We have something special for you, to end this year with a nice tone - interview with Markus Kossmann, the man who designed 8275 Motorized Bulldozer, the most acclaimed Technic set of the year. It was possible thanks to Misterzumbi, our man in Billund, the questions were prepared by the team of Hippotam & Sariel.

Klocki - Hello Markus. First of all, let me congratulate you on creating 8275 Motorized Bulldozer , in my opinion the best Technic set since the release of the 8421 Mobile Crane. I don’t know what opinions you hear on it, but I only hear the enthusiastic ones.

Markus - The reactions were great, the kids and fans loved the new power function that you can remote control your model.Iit was a also a model we haven´t done for some years.

- Tell us, what it’s like to have the coolest job on Earth?

- It is a lot fun of course, people get envious and when I talk about it, just playing with Lego all day.

- How did your adventure with Lego begin? Have you played with the Lego bricks as a kid and wanted to work with them when you grew up, or did you come to The Lego Company from some completely different job? What sets did you work with before the 8275?

- I worked in a Design Office in Cologne, when I saw a Job opportunity as a LEGO Designer in our local newspaper, that is now 10 years ago. I made a portfolio and two weeks later, two boxes of Lego Technic arrived by post, together with a letter saying that I have two weeks time to build a model out of these two boxes and bring it to a workshop in a hotel in Cologne. They liked what they saw and so I ended up in Billund, in February 1998 in the Technic Department. As a Kid I loved to play with Lego especially Technic…. but as most of us, I stopped playing when I was 12-13 years old. So the first thing at Lego, I had to learn to build with Lego again, there was so many new elements, and so many rules how build in the correct Lego way. So it took some time before I did my first model. But then the Droid Developer Kit was the box with some of my models, next was the Destroyer Droid….. then some models I remember the Tractor Puller, The Outdoor Remote Car for Racers where I worked for over three years. Then I returned to Technic again and there made the 8421 Mobile Crane, the Tractor and for this year the Bulldozer…. and a lot of small models i can’t all remember.

- What does it actually take to design such an excellent model of a bulldozer? Do you have some particular knowledge on machines, on the building equipment, or did you learn everything on the fly?

- I have a natural interest in construction machines which helps to develop our models. On the other hands being a Lego designer, you have the possibility to try out some machines, so i drove a Bulldozer in a gravel pit, which was of course a lot of fun.

- There is a interesting thing about the way the 8275 was built - an apparent tendency to cover up the studs. Is this a tribute to the SNOT technique preferred by many AFOLs, or just the way you felt it should be designed?

- Lego Technic today a stud less system, which makes to a real 3D building system. We do use Lego Bricks with studs where they are needed, and where it makes sense. In the Bulldozer there are a lot of studs on the Blade and frame that is holding the blade. So we don’t really think we try to hide the studs.

- As far as I can remember, 8275 is the first treaded Lego vehicle to have an electric drive. Was it a challenging thing to design, given the new treads standard? Have you considered some alternative ways to drive it, e.g. using a subtractor?

- We were always very sure, that a new track system will be highly welcome at our costumers. But to develop a new track system takes time…. when I made the first prototypes, they were bigger and building with them gave really big models. Though we had to reduce the size and then you have to build with them again. But which kind of model we wanted to do with the Tracks we had not decided at this point of time.

- What was the most difficult thing to design about 8275? What detail or function makes you proud the most? Was there something that surprized you e.g. about the functionality of bulldozers while you’ve been working on this set?

- We tried to build Track Loaders in the beginning, but they are not as iconic as Bulldozers. With our new Power Function XL Motors we had a very powerful source to drive the model and a Bulldozer must be powerful to push a lot of weight. But this gave also the biggest challenge how to bring this big torque from the motor to the Tracks with out destroying our gears.

- How comfortable is it to design with the new PF motors?

- The motors fit much better to the Lego Technic system, so they are really easy to use, much better then al the other motors we have done so far.

- I was surprised to see that new PF cables are permanently attached to the motors. They are also much stiffer than the old ones and therefore more difficult to contain inside a model. What is the reason behind this decisions?

- They are several reasons behind, on of the most important is that we have 4 cable running our power, so to avoid short cutting the system we decided to attach the cables directly to the motors and adding a new plough.

Pages: 1 2

This entry was posted on 28 December 2007 at 10:34 AM and is filed under Model, Technic, Interview, MOC, Giants, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.