If it was up to one fan, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood would literally be in your home. Or at least a miniaturized version of it.
Matt Smith recently made a detailed Lego re-creation of the set of the beloved children’s television show and the show’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
Now, he wants his idea to be accessible to all Lego lovers, according to reports from Pittsburgh media outlets and Lego.
For Smith, the idea began when his child was born in 2019 and they started watching “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” together. When the pandemic arrived, the family played with Legos to occupy themselves.
“After I’d been building sets and collecting figures for a while, my wife and I had started revisiting the show. … and it was like, you know, it’d be really great to try to do something with Mr. Rogers in Lego form,” he said to WTAE. “It could be really creative and fulfilling.”
Smith started working on the idea last year and put his first full Lego prototype together in September. The process turned out to be more than 125 hours of work and it contains 1,968 pieces.
If you’ve ever watched the classic children’s show, each day, Mister Rogers would open the door to his “television home” and sing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” to everyone watching, calling viewers his “television friends.” The most memorable part of this routine would be when he took off his coat, put on his sweater, and swapped his loafers for sneakers — to everyone’s delight.
The set includes such items as Picture-Picture, the traffic light, trolly, King Friday’s castle, and other memorable decorations that were a part of the show.
To turn Smith’s dream into an actual Lego set you can purchase, the project requires 10,000 votes to be considered by Lego. You can declare your support by heading to the project page and hitting the “support” button to create a Lego account and vote.
As of today, Smith’s recreation has received 1,897 votes. Lego lovers have 598 days left to turn this idea into a reality.
