Alexis dos Santos, a 40-year-old programmer, created the original model at home that LEGO transformed into an official product with 1283 pieces. Launched on April 1 — the same day NASA launched the Artemis II mission — the set sold out quickly.
It started with a simple gesture: a co-worker asked him for help finding instructions for a LEGO Tintin rocket. They found nothing that satisfied them. Alexis dos Santos, programmer and fan of LEGO since he was a child, decided to design the model himself – first in digital form, then in real pieces.
He liked the result so much that he submitted it to the LEGO Ideas platform, where anyone can propose a set. The project received more than ten thousand votes from the global community – the minimum required for LEGO to analyze the proposal. After months of evaluation, the Danish company said yes.
“The greatest gift is the pride of having a project that was put in an official LEGO box. It’s an incomparable pride”, says Alexis, who makes a point of keeping LEGO as a hobby.
“It’s not a career. It’s a hobby. And I like to keep it as a hobby, because otherwise it stops being a refuge.”
The result is set 21367 – a detailed replica of the red and white checkered rocket from Hergé’s classic albums Objective Moon and Exploring the Moon.
There are 1283 pieces, 49 centimeters high, six minifigures – including Tintin, Milú, Captain Haddock and Professor Sunflower and detectives Dupont and Dupond – and costs 160 euros. This is the first time that the Tintin universe has become an official LEGO set.
Alexis’ original design included a launch tower, but LEGO opted to replace it with character figures. Alexis, in a gesture of sharing with the community, posted the tower’s instructions online for anyone who wants to build it themselves.
Alexis is part of Community 0937 – the name, read backwards, gives “LEGO” – an active group of builders based in Póvoa de Varzim, with a workshop full of large-scale parts and projects.
The timing coincidence is hard to ignore: the set was released on April 1, 2026, exactly the same day that NASA launched the Artemis II mission, which returned astronauts to lunar orbit. Tintin reached the moon in fiction in 1954 – fifteen years before Armstrong. Now, fiction and reality have crossed paths again, this time on the shelves and in space.
