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Meet Australia's only female Lego designer, who is living out her childhood dream.

Australia’s only female Lego product designer, Melody Caddick, loves her job.

“I’ve been into Lego since my grandmother gave me my first Lego set which was at the age of three,” she told Mamamia.

“Whenever it was my birthday or my brother’s birthday I would always encourage my parents to get us Lego.”

The 41-year-old says it was the “ultimate” childhood toy because you could make other toys with it.

“My parents always said I was a creative child…I was never a bored child I was always creating something.”

A photo posted by Melody Caddick (@melloucad) on

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The model builder has now created a Lego legacy, after designing a host of products including the recent double-decker London bus and Lunar New Year monkey.

“The whole process is very very complicated, it’s very extensive. When you go from the beginning of the brief to the final part of the product, the process is quite large,” said Caddick.

“So many things happen, so many people are involved. It’s not just putting bricks together and putting it into a box, there’s a lot more to it than that.

“My part of it is getting the brief, doing the concept models and getting feedback and then developing it.”

“I have a lot of Lego.”

It’s also the kind of job that you can end up taking home, Caddick admits.

Melody designed Lego's London double-decker bus.

"I have a lot of Lego. At one stage it was definitely one of the largest collections in the world. I’ve had to cut back a little bit because I am running out of storage space."

After eight years with the company, the Denmark-based designer is still jumping out of bed to go to work each day.

“It’s a childhood dream to work for Lego…It’s just absolutely incredibly amazing and even five or six years after being in the design area, I still think ‘wow, I’ve been so lucky to get in’.”

The model builder loves any opportunity to share her passion for Lego, so when she was asked to travel home to inspire kids of Australia to re-imagine Santa’s sleigh as part of the Lego Christmas campaign, she jumped at it.

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This saw her work with six-year-old boy, Reid, to create a brand new sleigh for Santa and help inspire other kids to create their own.

“After working with Reid and seeing his imagination come to life, I can’t wait to see what other ideas children come up with,” said Melody.

But she is adamant that Lego is a gender-neutral toy.

"When I am creating my products I try to make them as unisex as possible, because even when I was growing up with Lego, I never saw it as a boy’s toy," she said.

"When people started calling it a boy’s toy I was like – really? – I never saw it at a boy’s toy.  We had basic bricks as kids and there a boy and a girl in the box so for me it was for children."

Caddick says her job allows her to be a big kid and despite stresses and deadlines she manages to find her real fulfilment in her work.

"You get lost in this world where you just create stuff and you forget about the big bad world out there. It’s kind of therapeutic, it’s exciting it’s enjoyable. It’s so nice."

The Lego fan has worked hard to build a career out of Lego, and wants young fans to know they too can follow their dreams.

"If you have a dream or a goal never think that it’s not possible because you never know," she said.

"If you had told me 15 years ago that I’d move to Europe and work for Lego, which is a big dream, I would never have believed you. It is achievable, you just to put yourself in that position and go for it.

"If it doesn’t work the first time, then keep trying until you get there."

Welcome to the slightly sticky world of This Glorious Mess, Mamamia's parenting podcast.

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