here again.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
It's time for the canonical couplet, the Sherlockian quiz program,
where we give you two lines of poetry and we
ask you to play luth and identify which Sherlock Holme
story we are talking about. Well, the last time we
were around here, we gave you this clue. A wild
(52:17):
goose chase is sometimes all you need to accommodate the
object of a felon's greed. Oh Bert, any whiff sense
of what's going on here?
Speaker 6 (52:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Of course, that's an interesting case because it stems from
Watson's exclamation when he dressed the wound of a hydraulics
expert who explained to him that he built a wine
press with no room for the grapes. That's the case
Watson called the engineer's.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Dumb He sure is, why you're not going to get
points for that?
Speaker 3 (53:03):
However, oh you are not.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
But our friend Eric Deckers came to the rescue. He writes,
Holy schnikes, I solved it. This is the adventure when
Holmes and Watson helped track down three men with the
name Garadeb in the hopes that they can raise a
baby girl who have been left on Nathan Garretteb's doorstep.
It's the story Watson called three Garadebs and a baby.
(53:32):
Except when I watched this, one of the Garradibs looked
like Tom Sellick, so I may have confused this story
with a classic eighties movie. It's more likely to be
the adventure of the three Garadebs. Why yes, Eric, that
is correct. Okay, well, you know normally what we do
during this time is we turn to we turned to
(53:57):
the big prize wheel and give it a spin and
selecting one lucky entry at random. Because everyone's supposed to
submit an accurate entry, and in this case, Bert no
one submitted the three Garadibs. We had a lot of people,
(54:20):
almost everyone exclusively guess the blue carbuncle. That line about
the wild goose chase is what threw them off. But
what you should have focused on was the object of
a felon's greed. Remember Nathan Garadib was sent off on
(54:44):
a wild goose chase to get him out of the
house so killer Evans could come in and grab the
the plates from the Bank of England that were underneath
the floorboards there. So tricky one.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's a real shame because is the prize, you know,
is the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow in the nineteen sixty
seven Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. Well, I guess we're not
going to be giving that away.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
No, You and I keep get keep getting to drive
around in it. So oh good, no no harm, no foul. However,
this is better than a Rolls Royce. The prize, as
we said this time around, is for the Lego Sherlock
Holmes booknook. So you have to be a supporting member
(55:28):
of the show either on Patreon or on substack, and
you have to submit the correct response and then we'll
choose your name at random that'll allow you to potentially
win that prize. So if everyone is ready for it,
take notes. Here is your clue. A figure at the
(55:52):
window gave a fright that took a note from Holmes
to set a right. If you know the answer to
this episode's canonical couplet, put it in an email addressed
to comment that I hear of Sherlock dot com with
canonical couplet in the subject line. If you have one
of the correct answers, and we choose your name at
(56:13):
random and you'll win, good luck. Well Bert, yes, you
feel lucky for next week and you're not clos win unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Drat Well, I'll make myself comfortable in the backseat of the.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Rolls and okay, have another You just park there. That's
it good. And the turning radius of sixty feet.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Whatever it is, that's right. Well, if you're really driving
one of those cars, you're not going to pay any
attention to the turning radius. You just pull over to
the side of the road and wait for an earthquake.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
I love it, very sturdy and steady. Well, until we
are around here with you folks next time. This is
Scott Monty, the Rolls Royce of podcast hosts, and this
is Bert.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Walder, the Hugo of Hugos, and together we say.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
The game sha of the Foot, the games that foot.
Speaker 5 (57:29):
I'm afraid that in the pleasure of this conversation I'm
neglecting business of importance which awaits me. Thank you for listening.
Please be sure to join us again for the next
episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the first podcast
dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Goodbye and good luck, and believe me to be my
dear women. That is Eddygons Shellock Hounds
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!