NY I ♥ Yoda Statue Replica (MOC)
Building the Unbuildable: A Replica of the Rarest Yoda in the Galaxy
1,391 pieces. Weeks of work. One YouTube video as the only reference. And a Reddit thread that proved thousands of people wanted this.
Only three brick-built NY I ♥ Yoda statues were ever made. They were given as Grand Prize awards in a 2013 LEGO Club Magazine contest, and their whereabouts today are almost entirely unknown. One is with MandR. Two have never surfaced publicly. Most collectors will never see one in person, let alone own one.
This is the next best thing.
The Original
The brick-built NY I ♥ Yoda statue was produced by LEGO as the Grand Prize in a contest run in the May/June 2013 issue of LEGO Club Magazine, timed to promote the launch of The Yoda Chronicles and the Times Square X-Wing event. Three winners each received a large-scale brick-built version of the iconic NY I ♥ Yoda minifig — the same design as sw0465a, the white-hair Yoda given away at the Times Square Toys R Us event, scaled up to display size.
The full history of the original statue — its contest origins, known provenance, and the ongoing search for the two unaccounted-for examples — is documented in the companion article Brick-Built NY I ♥ Yoda Statue — LEGO Club Magazine Contest Prize. This article is about building one.
The Challenge
The only publicly available documentation of the original statue is a February 2022 YouTube video by MandR titled “The RAREST LEGO Star Wars Yoda EVER?” — 15 minutes and 20 seconds of footage, shot from whatever angles MandR chose to film from, with no guarantee of seeing every face of the build.
Reverse engineering a LEGO build from video is painstaking work. The process involved watching the video repeatedly — pausing, rewinding, zooming in — looking for seams between bricks, trying to identify part types from shape, inferring hidden layers from what was visible on the surface. Many shots were clear enough to see individual brick seams. Others left critical angles completely undocumented. The underside of the build, for example, is never shown in the video.
An attempt was made to contact MandR directly for additional photographs. He didn’t reply — which is understandable. A cold email asking for detailed photos of a one-of-three collectible probably does look suspicious, and he may have had concerns about enabling counterfeit builds. The reverse engineering had to proceed without his help.
The work took several weeks, spread across nights and weekends. Every layer had to be reasoned out from what was visible, with educated guesses filling in the gaps. The result is a faithful replica — not a certified reproduction, but the most accurate build possible from the available evidence.
The Build
The replica contains 1,391 pieces across 89 unique part and color combinations. The color palette directly mirrors the sw0465a minifig it is based on:
- Dark Green — Yoda’s skin, the dominant color of the build
- White — the I ♥ NY torso shirt
- Red — the heart in the I ♥ NY design
- Black — detailing and outlining
- Light Bluish Gray — secondary detailing
- Dark Gray — small accent elements
- Green — accent elements
The most technically interesting element of the build is the heart. Rather than being built in the standard stud-up orientation, the heart is constructed using SNOT (Studs Not On Top) techniques — plates and bricks oriented sideways to achieve the curved shape of the ♥ symbol. It is the most complex section of the build and the part that required the most trial and error to work out from the video footage. If you build this and find a better solution for the heart, we would genuinely love to hear about it.
None of the parts in this build are particularly unusual or hard to source. The entire parts list can be purchased through BrickLink using the XML file linked below. The most common parts — standard bricks and plates in dark green, white, and red — are widely available and inexpensive.
Unlike the original, this replica is not glued. It can be disassembled and rebuilt.
The Response
When the instructions were first published on BrickPubs.com in April 2023, a post about the build on Reddit generated significant interest — hundreds of comments and direct messages from collectors who had never heard of the original statue and were excited to be able to build a replica. The response confirmed what the original contest numbers already suggested: there is genuine demand for accessible versions of items that most collectors will never be able to own. That is what the Builds section of this site is for.
A Note on Counterfeits
These instructions are offered solely for personal, non-commercial use. Building a replica for subsequent sale is expressly prohibited. Beyond the legal and ethical issues, selling a replica as an original would be straightforwardly fraudulent — the original statues are documented, provenance-tracked collector items and any serious buyer would investigate before purchasing.
The decision to publish these instructions was made carefully. The original statues are so rare and so well-documented that making replica instructions widely available is more likely to reduce demand for unverified examples than to enable fraud. Only serious collectors would consider buying an aged original over downloading these instructions and building a replica for a fraction of the price — and serious collectors are precisely the people most likely to scrutinize provenance carefully.
The Instructions and Parts List
I am offering these instructions solely for personal use. No commercial or advertising use permitted. To prevent counterfeit statues from reaching the market, using these instructions to build a model for subsequent sale is expressly prohibited.
Click here to download a BrickLink parts XML file for this model. Hint: right-click the link and select Save As to download the file to your computer. If you are new to purchasing parts on BrickLink, see our separate guide: How to Upload an XML Parts List to BrickLink.
Note on part numbers: BrickLink has updated several part numbers since the original parts list was created. The current list reflects updated numbers: 3068 (formerly 3068b), 3069 (formerly 3069b), and 3070 (formerly 3070b).
NY I ♥ Yoda Statue Replica (MOC)
Based on: Brick-Built NY I ♥ Yoda Statue — LEGO Club Magazine Contest Prize (2013)
Pieces: 1,391
Unique parts: 89
Designer: The Collector, BringMeSolo
Instructions published: April 2023 (originally on BrickPubs.com)