New 10305 Lion Knights Castle is ‘Castle’s Greatest Hits’

In a new interview, Milan Madge, Senior LEGO designer of 10305 Lion Knights’ Castle, talks about the inspiration for the set.

It’s fair to say that Castle is a much-loved LEGO theme and was always going to be a front-runner in the fan vote for a new set to celebrate the LEGO Group’s 90th anniversary. In a recent interview with Brickset, designers Milan Madge and Mike Psiaki, who between them did all the heavy lifting on both 10305 Lion Knights’ Castle and 10497 Galaxy Explorer, sat down to discuss the inspiration for the new castle.

In the original vote, Castle had been split into a number of subthemes, which ‘led to some criticism’ but helped shed light on what fans actually wanted. Co-designer, Mike Psiaki, talking about the results of that vote said that it ‘did create some problems with the voting, but also helped us understand the breadth of fans for different Castle ranges. Every subtheme is unique and splitting the range for the poll revealed the degree of interest in Fright Knights, Lion Knights, Black Falcons, Forestmen and the others, relative to one another.’

While 6080 King’s Castle was undoubtedly a starting point for the anniversary set, from the feedback received, it became clear that there was a desire to see elements from many different themes, which lead to the new model being something of a ‘Castle’s greatest hits’ design, as Milan Madge went on to discuss.

‘It quickly became apparent we would need to combine our favourite features from numerous castles into a single ultimate design, which could include just about everything we wanted and everything we know the fans would love to see.’

Psiaki added, ‘we found ourselves wanting to acknowledge the whole Castle universe, rather than focusing on one specific model. When discussing our favourite LEGO castles, we were finding that one would have the best gate, while another included the best drawbridge or hidden passage.’

The new set has 4514 pieces, a number of innovative features and when released on August 8 will cost £344.99/$399.99/€399.99. It’s available to pre-order now, from LEGO.com.

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