Five years after its initial rejection, a father-son LEGO tribute to electronic music legends Daft Punk has evolved into a creation that could soon sit on store shelves worldwide.
The pyramid stage that defined the robots’ groundbreaking “Alive 2007” tour may soon be manufactured as an official LEGO set thanks to the persistence of Patrick Harboun and his son.
The duo’s stunning design, a meticulous recreation of the stage containing over 2,000 bricks, won the Grand Prize in LEGO’s global “Music To Our Ears!” competition back in 2020 but was passed over for commercial production. However, it has now earned a second chance at immortality in plastic after receiving the requisite 10,000 public votes on LEGO’s Ideas platform to advance in the company’s approval process and face its notoriously exacting Review Board.
Patrick Harboun
The genesis of Harboun’s project speaks to the peculiar alchemy of lockdown creativity. While others baked sourdough or discovered Peloton, the father-son team channeled their shared Daft Punk obsession into LEGOs. His son, eight years old at the time, built a prototype cobbled together from his existing brick collection before the elder Harboun used his engineering background to expand the concept digitally.
At its heart, the design features a rotating transparent-brick box nestled inside the iconic pyramid, powered by a motor with hanging lights that recreate the pulsing light show that accompanied tracks like “One More Time” and “Around the World” during Daft Punk’s career-defining tour. It’s a fitting tribute to a tandem whose aesthetic sensibility has always straddled the line between retrofuturism and meticulous attention to detail, qualities that LEGO’s own design philosophy mirrors with uncanny similarity.
Patrick Harboun
Should the project survive LEGO’s rigorous review process, which scrutinizes everything from “playability” and safety to brand alignment, it will enter development later this year. Every potential LEGO product goes through this process and must meet the same standards, according to the company.
If approved, the set will enter the Development phase, the longest stage of the process. During this time, LEGO’s model designers will refine the concept and prepare it for release while the team develops all supporting materials, including packaging, instructions and marketing assets.
The final verdict will be made and announced toward the end of 2025, Harboun tells EDM.com. As the robots themselves might put it, he and his son are “doin’ it right” the second time around.
The LEGO review process will officially begin in May 2025. You can find out more about the project here.
