Robotnik's Truck

- Semi-tractor

- Semi-trailer

- Chevrolet Suburban

- 3 minifigures

- 12 drones

- Brick separator

- Pivoting fifth-wheel coupling

- Articulated steering

- Fold down door/staircase

- Fold up right trailer wall

- Openable arms on the drones

- Double pendulum office chair

The tractor can move its front wheels by means of a steering gear on the back of the tractor, which has a 1:1 steering ratio. The steering has a 50° pivot range to prevent the tires from touching the bodywork. The trailer can be connected to the tractor by first lifting up the trailer and then lowering the kingpin in the hole of the fifth wheel. When the trailer and the tractor are connected they have a wide rotational distance at the fifth wheel. The drones have each 4 arms that can be folded outwards and in the trailer are 12 mounting points for the drones to be stored inside the trailer. The trailer’s right wall can be opened by sliding it outwards and then folding it upwards and letting it rest on the other side of the roof, the wall can be closed by doing the same thing in reverse. On the trailer’s left wall is a small door that can be folded down to form a staircase, this can be easily done by first opening the right wall on the trailer and pushing the door on the left wall out from the inside of the trailer.

(The tractor sadly does not support motorization)

It was very important for me to get the most amount of detail in the model as I can. So I looked up a lot of pictures of the truck and watched some footage of the movie where the truck was in and thought of other features I could include to make the most out of the set. I included 3 minifigures, those being: Dr. Robotnik, Agent Stone and Major Bennington, Robotnik also has one of Sonic’s quills. In the set is also one of the four government Chevrolet SUV’s that followed the truck in some scenes. Inside the trailer I have replicated the interior from the movie but it does not include the “Eggpod” which is Robotnik’s aircraft that he used nearing the end of the movie, because the model had to stay below 3000 parts. One detail I personally like is the chair at the desk in the front of the inside of the trailer, it’s mounted on a double pendulum and can move and rotate everywhere within a certain radius. This is accurate to how it is in real life because the double pendulum can be seen in behind the scenes footage of the movie. Part of the humor of the set is that the truck is on a far larger scale than the car which uses the traditional scale LEGO vehicles have.

The tractor seen in the movie is a modified Freightliner argosy 110. It is a reused movie truck which has first appeared in the movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, where it had a silver and gray color scheme and some additional modifications. In that movie it played a character named Galvatron. For the Sonic movie it was painted black with gray with it’s mirrors removed and windows covered in panels. The tractor is currently at Daimler Trucks as a display. The trailer was custom made for the Sonic movie.

After I went to see Sonic the Hedgehog in the movie theatre I wondered what Robotnik’s truck would look like in LEGO. So I thought: instead of waiting for LEGO to release their own version, I decided to answer my question for myself and make it on my own. So I downloaded LEGO Digital Designer and started designing, after the first day it failed to save my progress, so I had to start over the next day. I began by making the chassis and the twelve wheels on the trailer and worked my way forward, but I quickly found out that LDD was missing many important pieces that I for example needed to make the drones. And the framerate was very low and it kept crashing. So I searched for an alternative LEGO designing software. I eventually downloaded Stud.io from Bricklink which had a regularly updated parts list, so imported my LDD file and found that Stud.io ran a lot smoother and could handle the big model much better. Quickly I saw the opportunity to make it a real set by submitting it on LEGO IDEAS and I had some time ago bought the LEGO IDEAS Saturn V which inspired me to submit my own idea. Besides designing the truck model, I read through the rules and guidelines on LEGO IDEAS in my spare time and modified the build accordingly. Some family members and other people I knew helped me with motivation and my understanding of semi-trucks in general and gave critique on some aspects of it. It was pretty tough to think about certain systems and ways of connecting specific elements to each other, after all I only was one person. After nine months the model was finished. Now I needed to make the renders to put on LEGO IDEAS. The renders took three whole days with each render taking on average one to two+ hours and one taking almost four hours. Three of the renders needed to be photoshopped into one image, my sister was the only one I knew who knows how to use photoshop, so she did that for me. In summary designing the truck was a whole process with many parts being very difficult to figure out, but in the end I think it was the best I could have done mostly alone.