LEGO “Design By Me” Custom Jabba’s Throne

LEGO has an interesting service that they provide called “Design By Me.” It uses a computer program called LEGO Digital Designer (available for both Mac and Windows), which is a sort of CAD program for LEGOs. You can choose from a large variety of pieces to make your own LEGO sets, then upload the data to the LEGO servers and they will assemble the set for you, even including a custom printed box and instructions. The software takes some getting used to. It’s fairly easy to come up with a design that won’t really work in reality, or to have pieces that only look like they are attached but end up being far away from each other when you rotate the design. But once you have some practice with it, you can make some interesting things.

I wanted to make a better version of Jabba’s throne — one that looks more like what we saw in the movie than what was in the Jabba’s Palace set. You can’t choose from any licensed parts in the Digital Designer software, so I couldn’t use any of the parts from the other sets. All of the pieces used are generic ones, but I think it turned out pretty well. (Of course the mini-figs are all from the existing Jabba sets.) It takes several weeks to get your completed set, and it’s not cheap. The throne was nearly $50 including shipping.

Here is how the design looks in the Digital Designer program:

And here are the custom box and instructions. The instructions are automatically generated, so they aren’t as logical as the ones with actual LEGO sets (and of course the set wasn’t designed by a professional so there may be things that aren’t done in the most efficient way). And the box is quite big for the size of the throne (I think they use the same size boxes for everything). But they look really nice. Very slick and professional looking. I was impressed.

Now I should add a word of warning. The first time I designed this and tried to buy it, I used the word “Jabba” in the title. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this ended up meaning that my order would be canceled due to the use of a copyrighted term. That’s fine, but LEGO never told me that my order was canceled. Since they made a big deal about how it would take several weeks to get your order, I didn’t realize anything was amiss for quite some time. In the end, I resubmitted the exact same design, but without using the word “Jabba” on the box, and it went through.