While 21376 Orange Cat is the first recoloured LEGO Ideas set, it's far from the first time a LEGO set has been released in a new colour.
Aside from some minor differences, LEGO Ideas 21376 Orange Cat is pretty much a recolour of 21349 Tuxedo Cat, even purchasable from the same listing page on LEGO.com. It's a first for LEGO Ideas, but hardly anything new for the LEGO system as a whole.
The LEGO Group has been cautiously dipping its toe into the pool of recoloured LEGO sets for nearly two decades, but ramping up its efforts over the last five. Here's a walk down the recoloured brick road to where it all began.
Retailer exclusive colours
One of the earliest instances of recolouring a LEGO set came about in 2008, when the LEGO Group launched two versions of the same BIONICLE set in different colours at the same time. 8942 Jetrax T6, built from blue Technic elements, was the 'main' version that was easiest to find, but there was a limited-edition counterpart that was exclusive to either Target or Toys R Us in the US where those blue parts were swapped out for yellow pieces.
Another limited run came in 2012; the LEGO Group challenged Technic fans to design a ‘special top’ for 9398 4×4 Crawler. This brought 41999 4×4 Crawler Exclusive Edition to market with a very limited production run of just 20,000 copies. It wasn't quite a straight recolour, with some other changes like the addition of a winch system but close enough for the two to be practically the same.
These examples underline a cautious start to the trend that's picking up steam now, with recolours acting more like hard-to-find exclusives than widely-available variants.
Quickfire recolours
Fast forward a few years to 2019 and experimentation with recolours is becoming more mainstream. The 911 Turbo made a return to LEGO Speed Champions just one year after it was released in lime green as part of a duo in 75888 Porsche 911 RSR and 911 Turbo 3.0. 75985 1974 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.0 hits the LEGO road in a more classic white, but the build itself is seemingly identical to its green sibling.
In the same year, LEGO Technic also released a direct recolour, with 42088 Cherry Picker bringing an orange-and-white look to 2015's yellow-and-black 42031 Cherry Picker. With less than 200 pieces and nothing too groundbreaking in the design of this pocket-sized Technic set, this release once again feels like the LEGO Group was testing how audiences were responding to recoloured versions of sets – before launching some bigger experiments, with more expensive sets.
Time to test
The experiments begin in earnest in 2021, when the LEGO Group officially launches its pilot program. The goal was to ‘gain a deeper understanding of what our fans want from our portfolio and where they prefer to shop for new or unique products’. That was achieved by launching variants of five new sets in the UK, testing the response to different colours and sizes of the same set.
This led to the following hitting shelves in UK stores: 77942 Fiat 500 (a light blue version of the yellow 10271 Fiat 500); 77940 Mighty Dinosaurs and 77941 Mighty Dinosaurs (dark blue and brown versions of 31058 Mighty Dinosaurs); and 77943 Fire Station Starter Set and 77944 Fire Station Headquarters (smaller and bigger versions of 60215 Fire Station).
Builder's choice
Although the LEGO Group has never shared its learnings from that pilot program, whatever it found appeared to find value in releasing different colours of the same sets. Rather than launching variant colours as retailer exclusives or years after the original launch, 2023 saw 42184 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolute White Hypercar and 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut Grey Hypercar race into stores at the same time.
The trend continued with 2024's 42196 Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica Orange, where the new colour was made clear in the very set name of the LEGO Technic set. Indeed, offering a choice of colour appears to be a popular move in Technic, with rumours of another recolour on the way to the theme for 2026.
While the LEGO Group's approach to recolours started off slow, the last few years have seen a gradual ramping up of the practice. It's a move from the LEGO Group that offers the creativity you often see in custom builds for a wider audience.
Where the casual LEGO fan (like the ones who would be interested in a LEGO cat, for example) might not know that sites like Rebrickable offer different coloured or tweaked builds of existing sets, the LEGO Group simply releasing the same set in a new colour makes those twists mainstream. It reminds builders that, at the end of the day, LEGO sets are designed to be remade and rebuilt – and changing the colour is just one facet of that.
It's a savvy move for 21349 Tuxedo Cat and 21376 Orange Cat in particular, as pet lovers are sure to want not just a brick-built version of any cat, but specifically of their cat. The more colours you have, the more people that's going to appeal to – so perhaps we'll see even more colours hitting shelves down the line. Even now, you can pretty easily combine the orange and black pieces to create tortoiseshells and tabbies with their mixed-colour coats.
If you're keen to try out one or both of the LEGO Ideas cats, 21349 Tuxedo Cat is available to buy now and 21376 Orange Cat is available to pre-order, both at LEGO.com.
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