Todd Elliott, a Wisconsin sports fan and former Milwaukee resident, has taken the next step in bringing his Milwaukee Brewers Famous Racing Sausages Lego set idea to life: building the Bratwurst IRL.
Elliott – an Army veteran who has run more than 60 marathons – designed and rendered Lego figures of the five iconic sausages and team mascot Bernie Brewer this summer using BrickLink’s Lego ideating software Studio.
In August, Elliott posted his designs to Lego Ideas, a Lego-run online community where users can share their ideas and potentially turn them into official Lego sets. To be eligible for adoption as an official Lego product, Elliott’s designs must first receive 10,000 votes from users on the Lego Ideas website. He is currently almost a quarter of the way through.
Although they have lived in Philadelphia for 15 years, Elliott and his family became Wisconsin sports fans after living in Chicago for eight years and then Milwaukee for three years. Elliott, who has loved Lego since childhood and dived back into the hobby during the COVID-19 lockdowns, was inspired to create the Famous Racing Sausages Lego set after rediscovering the Racing Sausages plushies he bought many years ago. at a Brewers game for his son and daughter.
Using the BrickLink software, he designed Lego models of Bernie, Bratwurst, Polish Sausage, Italian Sausage, Hot Dog and Chorizo. Each statue consists of approximately 500 Lego blocks and is approximately 9 centimeters high and 10 centimeters wide. Elliott first designed the Polish Sausage statue, which he said took a few hours to complete. Making the other sausages was easier because they used a similar template, just different colors and accessories, he said.
However, designing the sausages in the software posed a problem when it came time to bring them to life.
“In the design tool, you can use every piece Lego has ever made in every color they’ve ever made pieces in,” Elliott explains. “Unfortunately, this allows you to use pieces that Lego has never made in those colors, so they don’t exist in real life.”
Due to their round shape and specific brown tones, many of the pieces Elliott used to design the sausages were never produced by Lego – including the bricks in the hats of Polish Sausage and Hot Dog and the stripes on the shirts of Hot Dog and Chorizo. Elliott said he hasn’t found any good replacement pieces yet.
But with some minor design adjustments, Elliott was able to produce a model of the bratwurst using only existing bricks.
“I noticed that the bratwurst had the fewest parts that were not the right colors,” he said. “I just had to redesign him a little bit. You’ll notice he now has white socks and his head looks a little different. But other than that he’s exactly how I designed him.”
Using BrickLink’s network of Lego resellers, Elliott ordered the necessary parts to build the bratwurst. The completed statue now sits on his shelf next to the old Racing Sausages stuffed animals and a photo of Elliott’s two children at a Brewers game. Elliott plans to purchase the pieces to build two additional bratwursts for his son and daughter.
Now that the bratwurst is ready, Elliott says he thinks he’s close to developing an Italian sausage design using only existing Lego pieces.
If Elliott’s Racing Sausages receives 10,000 votes on Lego Ideas, Elliott said Lego will review the design to see if it would be a successful product and if it would be worth creating the necessary new bricks to produce the set. It is also up to Lego whether the six figurines come as a set or are sold separately.
Your vote can help make the Brewers Famous Racing Sausages Lego set a reality
To potentially bring Elliott’s designs to market, they must first get 10,000 votes from Lego Ideas users. Everyone is welcome to vote; you just need a free Lego Ideas account. Click here to cast your vote online. The voting process includes multiple benchmarks needed to move the project forward, and Elliott achieved two of them.
Within just one day of posting his designs on Lego Ideas, Elliott took the first step: 100 votes in 60 days. After a few short weeks, he also reached the second step: 1,000 votes within a year. As of Monday morning, Elliott’s designs have received more than 2,100 votes — and plenty of support from Brewers fans in the comments.
“They love it,” Elliott said. “A lot of people say, ‘I’d buy one right now.’ They want them for their children, nieces and nephews. It’s only positive reactions.”
Now Elliott’s designs have about five months left to get 5,000 votes. If they reach this milestone, they will have another six months to get 10,000 votes. However, he hopes to achieve this goal sooner. Lego reviews all designs that receive 10,000 votes each quarter to see if they are successful products, Elliott said.
“The next review session will be in January,” he said. “I hope to shoot for that January session because if they review and accept it, there’s a good chance the product will be available in time for the next baseball season.”
This article originally appeared in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lego Brewers racing sausage set enters next phase of development