Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle MOC Lego Sewer Lair
Let’s take a trip down into the Lego Sewers
The goal of this Lego Sewer lair was to create the ultimate base for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wanted a Lego sewer lair that tied into a larger street scene. I wanted something on the street. A pizza shop. An alley-way and road.
The custom Lego Sewer Lair has plenty of pipes, tight spaces and areas for the turtles to occupy. The whole set includes plenty of sections borrowed from original Lego sets. Donny’s workbenches, Dojo, Corner Deli shop.
The project
I’ve made the Corner Deli shop from the Lego Creator line an Antonio’s Pizza joint. Complete with shooting pizza oven and signage. I’ve made April’s apartment on the top level. With the balcony creating a great vantage point for her journalism.
On the NYC streets, we’ve got a manhole cover creating a sewer entrance. There’s an alley way on one side of the building, above Donatello’s workshop. And then a skate ramp on the other side of the building with a street that extends back. The goal is to create plenty of places to set up mini-figures. Kraang in the alley. Footclan on the roof. Baxter’s robot rampaging down the street.
I was inspired by the retro Playmates Sewer lair. Donny’s Workshop is on the far left. Pieces like the work bench were pulled out of the Nickelodeon Lego Sewer Lair. Using the grate on top, Donatello has a classic fire-hydrant periscope to get a heads up on any trouble.
Donny’s workshop is on a raised platform along with the main lobby coming from the manhole. This is elevated so Donny had a good vantage point to work on the Turtle Sub.
From the back, we can access the Turtles computer system. It’s really basic but I wanted to to use it to add a little depth to the sewer lair and make sure we got all the important amenities for the Turtles.
Where did the Lego Sewer Lair start?
I pulled apart the stock Lego Sewer Lair, the original Nickelodeon Cartoon one and the one from the movie, I tried to keep them relatively together to begin with. The official Lego sets always do a pretty good job with the patterns on the bricks, stability, balance between the colours. I wanted to keep those elements as much as possible but it felt very ungainly. I originally wanted to go really big with a t-intersection, 3 different street sections, a massive underground area with 3 different floors and the ability to pull the set apart into two separate sections with a removable street.
The problem was obviously, I’ve tried connecting all these pieces into my grand scheme. It didn’t work. The whole build was too big and unstable. There were too many sections that felt redundant or weren’t practical. I also tried to mix both the movie and original Lego Turtles on each side of the lair. With all the bad guys up on top, there was a lot of minifigures but not much room to breathe.
Using parts of the original structure, I wanted to create something more custom. By breaking the sections down further, I was able to begin incorporating them better and creating a better space. I’m pleased with the final result. The new MOC Lego Sewer lair incorporates most of my original ideas.
Like any custom creation, this is far from complete, especially the back of the set. Any thoughts, suggestions or even custom turtle stuff you’ve built, let me know in the comments!