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Now, a Cessna 185 set that Zighmi designed is in the running to become a real set. Zighmi’s Cessna 185 on floats with working flight controls, retractable gear, baggage compartment, a two-cylinder engine block, and accessories struck a chord with the pilot community, which helped propel it to 10,000 supporters on the Lego Ideas site. The 185 is now one of 75 submissions that will be considered by a company review board for production as a real-life Lego set, putting Zighmi’s Skywagon up against such pop culture franchises as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Jumanji, and KPop Demon Hunters.

“I like building things,” Zighmi said. “And I like designing things even more than building them. I mean, when I got a Lego box when I was little, I’d always build the model that was in the set, but then I would pretty soon destroy it and add all the parts to my bulk to do my own models.”

As he dived back into building with the iconic interlocking bricks as an adult, Zighmi thought back to a treasured set from the 1980s, a yellow Technic seaplane with a movable tail and ailerons, and a spinning propeller. Using software and physical prototyping, Zighmi created his own design inspired by the floatplane.

“What really blew my mind when I was like 5 or 6 years old is that it really worked when you moved the stick, the flaps, the ailerons and all will really move and I tried to reproduce that. I tried to make it even richer. So I added the pedals. I added some stuff that wasn’t there on the 8855, because otherwise, what’s the point? If you don’t make it better, there’s no reason to remake it.”

Zighmi’s ode to Set 8855 started out looking like a Cessna 172, but as he added features it grew into a six-seat 185. Zighmi mocked up the airplane in a software for Lego design called Stud.io, but he says one can’t effectively evaluate things like balance, friction, or spring resistance digitally, so he went back and forth between digital design and physical prototyping until he found something that worked. He estimates the process took him a year from initial design to Lego Ideas submission, working in his spare time.

In November 2022, Zighmi submitted his set to the Lego Ideas website, where it was labeled a staff pick and gained 1,894 supporters. But without any promotion, the airplane fell short of the 10,000 supporters required to be considered as an official set. So, Zighmi resubmitted the 2,248-part set in 2025, and this time he committed to promoting it on platforms like Reddit and TikTok.

“The moment it really took off is when I posted it on the Subreddit Flying and hundreds of pilots rushed in to vote, and I took like maybe 2,000 votes in two days,” Zighmi said. “It was kind of crazy.”

Zighmi is not a pilot, but he learned airplane fundamentals studying for France’s brevet d'initiation aéronautique, an aeronautics initiation certificate. He said he didn’t know the 185 would be so popular in the aviation community.

“I'm pretty happy that this one got to the end because in the end I was successful in getting something that looks like an airplane, but it’s also functional, which is sometimes very hard to achieve,” he said.