Okay - Here it is.

Here is the interview with Jamie.


I guess the main question is the release date (I'm guessing its March?)

The release date is indeed currently set for early March.


AFsOL have been aware of The Green Grocers for some time. How long have you been working on it? (Was it hard to keep secret?)

Green Grocer was finished about the same time as Town Plan which was just before Easter of last year. I worked on both models for the first few months of 2007.

The first year I worked for LEGO, it was extremely difficult to not talk about all the cool stuff I was working on. Now that I’ve got a few products on the market, it’s a lot easier to keep quiet because I have other things to talk about. Actually, by the time some of the sets come out, it could be up to a year since I last worked on them. They almost seem like old news for me once they’re finally launched.


Was the idea to do a Green Grocers yours, or were you asked to use that title?

Green Grocer is the second of three models that I proposed when pitching the idea for the modular building system. However, I originally wanted to call it Green Gables, but our legal department advised against that.

Although I had a rough idea of what the model might look like, I only specifically knew that I wanted it to be sand green, with a fire escape and a bay window. Everything else fell into place during the development process.


I'm personally interested in the design process. What sort of research do you do? Will we get to see some prototype pictures in Brick Journal as we did for Cafe Corner?

We mostly use the internet for our initial research. However, we’ve also got our own in-house library where we’ll often rummage for good images and info. Specifically for the Green Grocer, I found some great reference material in a book we have about architecture in the San Francisco area.

I have not sent Joe over at BrickJournal any development pictures of the Green Grocer because there are a few building techniques that I used in the initial sketch that I am now using in another model I’m working on. It’s potentially good stuff, so I’d hate to ruin the surprise J


Are the pictures of a LEGO designer sitting on a carpeted floor with a pile of LEGO accurate or do you have a different design space?

It’s not that far off! We may not be building on the carpet, but I can assure you that there is plenty of LEGO spread all over my desk. On some of the bigger models like the UCS Millennium Falcon, we can move over to other areas of the building where we have more room to spread out.

On my desk, I have two monitors that make it easier for me when I virtually re-build the model in our 3-D modeling program. Once it’s virtual, I can do lots of cool things like duplicate middle floors to make large versions of the models. I did this when pitching the idea of the ultimate Café Corner, but I could only get a black and white version because my computer could hardly handle the size of the file!

Another cool thing about having a computer model, is that I can find out valuable information like prices, piece count, element availability, types of plastics used and other neat stuff. This helps me make sure my model is on budget and in line with our design briefs.