LEGO Ideas has released a Speed Champions boat first

LEGO Ideas 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has beaten Speed Champions in taking its engineering style to water.

Well, LEGO Ideas is technically taking Speed Champions style to chocolate, rather than water, but the end result is the same. Speaking in a roundtable with LEGO Fan Media, set designer Laura Perron, when complimented on the brick-built boat that's included in 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, said: "Full props to Markus [Rollbühler] for putting this boat together."

"He worked in Speed Champions, so this is almost like a Speed Champions boat, if you will," explained Jordan. "It's built in five modules and with crazy, weird connection points and everything."

Even with LEGO Speed Champions know-how weighing in, the Wonkatania boat still posed some issues to the design team. In the movie, it takes the entire group down the chocolate river, so it was important that all the minifigures in the set could fit inside – but that was easier said than done.

"It's real spicy," added Laura. "It's spice to the chocolate. I know we had an issue at one point with the talk, because we had a previous version where the awning was tilting backwards so that you could put the minifigures in, but then that wasn't working.

"It was causing a lot of fuss, so we ended up with this solution: having the cross axle more easily lift up so that you can easily put your minifigures in."

"You guys were really proud," said Crisy. "It was really important to be able to be true to the source material. Watching them be able to put this together, I was not expecting that."

The end result is undoubtedly impressive, with the boat bringing a fresh palette of colours to 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as well as a handy way to group the minifigures together easily for display, if you don't want them dotted throughout the LEGO Ideas set.

If you want to build the Wonkatania boat and the rest of 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for yourself, LEGO Insiders will be able to buy it from September 15 and everyone else from September. It will retail at £199.99 in the UK, $219.99 in the US, and from €219.99 in Europe.

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